Doctorow’s First Law

Cory Doctorow had an interesting article in Publisher’s Weekly yesterday. It’s an update on one of the subjects he was talking about at the book signing we went to a few months ago. He’s been fighting with the ebook publishers for awhile now about their use of DRM. Even though he has been doing ebook versions of his books for years, he hasn’t been able to get them onto platforms like the Kindle because the companies which control the platform want him to sign agreements which aren’t compatible with the CC license he publishes under.

So the big news is that he has reached an agreement with Amazon, B&N, and Kobo for his next book. That’s pretty cool! The only ones he couldn’t reach an agreement with were Apple and Audible.

Of course we’ve had access to his books on our Nook for a while now. That’s because we rooted it and installed Trook. Trook gives you immediate access to loads of online publishers who use the OPDS Catalog system. It’s a really neat app.

Of course we really like buying pretty hardcopy copies of Cory’s books too. Tom’s currently rereading Little Brother and making a list of places we should visit when we’re in San Francisco next month.