07 October 2004 Blog Home : October 2004 : Permalink
The Register has an interesting piece on Microsnot's DRM plans. I mention this solely because I have been considering dipping a toe in the DRM world by actually buying some protected eBooks over at Fictionwise. I've been tempted numerous times but so far each time I've gone to fictionwise I've nearly bought stuff and then decided I don't want it enough because of the *ç%&ing encrypted ebook formats which are generally the only ones on offer. Right now despite all the discounts (which do make fictionwise interesting) the idiotic protection still makes me annoyed and debate whether its worth the hassle given that I can get enough unencrypted stuff from Baen's Webscriptions.
However I noticed that almost all the books are available in Microsnot's Reader format so that if someone had a way to decrypt that format so that I could store the unencrypted versions in some convenient manner (and possibly run some HTML converting perl script to add them to my existing Baen library) this would make my bitching and moaning a one time operation. And, thanks to a helpful person at Baen's Bar it looks like this is indeed an option becuase there is a nice program called Convert LIT which does precisely what I want.
Of course I still have to bend over and get a nice insecure Passport account and I still have to install M$ Reader which bitches and moans about requiring Administrator privileges both to be installed and then to register with Redmond (<% insert obligatory rant about broken Microsnot security model %>) and of course running the Convert LIT executable is almost certainly illegal (perhaps its significant that the program is called clit.exe?) so I will neither confirm nor deny that I have done that...
However going back to the title, the fact is that I have spent a lot of money on eBaen books over the last couple of years, by my calculation I have bought over 100 titles at an average cost of about $4 each for a total expenditure of some $400 or so, and I have no intention of reducing that rate of purchase until Baen runs out of books that I want to read. Fictionwise, by contrast, will get perhaps a tenth of that amount if it is lucky, and more likely will get less as all I will do is buy a couple of books which aren't available from Baen but which fill in a series that I already own either on paper or electronically. This is partly becuase the Baen books are cheaper but it is mainly because they are easier to read. I don't need to putz around with passwords once I've downloaded the files and I don't need to run some special version of software to read them, a web browser is entirely sufficient and finally, if (as has already happened once) my computer goes to the scrapheap in the sky, I can still read all my books without doing anything more complicated than copying them from my backup hard disk. No read to reregister my computer or figure out what my password was or anything.
The fact that Baen also provides entire books for free (as I noted yesterday) is just an additional loyalty enhancer. Oh and by the way I have never ever violated the Baen copyright and I doubt I ever will, why would I when a Baen ebook costs $4-$6? Fictionwise on the otherhand I note has ebooks priced at Hardback prices. I object to paying $15-$25 for a bunch of electrons, especially when they are copy protected so that I cannot legally print them or read them on more than one machine. As the introduction to the Baen Free Library says (I paraphrase slightly) treating your customers like felons is not a great way to inspire customer loyalty.