ebook rant

[chronovore]

Direct-to-Drive is offering digital editions of the "Girls of Gaming" volumes 1 and 2, bundled, for the low-low price of US$19.90, which isn't really a bundle because the price on each volume is US$9.95. This is not coincidently the same price as the dead-tree edition of the books, so as bundles go, there isn't really anything added. Usually in sales a bundle means a cheaper price, or some added geegaw or doodad along the lines of a box (in the case of a boxed set) or a wrapper of some kind. Wrapper is coincidentally the term that digital download providers use for some types of DRM; maybe they got confused and meant that was the nature of the bundle. The downloaded version are in the Adobe PDF format, require v. 6.02 of it to work properly. There is no information about how high resolution the graphics are, or whether the text is integrated into the graphics (resolution dependent) or if the text can be made to disappear and not obscure the pictures. Well, at least the book can be printed out, because some PDFs request that Acrobat heismans the print function. So essentially the downside there is that is not clear what resolution the printouts would be at.

My gripe is that there is no simple way to know exactly what is being offered with the digital version, as opposed to the paper version, which can be leafed through, plopped on a color copier or scanner, what-have-you. In other words, D2D wants to charge the same amount for something they don't have to physically distribute and which may or may not be as easy to read/enjoy/use as the originals, which offer an unprecedented level of resolution (the books are, you know, "real") and no copy protection beyond their single-instance physicality.

I will draw on the wisdom of Doctorow (sorry, professormass) which largely echo my feelings on DRM

No customer wants DRM. No one woke up this morning and said, "Damn, I wish there was a way to do less with my books, movies and music."

Hopefully this will be an instance of no sales occurring and dimming this kind of dim, protectionist, consumer-hostile behavior, as opposed to an assumption that ebooks are not viable. They are viable; I have what would be a walls' worth of books all on my Palm T3, all legal, many of them purchased — but none with DRM on them.