I received an email from Amazon’s Customer Service Department yesterday in which they informed me that an ebook I had purchased some time ago, and which had a number of typos and other errors in it  had been updated and those faults repaired.

Why Tell Me?

To begin with I couldn’t work out what the point of the email was, as I had no recollection of the ebook in question (the problem of remembering the titles of ebooks yet again), but on the second reading of it, I grasped what it was they were telling me. I know, I can be slow on the uptake at times, and can only plead my advanced age (almost 70) as an excuse.

What I was being offered was the chance to download the updated and corrected ebook for free to ensure that I had the best possible version of the ebook in question in my ebook library.

They gave me very full and concise instructions on the several ways in which I could do this update:-

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I see on Nate Hoffelder always interesting and readable blog – The Digital Reader – that Sony have come back to their earlier offer of a free Harry Potter ebook if you buy their WiFi ereader.

As you may have noticed back in the early exciting days when Pottermore announced their existence and plans for selling all  the Harry Potter ebooks via their own website, Sony at the time announced that as part of the launch of that website, they would give anyone who bought a brand new Sony WiFi ereader a coupon to get Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone for free from Pottermore.

Well, this didn’t happen as you know, since Pottermore took much longer to come to full life that was expected, months longer in fact.  So Sony withdrew that offer.  Well they really had no choice as Pottermore would not sell  or give away any Harry Potter ebooks until they had their site exactly how they wanted it to be.

Well, that happy situation is now with us, and Pottermore is going great guns and millions of ebook copies of the Harry Potter books are pouring through Cyberspace as the world buys the whole set in ebook form.

Sony try again……………

So, Sony in an attempt to boost sales of their WiFi ereader have reintroduced that offer.   Thus, if you now go out and buy one of these ereaders, you will get a coupon that will enable you to get your free copy of that ebook from Potttermore….  Joy unconfined say I.

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A couple of recent studies in the USA have shown some very encouraging trends in reading there, especially among the young.  And this improvement seems to be linked directly to the advent of ereaders and ebooks.

Most Americans did not really read at all:

About a year ago, I remember reading an article about reading habits in the USA, in which a “reader” was defined as someone who read at least (!) 5 books a year.  Not surprisingly, this figure depressed me no end.  If a country considered that 5 books a year constituted being a reader, then something was seriously wrong in that place. What made it worse was that the Bible was one of the 5 books they read, and very few people actually “read” the Bible, they dip into it, study it, but do not sit down of an evening and read it from start to finish.   And read over and over again, unlike most novels. It is a reference book in fact.

In my view, that figure almost constituted functional illiteracy.  A reader is someone who reads books more or less constantly, and would certainly mean someone who read 5 books in a month, not less than one book a month, as was apparently the case in the USA so recently.

However, things are getting better:

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Pottermore (the website of the Harry Potter ebooks) has dispensed with the traditional form of copyright protection – the dreaded and hated DRM system – and instead used a system that allows us to actually own the ebooks we buy from them.   If this takes off, it could finally spell the end of the DRM system so beloved of large publishing houses.

Generally if we buy an ebook that was written by an established author and published by one of the larger publishers, it will have some form of digital rights management (DRM) built into it.  These system attempt to make it impossible for us to make illegal copies of the ebooks thus “protected” and then sell them on..

DRM doesn’t work guys…………….

As has been shown over and over again, this form of protection simply does not work.  It is the work of minutes on Google to find free software to strip this protection away from our ebooks, and thus be able to copy them to our heart’s content.   It is illegal to do this in fact, but that has never stopped anyone from doing it obviously.

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As you may know, Phoenix who publish and sell science fiction ebooks, have a policy of giving away one ebook each month for free, and this month is no exception to this policy – see below for details of this month’s ebook – but for the next few weeks you can download a free ebook each week from them, via Amazon as well.

For the next 9 weeks (from this week, which is 10th April 2012) you can download a free Sci Fi ebook from them via the Amazon ebook store.  Each week a different ebook.  An amazing offer and one that all lovers of Sci Fi should take them up on I would think.

Each Tuesday and Wednesday for the next 9 weeks you can follow the link below and get hold of your free ebook, many of which will apparently be offered with some form of additional promotion to make it even more attractive.

Important note:

Please make sure that you remember time zones when you try and get these free ebooks.  You have to go there when it is the relevant date in the USA, not as I tried to do yesterday, when I went to pick up this week’s freebie at 8 am on 24th April in the Philippines, which of course is still sometime in the middle of the night of 23rd April in the USA ……

DRM free ebooks:

For the duration of this promo, these specific ebooks will only be available via Amazon, as Amazon insist on exclusive selling rights to any ebooks they carry it seems, but those of you who do not have a Kindle need not feel left out, as all these ebooks will be DRM free, so you can easily convert them to ePub or whatever system your particular ereader uses using a program such as Calibre to convert them.

As a result of the policy of Amazon to have exclusive selling rights to these ebooks, they will not be available in any other format or via any other online ebook store for the duration of this promo, but as Phoenix tell me:

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Synopsis:  This morning, Nate Hoffelder has reported on his blog The Digital Reader (link below) that the first illegal copy of one of the new Pottermore DRM free Harry Potter ebooks has appeared on the web.

One born every minute:

STUPID AND FAILED PIRATE

It seems that the form of anti-copying protection that Pottermore have chosen to use is in the form of a number of small files concealed in the body of the ebook, which gives details of the person who purchased the particular copy of the ebook.  This is great for honest readers, as it enables one to move the ebook from one device to any other freely, so effectively bringing ebooks into the realm of ordinary paper books finally.

But obviously it also makes it very easy (one might think) to copy and sell online , which is what this individual has apparently done.

But as Nate has pointed out, the software in the ebook he has placed online to sell, has this secret sting in its tail, enabling the Pottermore folk to identify him easily.  So no doubt an army of lawyers is already on their way to the guy’s house to impound all his worldly possessions, up to and including his wife and children, for his temerity in offering to sell people copies of his Pottermore ebook.

I will be very interested to hear how this story plays out, since the approach to ebook piracy that Pottermore have chosen is so much better from the point of view of us, the readers, than the dreadful Adobe DRM system that we have all had to deal with since the start of ebooks.

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