Replying to Avatar Cory Doctorow

The actual paperwork itself was hard for anyone to lay hands on, since the relevant records had been physically transported and re-stored subsequent to the merger. And, of course, the company itself was so big and powerful that it was hard for Foster and his agent to raise a credible threat.

I've experienced versions of this myself: every book contract I've ever signed stipulated that my ebooks could not be published with DRM.

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Cory Doctorow 2y ago

But one of my publishers - a boutique press that published my collection *Overclocked* - collapsed along with most of its competitors, the same week my book was published (its distributor, #PublishersGroupWest, went bankrupt after its parent company, #AdvancedMarketingServices, imploded in a shower of fraud and criminality).

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Cory Doctorow 2y ago

The publisher merged with several others, and then several more, and then several more - until it ended up a division of the #BigFive publisher #Hachette, who repeatedly, "accidentally" pushed my book into retail channels with DRM. I don't think Hachette deliberately set out to screw me over, but the fact that Hachette is (by far) the most doctrinaire proponent of DRM meant that when the chaos of its agglomerated state resulted in my being cheated, it was a happy accident.

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