I've started buying from ebooks.com exclusively, because they tell me it's DRM-free EPUB and PDF.

I end up paying a big premium in practice over Kindle DRM and discounted paperbacks, but I'm doing my part to convince publishers to offer DRM-free.

Speaking of buying DRM-free books, let me mention again The Humble Bundle. Not many books in there, but for a good cause: https://www.humblebundle.com/

I bought a DRM-free Schneier's "Applied Cryptography" from a Humble Bundle, and got a virtual pile of other interesting books at the same time.

Schneier's last book, Data and Goliath IIRC, was also available as an audiobook, so I bought it, listened...until it ended abruptly at 1/3 of the full length.

How could he do this to readers, old fart!?

_Some_ of their books are DRM-free.

“But please note that eBooks.com uses Adobe DRM to protect most ebook files, so the device, or the software running on the device must be compatible with Adobe DRM. If you'd prefer to obtain your books without DRM, you can browse our DRM-free section.”

https://support.ebooks.com/hc/en-gb/articles/214119286-Guide...

Yes, unfortunately this is the case (I work for ebooks.com). Most publishers require us to use DRM and Adobe DRM really sucks, but there isn't other options out there and we don't have the resources to make something better.

We focus quite a bit of effort on educating publishers about moving to DRM-Free as it makes everyone's lives easier and from what we've seen increases publisher sales numbers.

https://about.ebooks.com/should-we-sell-your-ebooks-without-...

https://about.ebooks.com/sales-jumped-54-when-this-publisher...

Is this a regional thing to buy without DRM? I just checked some books from my reading list and many have DRM. Just some examples if you could double check: Double Star Project Hail Marry Children of Time A Memory Called Empire This is How You Lose the Time War

While I know/assume that it will be easy to remove the DRM, I do not want to install Adobe Digital Editions to download the books.

For the most part, whether a book has DRM is a per-publisher decision, not per-storefront. e.g. TOR books are DRM-free everywhere (including Apple).

That said, ebooks.com is great! Clean interface, easy to download old purchases, etc. It's my go-to for O'Reilly content.

Worst part for me is that even libraries, who want to promote openness and reading, are perfectly comfortable with delivering books using Adobe's horrible DRM delivery solution.

Libraries have to play in the rules the publishers give them or else they get cut off from the supply of ebooks. They already have to pay more for the ebooks that expire after a certain number of loans.

Yeah, it's a major misconception to state that they're happy about it. Talk to librarians after hours and they will rant. (And most of us have personal DRM stripped libraries).

At least Adobe DRM is trivially easy to break. Right click in the Adobe software and it has a "open document storage location" option. Then drop that DRM loaded PDF into Calibre and you get a free and clear PDF in your library. At that point I go back to the library and hit the return button.

Why not get a DRM-free epub off the net in the first place?

In some cases these are not available. For instance, archive.org has many books that don't seem to be available anywhere else.

I like using the Kobo store, because it sells some of its books DRM-free. When it does use DRM, it lists the book as being DRMed, and Kobo DRM is easy to remove anyway.

Are you aware of Calibre?