Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
In the short run, DRM probably results in a few more sales, as those who tried to share but couldn't exhort their friends to just buy the ebook, and a few of them do so. However, in the long run, it's crippling word-of-mouth recommendations. It's possible that downloadable sample chapters mitigate this.
Almost none of us discovered our favorite authors by buying a new book. Removing the "I liked this; you read it and see if you like it" aspects of book culture is a drastic change.
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This is also my take on it, although I have actually bought the series based on the back of some of the publisher freebie/dirt cheap offers that caught my interest.
I'm hoping something like that very cheap txtr reader becomes reality (Essentially a dirt cheap e-ink reader that only holds a couple of books as bitmapped pages - all processing to get the book on the device is via an app on a smartphone), if something like these become popular then I can see them doing the rounds amongst friends instead of files, just hand them the reader with the book on it and they are unable to copy the book back to their computer, eventually you get the reader back (Theoretically at the moment you could send the book to multiple devices but I see no technical issues with having a check-in check-out facility in the app, a custom time limit would be usefull so you can lend it again after a certain time if the device gets trashed).
Instant lending, face-to-face only, with no chance of the book you lent out ending up on a torrent site, also no need to circumvent DRM. All we need is e-ink screens to drop in price enough as the actual device needs very little in the way of hardware other than the screen (you can get little digital keyring photo frames for a couple of quid, it's only the screen price stopping this idea).