Hi,
I think that the publishers and authors lose a lot from the drm. Nowadays the bookselling is bestseller driven, and for Harry Potter or Stephen King or the current hot book I agree that the drm protection may help since many people pick up those books just that it is fashionable, so for those I have nothing against drming them through the wazoo for a while at least. Though anyway they get pirated immediately, but since I very rarely read a book that makes a general bestseller list (recently just Judas Unchained and A Feast for Crows) I just do not care either way.
But for the majority of books, having a 5-6$ ebook drm free would increase the sales considerably I think. Right now for Baen books the estimate is 10-20% more bottom line for authors, though for some (especially now with 15$ earcs of which personally I have purchased about 10, and all except one also in print from the ones that are available as of now) it may be more. Also when they had the short lived Tor book program I purchased some books I would have not considered otherwise or at best I would have tried them first from the library. Conversely in the embiid example, I bought one book from them, and then I got used books (more expensive due to shipping) and on which the author and publisher gets nothing. So who wins?? Me?, no...The author/publisher?, no...
If the ebooks were availble at decent prices and drm free, who would pirate them? The people who would, most likely would anyway would not have bought them otherwise either because they could not afford it, or... but for me, why should do it, when I can afford to buy it, I want more books from the author so I have to encourage/compensate him/her, I want more books like that so I want to encourage/compensate the publisher...And also many people who cannot afford a book now, may do so later.
Just another personal example, in grad school I could not afford to buy The Economist which I find the best news magazine around, so I read it extensively from the library. The moment I could afford it I got a subscription, and even today when I would be happy with the online subscription only, I still keep the print subscription (for extra 50$ or so a year) in part to "repay" them for the years of library reading.
Sorry for the long rant, but when the whole "human" knowledge could be available so easily in digital form and is not due in large part to stupidity, it makes me quite upset...
Liviu
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Originally Posted by Bob Russell
That's a shame to hear that. But even worse, don't you think that the publishers and authors benefit from this in a way because they can resell the same book over and over in different forms? In the long run, it's got to be bad for sales, though, if people start to avoid content because of the DRM.
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