Tor/Forge has announced plans to make all of its ebooks free of DRM by July of this year. This is the first major imprint to do so, and hopefully others will follow, although at this time Tor’s parent company (Macmillan) is not following suit. Let’s face it, DRM is more annoying than it is effective. In an awesome statement of the kind rarely heard from publishers- the kind that acknowledges readers- Tom Doherty, president and publisher of Tor/Forge, said, “Our authors and readers have been asking for this for a long time… DRM is a constant annoyance for them. It prevents them from using legitimate purchases in perfectly legal ways”. Yeah, that!

First steps are good. Publishers everywhere, take note!