If I had it to do over again, I probably would have published the Kindle and Nook editions of High Desert Barbecue without digital rights management. After all, DRM has gone by the wayside for music, and people eagerly hand over their cash to Amazon and other vendors for mp3 albums that can be copies again and again. Honestly, I don’t think there’s an eager underground market salivating at the opportunity to pirate my novel rather than hand me a penny shy of three bucks.
But I used the DRM defaults on both Amazon and Barnes and Noble, and you’re locked in after you do that, unless you want to unpublish a book, republish it and start over from scratch. I’m not doing that.
So, perceiving that there is some demand for a DRM-free version of my book, as well as hostility to Amazon, I went to Lulu. Originally, I was going to publish an epub version of the book through Lulu, but after several hours of frustration, Lulu is still refusing an epub that is at least as meticulously formatted as the version Barnes and Noble is peddling with no difficulty (and Lulu’s in-house conversion of my doc files — which the company would, apparently, willingly sell — looks like somebody puked alphabet soup onto a page). So those of you seeking an alternative will have to settle, for now, for a pdf file of High Desert Barbecue. Lulu also sells its wares around the world, which should alleviate some of the frustration international buyers are having with Amazon and B&N.
High Desert Barbecue (No DRM)
Thomas L. Knapp
November 27, 2011 at 7:06 amHuzzah! Thanks for making a DRM-free version available.