Yes! The gob-smackingly brilliant author Charlie Stross (how’s that for a plea for comments from the man himself? *wink*) has talked his publishers into a very interesting ebook experiment. As he notes, ebooks are typically priced so close to the cost of a actual book that it seldom makes sense to purchase them. After he commented on the problem in a earlier post,, however, WHSmith is selling his ebook of The Atrocity Archives for half the price of the paperback edition. Joy! Hopefully this will get some traction. And yes, it’s DRM’d…he had no choice (read the notes. Next step is hopefully to get them to try a sale without that; I’d start getting excited at that point. But I’m easy, especially where it comes to Mr. Stross.

Based on past experience, by CC company will think that my card #s been stolen if I go to buy this, and decline the sale…but I may just try anyway. This sorta thing must be encouraged! (I already own the book, so no worries there….just trying to reward good behavior.)

UPDATE: Cory Doctorow weighs in via the comment section of Charlie’s post. Well-spoken, and valid points. I don’t worry personally about the DRM issues on my own machine, b/c I’d never actually INSTALL any of that crap to read a book. I’d buy it to promote the (un-DRM’d version of) the format, plain and simple. I hear what both Charlie and Cory are saying, and I think they’re a lot closer on this than it appears at very first glance; things, they are a-changin’ in ebook land.