I own my books

I love reading. I caught the bug as a middle-schooler when I got caught skipping school, and as punishment, I had to read The Chronicles of Amber and do a book report about it. Even today, opening a book and fanning the pages to get the paper smell activates very fond memories and emotions.

I remember a time before e-readers came out. I always thought reading on one seemed very futuristic. In military sci-fi books, characters are reading on their data pads, and reading on an e-reader makes me feel like a sci-fi character.

Physically, e-readers are superior in every way to paper books. I can increase the font size. I can increase brightness. I can read in the sun. I can read in the pool. My entire library fits into my pocket. I can look up the definitions of words.

Capitalists really hate when consumers love something, so of course they want to ruin e-readers. They do that by implementing digital rights management (DRM), and making people agree to draconian agreements such that the books they "buy" are in fact just renting. They want to lock you into their device ecosystem and force you to buy their hardware. That makes it very hard for consumers to buy a device from a different manufacturer as they basically have to abandon their digital libraries to do so.

All that to say, I can understand why some people just do not want to deal with fighting with e-reader companies like Amazon so they might prefer paper books. I am up for the challenge though, and here is how I avoid the obstacles and hurdles that these companies put in the path to consumer choice and freedom.

Removing DRM #

The most important thing to ebook freedom is removing the DRM the companies put on the books. I wrote about how I remove DRM for backup purposes so I won't rehash that here, but the main thing is buying your ebooks from a distributor other than Amazon. I buy mine from eBooks.com and Kobo.com as they distribute their books with Adobe DRM, which the right tools can remove.

I do not remove DRM so I can give my books away. I remove DRM so I have a backup of the books I paid for.

This isn't paranoia. In 2019, Microsoft shut down its ebook store, and because the books were DRM'd, every book every customer had ever bought simply stopped opening when the DRM servers went dark. Microsoft refunded everyone, which is a tidy admission that those were never really sales. A decade earlier, Amazon reached into people's Kindles and deleted copies of 1984 that they had already paid for, taking one student's homework notes along with the book. Not great, Bob.

So I backup my books to an open standard, ePUB, with the DRM stripped off. If eBooks.com folds tomorrow, or Kobo decides my account is a problem, or I want to read on hardware nobody has invented yet, my library still works.

I don't care what their fine print says. I bought this book. It's my book. I'll read it where I like, TYVM.

But what about Amazon exclusives? #

I want to support authors. I do not want to support anti-consumer choice cartels by giving them money.

I remember back when Amazon first started, and they allowed smaller authors to self-publish their books. Back then, Amazon was the small guy, and it allowed other small guys to avoid the big book publishers. That was a right and good thing.

But now, Amazon locks its exclusives behind the superior Amazon DRM and I don't know how to create DRM-free backups with the tools I have access to. So in the rare instance that I must purchase a book from Amazon, then I'll hold my nose and give Jeff Bezos my money. What happens after that, and how the book ends up readable on my Kobo, is left as an exercise for the reader.

Audiobooks #

The same fight plays out with audiobooks, except here the landscape is still favorable to the consumer. My preference is Libro.fm, who sells audiobooks DRM-free from the start. And you can strip even Audible's DRM, so nothing I buy is ever really locked inside their app.

Same rule as my books: I paid for it, so I keep a copy I control. The medium changes; the principle doesn't.

I'll sign off this post with a quote.

Any time someone puts a lock on something that belongs to you and won't give you the key, that lock isn't there for your benefit.

Cory Doctorow, Information Doesn't Want to Be Free