… that I didn’t go out and buy a Sony PRS-505 the other day. If I had, I’d have been tempted to eschew Sony and Waterstones’ generous promise that prices will be “Much the same as normal paperbacks” by finding a copy of, say, Neal Stephenson’s new opus Anathem on a site like Fictionwise (because Waterstones only have it in hardback and couldn’t bear the thought of cannibalising their own sales… another industry finds its Inner Dinosaur), pay for it in US Dollars, then use DRM removal tools in order to get it into a format the Reader can handle. And then not only would I have it the moment it came out, for less than the hardback price, instantly and conveniently, having saved Waterstones the trouble of trundling it around the country (and the planet the CO2 that that would have cost), but I would probably also be utterly engrossed in the doings of Fraa Erasmas and virtually unable to conduct my own life because of this engrossment.
Phew! What a relief that DRM keeps us from nightmare scenarios like this, eh?
Are you gunning for Stephen Fry’s Dork Talk column in Grauniad Weekend? You are, aren’t you!?
I cannot tell a lie. The man’s overqualified for the post. Gunning it is.
Now, pass me my gramophone; I wish to listen to one of my 78s.