Quote:
Originally Posted by Abtacha
Am I the only one that finds it strange the J.K.R. gets praised to the heavens for something (not using DRM) that shops like Baen, Smashwords and others have been doing for years?
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As far as I can see, JKR isn't praised
only for the lack of Adobe/Amazon DRM but also for the way the Pottermore account can be linked to the buyer's primary/preferred shop or device account, enabling device syncing, additional backup on the preferred shop's system and all that, which Baen or Smashwords don't have in quite the same way.
And another reason is that JKR is, well, a mega-star, an author whom everyone knows and whose decisions and choices make the news and can make even the least tech-aware person take notice.
What Baen and Smashwords do is awesome and deserves praise - and those who buy books from Baen or Smashwords have been aware of it and praising those publishers for a long time. But as awesome as the approach of Baen and Smashwords are, they're still niche publishers - Baen is only of interest to those who are into epic fantasy and sci-fi, and Smashwords is by and large only of interest to those who are into self-published books (although I know some smaller publishers use Smashwords for their ebook distribution, too). JKR is as mainstream as it gets and when she does something, even big publishers
might take notice and pay attention.
I wouldn't be surprised if big publishers followed the Pottermore watermarking / social DRM experiment with interest, even if they aren't going to speak out about it. Some European e-publishers have been using watermarking for a while now but that's also not quite as relevant on a global scale as the Pottermore experiment may be.