When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear too

Re:When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear... by ocdtrekkie on Thursday April 04, 2019 @01:17AM (#19569515)

There's actually quite a few eBook stores out there with DRM-free options, you just have to know where to look, and they're usually publisher-specific.

Humble Bundle does a weekly Book Bundle. Wiley, O'Reilly, No Starch, and several other publishers all regularly participate with tech books, geek books, comic books, and manga.

No Starch itself deserves a separate mention just because they're awesome. On their own site, if you buy the print book, the eBook comes free, a nice courtesy you won't pick up buying on Amazon. And of course, all of their stuff is DRM-free.

Informit, which is Pearson's programming and IT book site, sells watermarked, but otherwise DRM-free content (if you really care, watermark stripping likely isn't that hard, but as long as they're not trying to tamper with my ability to open the file where I want to, I don't mind watermarks, I ain't a pirate). Informit includes Adobe Press, Cisco Press, Microsoft Press, VMware Press, Sams, etc. I've gotten a lot of textbooks from here.

Manning Publications sells DRM-free too.

If you're a Trekkie, Simon & Schuster sells Star Trek novels DRM-free on their site as well. They have monthly sales that bring a set of them down to 99 cents a piece, which is good, since their standard prices are obscene.

Even Comixology (from Amazon, of course), has joined the DRM-free game, though only for specific publishers. Neither Marvel nor DC participate, mind you, but many of the smaller publishers do.

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Re:When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear... by TeMPOraL on Thursday April 04, 2019 @03:27AM (#19570029)

Wow, thanks for that list, in particular for Simon & Schuster. I am a Trekkie (that's the origin of my handle, too), and I sometimes bought Star Trek e-books on Amazon (most recently, Department of Temporal Investigations series). I'd much prefer to buy DRM-free.

> I don't mind watermarks, I ain't a pirate

That depends; pirates mind water marks on goods they liberated on the high seas, as they reveal the provenance of the merchandise. They like the marks left by water on their equipment, as a proof of prowess.

(Yes, I had to.)

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Re:When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear... by teh_klev on Thursday April 04, 2019 @05:40AM (#19570516)

Can I add Tor (publisher of SciFi, Fantasy etc) who also sell most of their eBooks DRM free.

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Re:When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear... by bo1024 on Thursday April 04, 2019 @07:47AM (#19571017)

One thing I got confused about was where they actually sell these DRM-free ebooks. (Apparently not on their website.) I went out on a limb and bought some Tor books from ebooks.com and they did turn out to be DRM-free, but there was no way to tell in advance.

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Re:When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear... by jamesgeck0 on Thursday April 04, 2019 @10:48AM (#19572948)

Tor's Kindle books are also DRM free, although IIRC the process of exporting the DRM free files outside the Kindle app is somewhat non-intuitive.

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Re:When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear... by WorldMaker on Thursday April 04, 2019 @01:38PM (#19575007)

Thanks to lawyer back and forth Amazon now has an explicit note on Tor (and Baen and a few other similar publisher titles) making it clear that the file is DRM free at publisher request. It seems like funny language in Amazon's store pages because it sounds like they are treating it like a book defect the way it is written, but the bonus is that you can look for that "warning"/"acknowledgment" when you want that best of both worlds situation where you want to get Kindle features on a book but support a DRM-free publisher over alternatives.

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Re:When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear... by reitanqild on Thursday April 04, 2019 @04:03AM (#19570168)

Didn't O'Reilly stop selling ebooks and now only sell paper books and online (Safari)?

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Re:When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear... by tzs on Thursday April 04, 2019 @05:34AM (#19570499)

They stopped selling ebooks directly to consumers. They still publish them, but now sales are all through third parties. You can get them in PDF or ePub format, DRM-free, from ebooks.com.

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Re:When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear... by ocdtrekkie on Thursday April 04, 2019 @08:34AM (#19571408)

Yup. Hence why I only mention them as contributors to Humble Book Bundles. Their site only has what you mention, but Humble Bundle (and other sites like ebooks.com) still sell DRM-free O'Reilly titles outright.

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Re:When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear... by sundvor on Thursday April 04, 2019 @05:10AM (#19570401)

Thanks for mentioning Manning; they are great, love buying from them - including their Early Access versions such as Jon Skeet's C# in Depth.

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Re:When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear... by ocdtrekkie on Thursday April 04, 2019 @11:17AM (#19573305)

I try not to forget any once I know they are DRM-free! When music switched to DRM-free, it was pretty much just "Apple says all songs are DRM-free now, but books has been a much longer, harder fight. I think it's important we recognize, promote, and patronize DRM-free retailers and publishers.

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Re:When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear... by MrMember on Thursday April 04, 2019 @10:31AM (#19572726)

Baen is also 100% DRM free. They're kind of a niche publisher but I've bought a few things from them.

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Re:When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear... by ocdtrekkie on Thursday April 04, 2019 @11:20AM (#19573331)

Hadn't heard of them before! Thanks for letting me know!

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