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Why not just make books that are going out of circulation (out of print) unencrypted and leave the in-circulation books encrypted? You'll be offering one service, while maintaining another...

We tend to keep our titles in print for a long time. A transitional period in which we try to figure out what our customers like fits my way of thinking best. I think we'll do that.

Just one thought from Russia ;-) As you ever make DRM (but as I see from your site, you've already made) that would be your biggest mistake. I'm getting exciting about Manning books and I think e-book format needed for book's examination. If person likes e-book, that person purchases print format of the same book. Please beleive me untill now there is no DRM technology could not be cracked. One stupid example is DVD region zone. If Manning hopes to limit themself from piracy this way, it looks like they all are childs. I'm sorry for my words, I do not want to hurt you. Also, ThoutReader is terrible comparing to Acrobat (sorry, OSoft guys). It took years to make pdf great and readable. Simple xml transformations using xsl, css, whatsoever is not even getting close in quality and usability of pdf! Please, DO not make that mistake!

I own a few ebooks from Palm ereader. One approach that they use is to use the purchasing credit card as the encryption key. Perhaps any unencrypted ebooks could have this number. This would/should discourage some ditrobution. I actually don't mind the DRM so long as it is portable to many platforms ( used Zinio for Mags, seems to work on Mac ). The only request that I have is the Thout adds a Zoom feature. My eyes get tired easy ( resulting in migraines ) and a zooming the text makes life many times easier. Thank you, Hugh

Yura, In some respects you are right. The ThoutReader was never meant to compete against or replace Acrobat Reader. In fact, we use .PDF formatted documents on our website for sample chapters. The ThoutReader WAS designed specifically for technology use, not as a general purpose document reader. [I would not want to read War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy in the ThoutReader format.] To be succinct, most open source documentation sucks. Even though it is needed by developers, most people don’t want to think about it or deal with it, even though they need it. There’s no consistency and no standards. Documentation comes in different formats and different locations, making information hard to find when, where and how you need it: this means a lot of inconvenience and frustration by developers. The ThoutReader™ allows developers to browse, search, bookmark, and append their favorite library of open source documentation and reference books (read Manning) - from one program, in one format, at the same time - even off-line. Adobe's Acrobat Reader is not open source. The ThoutReader is. There is no telling what direction the ThoutReader will take in the future. On the planning table right now are the following: * Public notes - the ability to collaborate with other developers around the world to specific sections within content. * Merged notes - individuals can merge notes from other developers (students could merge instructor notes at the end of a course) * Plug-ins - ability to add video and audio plug-ins * Advanced search capability - already the ThoutReader allows user to search select titles or an entire library of content. It also accepts regular expressions. * Eclipse plug in * Cross linking - ability to link from one document or book to another * Embedded as a help file within an application * Ability to read docbook and other file formats natively * ThoutCreator tools will allow developers to distribute their own content We are excited about our relationship with Manning because of their Java focus. The ThoutReader was written in Java and Manning readers are some of the smartest developers in the world. Manning will be featuring contests and other incentives to continue to develop the ThoutReader. When was the last time you were asked to make improvements to Adobe's Acrobat Reader? What the ThoutReader becomes is up to you and thousands of other developers and Manning readers who wish to contribute to our open source project. I for one look forward to the next few years.

I have bought several Mannings ebooks in the past and probably will continue to do so in the near future, due to its excellent content. But plugging DRM onto the thing is a problem. I move the books between several dev machines (have them on the harddisk there), there is several what ifs. I want to print them myself, I want to move the books, because I move between machines. If the DRM becomes to restrictive, there is no way I will purchase future books, because the advantage is gone, and paperbacks from other publishers like OReilley are easier to get where I live. So Mannings has to be careful, so far I have bought about 4-5 PDFed books from them. I dont have any problems with the name watermarks they introduced recently (in fact I liked it because I thought that they were going the watermark route instead of restriction route to keep the warezers out) But if DRM is introduced and introduced to restrictively, Mannings will have lost a customer (and a good one because I usually look at the Mannings site first for a book)

DRM is a tricky one isn't it. The only way to solve the grievous problem of major theft, is to bludgeon to death the freedom of sharing. My only complaint with DRM'd texts is that I can no longer have them sitting on the shelf at work where people can come grab them and share. The only obvious solution to me there is to have a public/private key encryption. As the owner of the text, I have it privately encrypted/signed, and I supply the public key to people I wish to share it with. They're all able to share it. If I share it too much, I get punished. The problem however is in noticing how much I share it. While my putting a pdf on my webserver at work is hardly a capital crime (4 developers), if I worked at IBM and put it on the internal network it'd be quite a bit worse. Maybe the solution there is to allow a set number of public/private keys to exist on the document. It's hard to define it without having constant internet access to make sure people are obeying the rules, and then you've lost the competitive edge over Safari. That said, I'm still paying Bookpool for dead-wood versions of books as time away from a monitor/keyboard to read is the only thing keeping my carpal tunnels and near-sightedness within limits.

Werner, we want to keep you as a customer. We will listen to you and others and adjust things until we get it right. When the ThoutReader™ was developed, content restrictions were added as an afterthought. They did not “code” commercial content to a specific machine because that would have been too restrictive. Instead, they chose a simpler solution. It allows you to download and install any Manning content on any number of computers. The user key only needs to be installed once per machine. After that, any Manning content you buy can be opened without any further hassle. TR gives us the control of printing restrictions. Printing can be turned All On, All Off, or selective on (code snippets). I think that its current feautures are already pretty compelling and future ones will make it better.

There are two points that I would like to bring up. First, how many people that downloaded pirated versions of Manning books would actually have bought them? If this number is only a small percentage, then the majority of honest customers are being penalized for the actions of a small minority. Second, from my quick look at ThoutReader, its output is relatively ugly. It may look good for an HTML document, but it's nowhere close to emulating printed material, which Adobe Acrobat does quite well. Not only are PDF documents prettier, they are much easier to read. Sounds like we’re regressing here.

I was one of those who reacted with a hopefully polite but strong answer when you first sent out the questionnaire regarding DRM. I still appreciate it very much that you simply talk with your customers about these issues. Back then I said I would not, under any circumstances, buy anything that is not in a documented, open format (Acrobat is borderline, but seems to be OK). This is still basically true, though I have some more thoughts on it since then. My refusal still applies to anything that limits what I can do with an ebook. I want to use it on as many devices as I want, I want to print it and I want to copy and paste bits of the text. I could agree to buying encrypted content as long as the format is still open and documented and doesn't restrict me more than maybe having to enter a password every now and then. My main concern is that I do not want to be dependent on any sort of infrastructure outside of my control. One of the worst examples of this is the Steam system used to deliver Half-Life2. The game is unusable once a Steam server goes down, even in single player mode. So I want something where I will be able to use (not just read) the ebook in the future, even on different systems, or if Manning or OSoft or anybody else goes out of business. I hope you will all stay afloat for a long time, but one never knows. Most current DRM "solutions" don't offer that, as far as I know. I haven't yet had a closed look at the ThoutReader DRM, so I can't comment on that. (Is there a good introduction to that anywhere?) Thanks for the great books Carl-Eric

I forgot one thing I wanted to mention: I have no trouble with watermarking - if you can somehow identify the buyer of the ebook within the file, it should discourage most illegal sharing of the book. It doesn't have to be overly restrictive in that case.

Thanks for your comments Carl. When the developed the ThoutReader, DRM was an afterthought. After listening to a lot of customer feedback, we came up with a unique solution that was minimally invasive. All you have to do is register as a user 1x, and all of the content you purchase from Manning after that will open without further intervention on your part. We chose not to "imprint" the DRM to a particular machine but rather the user. This means you can install and use any Manning title you purchase on any machine you use. Best of all, you do not have to be online to use or validate anything. I hope this information helps. We start rolling out the Manning titles beginning next week. Let me know if you have any questions. Mark Carey OSoft.com

Yes, I have a few questions :-) Just to satisfy my curiosity and try things, will I be able to download the ebooks I already purchased as ThoutReader documents? Is there a good overview/documentation of the ThoutReader format and its encrypted version? Thanks Carl-Eric

We certainly thought that Manning ebook customers would want to convert their PDF ebooks to the ThoutReader version. That's part of the beauty of the new system, having all your reference material accessible in one place. We're working on how to best do that and hope to get the word out very soon! Right now, one of the best places to get an overview of the ThoutReader is at OSoft: http://www.osoft.com/store/pages.php?pageid=featurebenefit While you are there, you can download the ThoutReader and some of the free packages and try it out for yourself.

Search is hardly an advantage of ThoutReader. Maybe compared to the standard PDF reader it is, but our systems are (or can be) so much more than that. Desktop search engines index PDFs, so with the PDFs, we can not only search our digital libraries, we can do the search across *all* the documents on our systems (well, the unencrypted ones at least).

You keep talking about how ThoutReader is not restrictive etc., but that completely misses the point. Not only is its output unbearably *ugly* as already pointed out (when I pay $20+, I insist on having printed book quality, i.e. PDF, not HTML!), it's annoying to be forced to use a reader don't like and am not used to. I use KPDF to read the PDFs, not Acrobat Reader, and it has pretty much all the features I need for comfortable reading. I do *not* want to change my reading habits and if the only way to buy an ebook from you is to use some weird reader, I'll manage without the book. For example, I could use Lucene in Action when developing our product, but I'd rather spend one or two days more on understanding the parts I need from Lucene's sources and examples than to waste $20 on inferior quality ebook...

I've tried ThoutReader now. I think I could warm up to the concept, but form my point of view it is still lacking in some respects. I definitely have to agree on the looks. Compared to a ClearType/CoolType enabled Acrobat, its screen output really is, well, not ugly, but a big step backwards. I don't see layout equality with the printed version as an absolute requirement, though it would be nice. But reading this completely unaliased and without any typographical or layouting niceties simply is less enjoyable. And while the content is of course most important, I don't think we should step back on the niceties, when it is already possible to have them. I do have a suggestion, though: Can you manage to embed a different browser widget? I.e. Mozilla/Gecko instead of the Java Swing browser. That way we could use any of the capabilities of the OS, like ClearType. And we would have a lot more CSS compliance, which would enable better layouting. Which leads me to my second suggestion: *Please* let a good page/type designer create the CSS layout for these files. "from developers for developers" is good when it's about the content, but I have never seen it work when it comes to UI or page design. The layout of the printed Manning books (and the PDFs) is beautiful and well readable. Even taking into account the differences of reading on screen instead of paper, what I have seen so far as ThoutReader files simply doesn't do that justice. Third suggestion: Use SWT instead of Swing. You get a lot of the niceties for free with that. Fourth suggestion: UI improvements. Let me get that sidebar on the left completely out of the way while I'm reading. My conclusion so far: Yes, I can see that ThoutReader *might* become an interesting alternative to PDF, if its advantages are fully used, and the content enhanced to that effect. Right now, it's interesting, but to me, subjectively, not as pleasant to use as Adobe Reader.

Sorry Mark, but I cannot quite grasp, why you think, that any free/opensource developers would be thrilled to help you creating or improving a software which in turn restricts their freedom. If you want those features to be developed, then why do you not make a software which does not restrict people at the same time of helping them do something... Also, if you think that reading large novels in TR is not really an enjoyable experience, not even compared to PDF, then why don't you try to change THAT? So I guess, if you really want to attract developers to your product, you should try to find a development direction, which is useful for those developers you try to attract. I actually downloaded quite a number of books from the internet, but mostly used them to get a glimpse into a book, to determine if it is worthy of buying. And afterwards I bought them in paper form. I know, it is not really environment friendly, but being a hedonist when I am reading, it is much more practical and comfortable to read a paper book instead of an ebook. Since I payed for the book, even more than what the ebook costs, and I don't really use the ebook once I got the paper one, I don't really feel like I was cheating anyone out of money. The unprotected PDF actually provided an incentive of buying the book. And where did that require any use of DRM? Nowhere. Would a DRM restriction hinder me in any of my capabilities? Yes, it would restrict my capability of exercising my freedom, since I would be required to install a software to get a peek into the book, for which I have absolutely no use otherwise. Would it bring more money for the publisher? Definitely not from me, since I don't like to read lots of stuff on the internet, I like them in the handheld form, while lying on my bed. So honestly, I don't really see any attraction in TR, and probably lot of other readers are seeing things this way, too. Particularly while it is not offering the visual quality of PDF. Regards, Robert Varga

1 advantage and 1 dissadvantage more compared with Adobe: A1) You can get and read DRM books on Linux with ease. D1) You can't read un-drm books on a Palm pilot (beleive me, getting your DRM pdf into a palm is hell). not until someone ports the format to a palm reader app (I don't have the time to do it right now)

If TR is an Open Source, why don't you put to its site some encrypted document (with any text) to check for developers that TR provides realy strong protection? Until now, we only know some basic things. But nobody can't say for sure that your invetsments (I mean Manning) really protected by TR. As for me, I think within a month or two would be possible to find in eDonkey and others Manning books again, but now in TR format. Also, I agree PDF needed to check is it worth or not to purchsase a printed edition.

What about Palms e-Reader? It also supports encryption of eBokks. And I like it to read books in the train using my Palm, so I think it is good idea to support eReader also. PS: Reading PDFs on a Palm is not very comfortable (at least you should use a PDF creator which adds tags)! R

Hi Reiner, We'd love to support the Palm e-Reader (and also the Microsoft PocketPC Reader, Symbian reader, etc). Unfortunately Manning is a pretty small company and we simply don't have the resources to create infrastructure, buy and use conversion software, etc to support all these different formats. Even very large publishers don't support more than one or two ebook formats (if they support any at all). This is even worse for small markets like computer technical books because the number of paying customers that would buy ebooks in any one of those formats is very small. So for better or worse, Manning must focus on one ebook format and try to make that choice as smart as possible; to serve both our customers with ease of use and functionality and our authors (who need to get paid for their work). Our decision of TR will hopefully be able to work on quite a few platforms including palm (J2ME support for TR is not available yet although OSoft has it on their wishlist and with TR being open source, hopefully, someone will "scratch that itch" and start a port sooner rather than wait for OSoft who has their hands full). We certainly don't claim TR is perfect today, but we hope that it's the best choice for us and provides the ability to rapidly improve and expand in the future. -iain

Carl, We agree completely and have decided to re-implement the Thout Reader in C++ using Mozilla. This is a side project to the current java roject, but that is the beauty of having an open source reader. Anyone can potentially re-write the Thout Reader using any language they want. QT is making some great strides and promises windows GPL with 4.0 due later this year. Currently Thout uses a non-validated xml format that is simple to create and render. In fact in testing with Mozilla we were able to render Thout documents with nothing more than an attached xslt style sheet. With Thout 2.0 we will have a validating XML format which will make document creation easier using existing xml tools. Anyway I just wanted to let you know that we hear you, we agree and we are doing everything we can to make the Thout reader meet and exceed your expectations. Please be patient with us and continue to give us your objective criticisms as they help us make the right decisions to enhance Thout. While I am typing here (there are more appropriate threads for this) I would like to address some of the DRM concerns. DRM in Thout is very unobtrusive. The first time you download a book a user key is generated. You download your user key as a file. This user key file can be backed up to cd and saved along with your downloaded Thout packages. You can install this key on as many machines as you would like, and it is independent of Osoft in that it will always work to unlock your content whether OSoft servers are online or not. Once you register your Thout Reader by clicking file/register and browsing to your key file (MANNING.key) you can open any encrypted Manning book without entering a password or any invasive dialog whatsoever. This was the least intrusive method we could conceive. Still we have seen some very good ideas in this forum. Gary Varnell - CTO OSoft

OK, that sounds pretty interesting already. It's good to see that we're being taken seriously ;-) Of course I can't stop nitpicking and will say that having it all in Java would still be nice, but I guess basing it on Mozilla isn't bad either. I will follow this development with interest.

Carl, The C++ project is a completely seperate effort. The Thout Reader will always be available in Java. The only reason I mentioned the C++ project is because it will use Gecko for rendering and XML transformations. We have researched many open source embedable browser options for Java and Gecko appears to be the best option. Currently however embedding Gecko in Java is difficult. There are projects such as JRex that provide a Java interface for Gecko that we are looking into. By starting a sideline project in C++ we will be able to use the Gecko api natively. I mentioned QT before, and it is very possible that this will solve most of our problems allowing Gecko to be embeded in Java, Perl, and C++ applications. Unfortunatly however we have to wait a bit as currently QT is not available under GPL on Win32.

Just checked out Toutreader, I dont really like it, the fonts are a non issue here on OSX, but the main problem as others pointed out, HTML as markup for the Layout. The next problem, I gave my worst fear a shot and tried to print something out, there simply was no print menu item. Sorry to say that, I also would prefer watermarking as I already have pointed out. Watermarking is strong enough to prevent sharing to a certain degree. But it leaves everything open to the single user on what to do with it. Also sorry to say that, but one of the big plus points of buying mannigs was that I had the option to print out the books for me as often as I wanted (usually one for work and one for at home) if the printing is disabled or crippled in the end, I will go for printed books again, but this time for books I can get easily, which over here (Europe german speaking country) is definitely not Manning. (usually OReilley or local publishers are in stock here)

Werner, Unfortunately, your evaluation is not based on a Manning title. The same meticulous care Manning puts in their printed books has gone into the ThoutReader implementation. OSoft built and released a new version of the ThoutReader in order to support the functionality Manning required. The font is easier to read and the images have been colorized. Manning books CAN be printed in the ThoutReader. Mark Carey President OSoft

On the subject of DRM, perhaps someone could review this page: http://www.baen.com/library/

Baen books (one of the "biggies") has been supplying copies of older books in completely unprotected format for a while, now, and have found that it has only BOOSTED sales, rather than lost them money.

They also have a "webscription" service, where you can purchase new books a chapter at a time, for a reasonable price.

Admittedly, this is in a different genre (SF/Fantasy), but the distribution model should still be at least somewhat applicable to all.