Stories — who do they belong to?
I absolutely hate being locked into specific hardware or software in order to read an eBook and its one of the reason’s I’m mostly in pause mode, in regards to purchasing new books. When the next great device comes along, perhaps with some of the features current eBook devices lack, I want to be able to move my books over.
Richard Curtis recently summarized an article by Cory Doctorow in which Cory discussed his dislike for “roach motel devices” — eBook readers like the Kindle that didn’t let you actually own the stories and novels you’ve purchased. I encourage you to read the article, available through the link previous.
After reading the article I decided that since I’m not a fan of these roach motel devices and have been burned by purchasing eBooks in a format that ended up dying, I probably shouldn’t be locking my work into one of them either but a few weeks ago I released a story on my Kindle. The story, ‘The End of the Road’, was first published in Not One of Us and is also available in print anthologies through AnthologyBuilder, so it is available through other means. But I have also decided to make it available for free on my website as well, and I’ll continue this practice with anything else I decide to release on the Kindle (or other locked-in devices).
So if you buy it on the Kindle and want to move it to another device, you’ll just have to come my website and grab the text version.