DRM Drove Me Away From EBooks.

Our pool was open for one day, really more like hours, and I dropped my Kindle in. Now I have a Nook too so not all was lost. Until I remembered I couldn’t get my Kindle books onto it. (Yes I know there are some legal gray areas on removing DRM. That’s not the point of this post).

The digital is easier to carry, but I know which will still work over the years.

Recently there have been reports of some shady business practices around Amazon. So I’m not sure I want another Kindle. Using my iPad isn’t a solution (especially this time of year when I read outside). I like eink. I like that an ereader can so one thing (no social media distractions). So I thought about sticking to my Nook. After all, I can get Google Books books onto by Nook. And I can get Nook books into iBooks and Kobo. And all of a sudden this is getting very complicated.

I’ve written before about how I like eBooks because they’re convenient. But for me personally they’ve stopped being convenient (Claire on the other hand does not have this issue because she is not a gadget addict. Plus she prefers dead tree books anyway). I feel like ebooks are in the place MP3s were during the early 2000s. There’s DRM everywhere. You’re locked into a device. And the device makers own your business because of that.

There’s also the issue of cost. It seems that paper books are just getting cheaper. I just bought The Fault in Our Stars. Which is anywhere between $4.99-$8.49 for the ebook. Or $10.18 for the hardcover. Several Nick Hornby books actually cross the line into being cheaper on paper. And that’s not even including the used book market.

So I’m moving back to dead tree books for the most part. Sure, I’ll still read my trashy romance novels on my Nook. And there’s always the occasional deal (picked up Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited for $1.99 each before the pool incident). But for the most part I’m just tired of dealing with the DRM. Maybe if all writers were able to publish their eBooks like JK Rowling did with Harry Potter (using her site and you can transfer the books to up to 7 devices of any kind) I’d be more interested in ebooks. But let’s face it, JK Rowling can do pretty much whatever she wants.

I’m sure I’ll return to ebooks. I’m hoping books will go the way of MP3s and lose the DRM, and not games where it’s only gotten worse. Hopefully they’ll stop punishing their customers for actually buying their product instead of pirating it.

Of course, in my dream world books would be like records. You buy a physical copy and get a free download. But sadly I think that is truly wishful thinking.