Naomi Novik, author of the Temeraire series, was one of several people interviewed for an “All Things Considered” feature that aired on NPR this week discussing DRM, or Digital Rights Management. DRM—meaning software built into electronic books that controls the way it can be viewed—is a hot-button topic among publishers, writers and agents these days; both proponents and detractors discuss it passionately. Naomi’s point of view, which you can listen to here, is anti-DRM. As an author, she wants as many people as possible to be able to read her work.
As an editor whose continued employment relies on book sales (both electronic and hard-copy), I am of course conflicted about the topic. But I am fully in favor of offering non-DRM titles on occasion to fulfill the same goal as Naomi’s. That’s one reason we’ve opened the Suvudu Free Library, which will make electronic books available on numerous eBook sites for free. There are authors I know I would like to try but have never gotten around to reading; if I ran across a freely offered electronic copy of one of his or her titles, I most certainly would download it. (And if I liked it, I’d probably plunk down hard-copy money to buy the print edition—me being a fan of hard-copy books more than eBooks, at least at this point.)
DMR has been much discussed in the SF/fantasy world. Cory Doctorow and Baen Books, for example, have long been vocal proponents of making eBooks freely available. Any opponents out there? Let us know your opinion.
