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Worldwalker · 10-18-2010, 05:27 PM

Somewhere around half of ebook readers use Kindles. However, even among those, there are a fair number who dislike DRM. Then there's all the rest of us. To get a feel for how many people on MR have what, take a look at the device forums -- you can get a feel for it by how many people are browsing them, though it may be somewhat low for older readers. For instance, most Sony 50x users have the thing figured out by now, and aren't asking many questions, but based on the user data (to the left of posts) there are a lot of us. Mostly, we buy from Smashwords.

Things you can fairly safely assume about MobileRead members that are not necessarily true of the public at large: We are bookworms and read more in a month than most people do in a year. We know what's available in reading devices. We know what's available in books, and where to get them. We know what we're doing, most of the time. We want to support authors that we like. We have some idea of how the publishing industry works, and who gets paid for what. And, while it's not universal by any means, a lot of us do intensely dislike DRM.

In short, Amazon's ideal of someone who owns a Kindle, buys their books strictly from Amazon, pays $10 or $15 more for then, and only reads them once, is ... not us. Certainly there are people like that here -- there are people like ANYTHING here -- but mostly, we're clinging precariously to the skinny end of the bell curve and trying to drag that big hump in the middle out our way. Our ideal indie book, I think, is perfectly formatted, reflows nicely, and is available on Smashwords, DRM-free, in the format of our choice, for about $3 or so. If it's a pro book (that is, one also published on dead trees by a publisher we've heard of) it'll be from someone like Baen, for $5 or $6, and everything about formatting and reflowing goes double.

10-18-2010, 05:27 PM	#8
Worldwalker Curmudgeon Posts: 3,085 Karma: 722357 Join Date: Feb 2010 Device: PRS-505	Somewhere around half of ebook readers use Kindles. However, even among those, there are a fair number who dislike DRM. Then there's all the rest of us. To get a feel for how many people on MR have what, take a look at the device forums -- you can get a feel for it by how many people are browsing them, though it may be somewhat low for older readers. For instance, most Sony 50x users have the thing figured out by now, and aren't asking many questions, but based on the user data (to the left of posts) there are a lot of us. Mostly, we buy from Smashwords. Things you can fairly safely assume about MobileRead members that are not necessarily true of the public at large: We are bookworms and read more in a month than most people do in a year. We know what's available in reading devices. We know what's available in books, and where to get them. We know what we're doing, most of the time. We want to support authors that we like. We have some idea of how the publishing industry works, and who gets paid for what. And, while it's not universal by any means, a lot of us do intensely dislike DRM. In short, Amazon's ideal of someone who owns a Kindle, buys their books strictly from Amazon, pays $10 or $15 more for then, and only reads them once, is ... not us. Certainly there are people like that here -- there are people like ANYTHING here -- but mostly, we're clinging precariously to the skinny end of the bell curve and trying to drag that big hump in the middle out our way. Our ideal indie book, I think, is perfectly formatted, reflows nicely, and is available on Smashwords, DRM-free, in the format of our choice, for about $3 or so. If it's a pro book (that is, one also published on dead trees by a publisher we've heard of) it'll be from someone like Baen, for $5 or $6, and everything about formatting and reflowing goes double.