Much has already been said about this topic by others, including John Scalzi, Tobias Buckell, and Harry Connolly.
Being a fully independent author, I’m not really impacted directly by this. That said, this is a good decision for this publishing house. DRM doesn’t deter piracy, but it does prevent legitimate purchases from being moved from, say, an old Nook to a new Nook.
Over the past half-decade, it has been shown over and over that allowing readers the freedom to do what they want with the material is good for sales. This is much the same as giving away content drives sales. Look, for example, at the careers of John Scalzi and Scott Sigler, both of whom got their starts giving things away.
This is a good decision by Tor/Forge, and one that makes me think that they will be one of the survivors of the massive paradigm shift we are undergoing.
