Harlequin reminds us we don’t own our purchased ebooks
by Sunita
Last week I saw a discussion about a change Harlequin Books is making at its website with respect to how ebooks will be delivered to buyers. Until now they have used Adobe DRM and if you wanted to download your books you had to do it through Adobe Digital Editions. This was a pain, given how awful ADE is, but it meant the files were resident on your computer and could be transferred to any compatible ereader, i.e., one that read epub files and played nice with ADE. I’ve used it for my Sony, Nook, and Kobo ereaders over the years. I’ve also stripped the DRM and put the files on a Kindle. This was handy because Harlequin.com would occasionally have sales and it was worth buying from the site. Also, I found when checking my account that I bought my first Harlequin ebook back in June 2007, before Kindles or Nooks existed (I read it on my Palm phone, as I recall).
Anyway, at this point I have 620 books on the Harlequin site. I’m pretty sure I’ve downloaded most of them, since I long ago stopped trusting ebook retailers to stay in business. But Harlequin isn’t shutting down. Instead, they’re changing their DRM system from ADE to Overdrive. This seems like not a big deal, except that Overdrive system requires you to read the books in its app. In other words, you can’t put it on an ereader unless you can figure out a way to get it off the app (which may be straightforward, but I haven’t seen discussion of it). You can still buy the books at Kobo, Amazon, and other major retailers, of course, and maybe they will have sales and promotions there that are comparable to the ones Harlequin has had at their site in the past.
The biggest inconvenience for me is that I have to decide whether I want to download/re-download hundreds of books, or spend almost as much time checking to see if I have them already. The changeover date is November 12, so I have a week to decide. It’s not that big a deal; I have most of the books, I know, and it’s probably only the oldest ones that are likely to have gotten lost in a computer/ereader/platform transfer. Still, it’s a hassle I don’t really have time for now.
In addition, for me at least it’s a reminder of two things:
- Ebooks are licensed, not bought in the same way as print books. As long as the DRM is applied, you are subject to the terms of the license. If ADE goes away, you can’t read ADE-DRM’d books anymore. In the future, if you don’t have an Overdrive app, or you don’t want to put it on your phone or tablet, you have to read Harlequins on a computer with a data connection. This is what I don’t like about Hoopla, by the way; I don’t like their app interface at all and it’s frequently glitchy.
- Today’s Harlequin is not the Harlequin I bought from in 2007, or the Harlequin whose books I reviewed at Dear Author for years. It’s owned by HarperCollins and it’s a shadow of its former self. Some of my favorite authors still publish there, but a lot don’t. It’s less reader-focused and reader-friendly. It’s a Big 5 imprint and it feels like one.
More broadly, it’s pretty clear that romance reading is not what it was 5 years ago, let alone 10. The explosion of self-published books, the demise of many small presses and many ebook retailers, has changed the landscape. Authors who don’t self-publish are moving to women’s fiction and publishers are making covers look like chick lit or women’s fiction to attract new readers. I understand needing new readers (romance readers are aging and they have to replenish the churn with younger people), but the fact that they are changing the way romance novels look and how we can access them suggests to me that there may be trends that are distinct from the overall decline in readers (and one that is not replaceable with younger readers and/or readers in new markets).
I’ve been trying to figure out what the trends mean, and whether the new ways of publishing are fully replacing the old ones (and with new readers replacing the old ones), but the lack of public data makes it very difficult. My pessimistic guess is that reading is declining everywhere, including in romance. Traditional publishers like Harlequin are hit harder by the decline, but I’d be surprised if self-publishing sales are fully making up for the overall declines. I think people just don’t read as much anymore, and voracious romance readers are a dwindling population.
I have print Mills & Boon books from the 1950s and US Harlequins from the 1970s. The publisher has been a part of my consciousness for most of my life, and I’ve bought and read their books from bookstores and libraries across three continents. I know they’ll still be around, but this does feel like a(nother) nail in the coffin.
I think you are probably correct abou tthe decline in reading. I wonder if that applies only to books or also to websites, online news media, etc. If so it’s a worriesome trend not only to publishers and authors, but bloggers and newsrooms (the latter are known to be suffering from a decline in subscriptions). And I wonder what it means for the population, too. If true, there must be all kinds of implications for it. To me, it’s worriesome on many levels.
On the other hand, I have the sense that audiobooks and podcasts are rising in popularity. I doubt that’s enough to make up for publishers’ lost profits, though.
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I was only referring to books; I think that there is evidence (or at least there are arguments) that people are reading a lot, but in different formats. You certainly have people reading fanfic and online fiction in places like Wattpad. I just don’t know what the proportion of the population is. I agree it’s worrisome on many levels. We have a highly literate society, globally more literate than ever, but traditional texts (fiction and nonfiction) are not what they are seeking out.
Audiobooks are increasing, but the numbers we see are percentage increases and the base rate is still really small. Podcasts are very popular among some sectors of the public, but they are difficult to monetize; a couple of journalistic enterprises have disbanded or severely curtailed their podcast units. Which speaks to your point about profitability problems in traditional news media.
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I emailed Harlequin to let them know I won’t be buying from their site after November 12. If I can’t download the book,I won’t buy it. End of. Seems like a really stupid decision to me.
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I read a couple of things that suggested it was a financial decision. Not having to host books on their site will be cheaper, certainly, and Overdrive may be less expensive than ADE. I agree it’s an odd decision, especially given the relationship with readers that Harlequin has cultivated for decades.
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I too will not be buying from Harlequin. I have been buying ebooks from them for 8 years and I am slowly redownloading since I know I likely have lost a few and I paid for them.
As a Kobo user I am very disappointed. As a reader who doesn’t want to use an app or something other than my Kobo I am disappointed. As a Canadian, I can tell you that their service for Canadians has become TERRIBLE. I wait months for my points to appear in my account once I submit my receipt.
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That is depressing to hear, given they have been a Canada-based company for so long. I doubt there will be any benefits buying directly from Kobo. Much as I am grateful to Kobo for the quality of their ereaders and the fact that they are an alternative to Amazon, they are not price-friendly, to put it mildly.
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I too have given up on buying directly from Harlequin for ebooks. The old site was cumbersome, but at least I could load the books onto my ereader with no problem and I could keep copies on my computer.
I also prefer Kobo and now that they have price matching (at least here in Canada), I just fill out the form and few days later receive the lower price plus credit for the difference between the prices.
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I do like the price matching feature Kobo has and have used it quite a bit. I only buy books from Amazon when they are for one of the family Kindle readers.
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I was unaware about the price matching, thank you so much for mentioning it! I am out to search it out now!
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Sad to hear this development. B&N did the same crap more or less. They won’t let readers download their ebooks. I’ve always known that reading ebooks was a high risk enjoyment. I’ve tried to download all of my purchases as I don’t want to be screwed when they close up shop.
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That move by B&N was what pushed me to move away from the Nook, which I really liked. I just won’t buy books I can’t download and keep. I had probably downloaded all my Harlequins, since I try to do that when I buy a book, but I redownloaded all of them just in case. I did it while watching sports over the weekend. Not the best use of my time, but it’s done!
The ironic thing is I don’t dislike the Overdrive app; for a phone app it’s OK, and I use it occasionally for my borrowed library books. It’s the attempt at full control that gets to me.
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Yep
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