Sorry About the Digital Rights Nonsense
When my publisher decided to release my Secrets book for “free” as an ebook, I thought it meant FREE. I just found it meant free-for-a-little-while-and-then-gone. Apparently it has some sort of DRM expiration date on it.
[Update: One of my tester friends found that he could defeat the expiration mechanism by playing with the system date, but that's not very practical, I guess.]
They didn’t mention this to me when they told me about the promotion. I suppose they thought “Well OBVIOUSLY it’s only free for a period of time… we’re in the publishing business!” But it wasn’t obvious to me or I would have told you when I announced it.
Anyway, you can still download the book until the 24th of July, and you can read it for some period of time after that before it goes POOF. Not bad, considering that it didn’t cost you anything except the annoyance of downloading it, but still…
Naturally, I hope everyone goes out and buys the hardcover with real money. That way I’ll be encouraged to write more books. Otherwise, it’s an expensive hobby.
Side note: It’s interesting how glitchy the process is, too. Several people found that the special Adobe reader software complained and moaned and wouldn’t install on their systems. QUALITY IS DEAD!
July 23rd, 2009 at 6:27 am
Among the other issues with ” Adobe Digital Editions (ADE)”, the problem I faced was about “proxy authentication”. while downloading, I was using my office connection (with proxy) and required its authentication. ADE installer just got frozen. I did not know how to help this software to authenticate with proxy.
I later downloaded at my home (broadband) .. it just worked fine.
Anyway thanks James ( and your publishers) for this FREE dowload (conditions applied).
Shrini
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:52 am
Is it worth even trying if you use Linux and not Adobe reader? I guess not.
July 23rd, 2009 at 10:56 am
Eric Flint pretty much says it all, here:
http://www.baen.com/library/
and here:
http://www.baen.com/library/palaver_index.htm
which is lengthy, but worthwhile. Especially issue #11, written by Janis Ian.
Your publisher is wrong. Giving away books DRM-free on the internet gets you more sales, not less, and the Baen authors have proved that.
July 23rd, 2009 at 12:26 pm
I was able to read the book with Adobe Digital Editions on Linux. I downloaded a standalone installer for it on Windows, along with the book, and made sure to register it with an Adobe account so I could read the book on more than one machine. I copied the files to a Linux machine and installed them using wine. The site wouldn’t allow a direct download with a native Linux browser.
As I mentioned on another post here, I think this can be done without a Windows machine - try using a browser that lets you fake the agent string to look like you’re running Windows, or install a Windows web browser under wine and use that for the download.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Kent - it is worth trying, I’ve got it open on my desktop right now. I installed Wine, then I installed Adobe Digital Editions.
I found this forum discussion useful.
And here’s someone else reading it under Wine http://tejasconsulting.com/blog/?p=219
I didn’t find I needed any “hackery” to get it to install, but my setup is likely different.
July 24th, 2009 at 1:43 am
This is right direction - “free for a period of time”, because this s real “the publishing business!” It’s common approach - I read some parts from the book using, e.g., my mobile phone or PC, and if I am interested, I will by it ‘on paper’, because reading big text from the monitor is too hard for my eyes. PC is good for storing all my home library - i don’t need the whole bookcase for that.
You choose to make the book alive using Editor, Proofreader and Publisher’s time, work, brain, skills and paper. There cannot be ‘free sale’ in this conditions
Such books like yours can be published without all these components - just write all words in an txt file and publish it on the satisfice.com. Is it the same effect, right - people will read and will know about what you want to say about scholarism and ‘how to teach myself’?
And, anyone, who is able to download and read the book in epub format, can make a copy for longer personal use, or for read the content in other formats. There are several ways do do that, even if there are some technical restrictions in Adobe software.
I don’t know, how much money can give the book sale itself, real money coming from the ‘Hey, this is the author of those book! It worth to make business with him!’.
PS My english is not so brilliant as yours, so I hope for mercy to my grammar.
[James' Reply: I do give away a lot of content on the theory that it brings me reputation and therefore business. I think it's worked pretty well. In this instance, I'm working with a major publisher, so I'm bound to do it their way.]
July 24th, 2009 at 8:58 am
How many hours did you put into the book?
[James' Reply: About 26 years since I first agreed to write it. I can't tell which of the hours in that time count and which don't.
If you want the time I spent, after doing the main research for the book, to identify, structure, and package the ideas, then... hmm... on the order of 1200 hours plus or minus 200.
That includes all the writing that I threw away.
The biggest problem with writing a book is the vast number of ideas I don't include in it. How to choose what goes in and what stays out? It's a non-fiction book, but I had to decide whether to discuss incidents involving my son, or my first wife. Some of the events in my life are difficult to explain, so I gave up and skipped them.]
July 26th, 2009 at 11:40 pm
Thank you Mr James for the ebook , well I downloaded just in Time.I did have some problems initially to download the file & was unable to open it in the digital editions..had to close & restart Adobe couple of times.but finally I have the ebook
July 27th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
Hi James,
I was excited to see the “Free” download. Then it came up with “download this….”. That’s where I usually hit the “Exit here” button (and use some pretty harsh language about standards and DRM). But since it cam from you I persevered and continued just to find out that your publisher & Adobe do not care for about 10% of their clients….those on Linux and/or Mac. How shortsighted! When will these people learn that their proprietary systems just peeve people off? If they are so worried about DRM why don’t they just present it online as JPG page by page and cut off your login when the trial has finished? Then everybody could read it no matter what tech.
Although I think that this action has brought more sales for you I think it was probably a really awkward experience. Personally it put me off and would have scared me away from buying. I’m convinced though that the book is good and I do want to know more on the subject so I will go and buy a copy. I’m sure you’ll bring some to Stanz?!
Cheers
Oliver
[James' Reply: People have made it work on other platforms. But anyway... It won't be out for STANZ, but a couple weeks later it will be on sale in Australia (perhaps NZ, too, I didn't ask).]
August 7th, 2009 at 10:17 am
Pity, I was really getting into the book, but the next day when I tried to read, it was expired. I’ll probably buy the book when I have $ for it in the budget. I had hoped to blog it, but I haven’t really read enough to speak intelligently about all the interesting concepts.
August 16th, 2009 at 7:17 am
Though this discussion has mostly died, I’d like to include remarks made by bestselling author Neil Gaiman at this year’s World Science Fiction Convention (where he won another Hugo for best novel, btw), last week in Montreal, in a Q&A session with Cory Doctorow, concerning this subject:
“It’s been really fun in my own slow way nudging HarperCollins out of the stone ages and into the dark ages. As far as I’m concerned the entire argument [of the validity of giving digital books away] was won at the point where I got them to put American Gods online…we gave it away for free for a month, and during the course of that month and for about four weeks after, the number of copies of all of my books…went up three hundred percent. As far as I’m concerned, that answered that question.”
That came from here: http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=50469&j=20726859
Gaiman’s Hugo (and Newberry) award-winning novel, “The Graveyard Book”, has been recorded and made available on line for free. Whenever the book starts to slip in the ratings, Gaiman just reminds people that they can get it free:
“Whenever I notice that [The Graveyard Book] is slipping down the Amazon ratings…I just go onto Twitter and say, ‘You know you can watch the entire thing for free,’ and then the Amazon ratings will go up. It has been out in the world for forty-three weeks, and for forty-three of those forty-three weeks it’s been in the top ten of the New York Times Bestseller list. So I don’t believe we have lost a single sale.”
September 10th, 2009 at 5:51 am
It is a shame that you don’t give the book for free. You are a ignorant bulk like the others. You jsut want the money of the testers. You are not better!! Shame on you! I hope oyu post it, if you can accept critic.
[James' Reply: Do you think all books should be free or just mine?]
September 11th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Blimey Dublin, breath will you.
I thought it was a shame we were expected to download ‘their’ application to read a book. This approach strikes me as rather arrogant and backwards frankly. As if I’m expected to be beholden to them for my eBooks and that I’ll subscribe to the idea of doing the same for every publisher I want eBooks from. Crazy. I’m with Oliver on what I’d usually do in this event, as it was James’s book I installed it and started to read the book. I much prefer the ‘prepared for…’ approach pragprog take.
With regards to the book I was surprised and impressed with what I had time to read. I just bought my copy from Amazon UK http://snipurl.com/rrh6j and at £5.50 it’s as good as free. Looking forward to it arriving.