For the few writers here that are not benefited by piracy and NEED DRM...

[dadioflex]

Originally Posted by atanner

So the ONE guy that needs DRM has an agenda...are you serious bro??

Apparently this forum is very comfortable in ganging up and punishing diversity

Just for the record no, I don't have any agenda except for getting some good advice.

Just for the record...read my @#$%^ and you will understand what I am trying to achieve here.

Just for the record, what you have said, has been said soooooooo many times it should not be said anymore....it's clear we all got it.....

I'm sorry to have made you so angry, but perhaps you could read what I wrote. I was simply pointing out that you could be mistaken for having an agenda. I certainly didn't accuse you of anything, and to make my own stance perfectly transparent I even stated that I DO have an agenda. How more fair could I have been?

I didn't mean to make you emotional.

However, I notice that you haven't explicitly stated that you have no connection with the company.

[atanner]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I downloaded their reader for Mac. I didn't get all the way through the install, because it tries to install both X.11 and Wine. X.11 I already have. Wine I don't. It downloads and installs Wine, and then still can't find it.

So I can't read on my Mac. I can't read on my iPhone. I can't read on my Kindle nor my CyBook Opus. If I had an iPad I couldn't read on that, nor on a nook nor a Kobo.

Despite having an on-line ebook store, I rather suspect that they make their money from selling activation keys to authors than through ebook sales.

You see, now that is what I'm talkin' 'bout ...finally some good feedback!

We are not the biggest fans of Macs here, so we hadn't really tested it on that platform. We had received some reports that it was a bit of a pain to install and get going on Macs, but you simply couldn't do it...so that is certainly something to look into, and retest.

We've been also trying the new Adobe XI certificates, and they seem to be hard to crack (not impossible, so please save it people...it's been said before....), but there is no way we know of linking that certificate to a specific device...that would be EXACTLY what we are looking for...

Any thoughts on that direction?

[atanner]

Originally Posted by dadioflex

I'm sorry to have made you so angry, but perhaps you could read what I wrote. I was simply pointing out that you could be mistaken for having an agenda. I certainly didn't accuse you of anything, and to make my own stance perfectly transparent I even stated that I DO have an agenda. How more fair could I have been?

I didn't mean to make you emotional.

However, I notice that you haven't explicitly stated that you have no connection with the company.

No worries bro, there's no agenda here. I just want to hear what you guys have to say about a topic without having my thread getting hijacked so some (not you) can listen to themselves yap about the same garbage that has been said a million times...even AFTER the cows came back

Thanks for your posts and btw...I am 100% with you on the DRM story for SOME genres...but this one in particular just doesn't fit that.

Merci!

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by atanner

...
We are not the biggest fans .....
We've been also trying the new Adobe XI certificates....
Any thoughts on that direction?

We?

Maybe there is an agenda here?

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by atanner

and their success will never be measured in the thousands, but in the hundreds.

If the success of your publications really is measured in the hundreds, then I'd suggest that you look into social DRM. Set up a work-flow so that you customise each and every ebook you sell for that customer - big visible well-designed bookplate at the beginning, giving customers name, a scanned signature of the author, a serial number for the book, date date purchase, etc. Encode other information invisibly throughout the book (if an ePub there are all sorts of ways to do that.). Make a mention that any piracy of a book can and will be traced back to the original purchaser.

[dadioflex]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

If the success of your publications really is measured in the hundreds, then I'd suggest that you look into social DRM. Set up a work-flow so that you customise each and every ebook you sell for that customer - big visible well-designed bookplate at the beginning, giving customers name, a scanned signature of the author, a serial number for the book, date date purchase, etc. Encode other information invisibly throughout the book (if an ePub there are all sorts of ways to do that.). Make a mention that any piracy of a book can and will be traced back to the original purchaser.

That I'm completely on board with. But it's difficult for a third party to make a living on the back of something as simple and effective as that.

[atanner]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

If the success of your publications really is measured in the hundreds, then I'd suggest that you look into social DRM. Set up a work-flow so that you customise each and every ebook you sell for that customer - big visible well-designed bookplate at the beginning, giving customers name, a scanned signature of the author, a serial number for the book, date date purchase, etc. Encode other information invisibly throughout the book (if an ePub there are all sorts of ways to do that.). Make a mention that any piracy of a book can and will be traced back to the original purchaser.

The post that made us say "Ahhhhhhh"....!!!

Brother you hit the nail right on the head!

We all looked at each other like..."OK, we're done here. Let's now go and do it".

We were looking at this e-n-t-i-r-e-l-y the wrong way...great great great idea!

We need to discuss this point with the client, but unless there is a very particular reason, I can't see how this is not THE solution!

Many thanks!!!

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by atanner

We need to discuss this point with the client, but unless there is a very particular reason, I can't see how this is not THE solution!

Many thanks!!!

You're welcome. There is at least one firm that specialises in this area, if you don't want to spend the time rolling your own method. J K Rowling used them for the Harry Potter ebooks (although I thought they missed a trick by not having a pretty personalised bookplate).

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by atanner

You see, now that is what I'm talkin' 'bout ...finally some good feedback!

We are not the biggest fans of Macs here, so we hadn't really tested it on that platform. We had received some reports that it was a bit of a pain to install and get going on Macs, but you simply couldn't do it...so that is certainly something to look into, and retest.

We've been also trying the new Adobe XI certificates, and they seem to be hard to crack (not impossible, so please save it people...it's been said before....), but there is no way we know of linking that certificate to a specific device...that would be EXACTLY what we are looking for...

Any thoughts on that direction?

So, there you have it. This whole thread is a publicity stunt to get air time for his company. Did not take long for that to come out.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

So, there you have it. This whole thread is a publicity stunt to get air time for his company. Did not take long for that to come out.

I think you are mistaken. The we in those statement is almost certainly his publishing company.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by atanner

Customer loyalty...wtf?

What customer loyalty do you think is related to a doctor that wrote the only step-by-step procedure to remove a lacerated spleen on diabetic patients over the age of 60?

Now I'm completely lost again. Why would something along these lines (assuming it was novel, which this example isn't particularly) be published in a small-run DRM-protected ebook, instead of as an article in a medical journal? No doctor I've ever met is looking to learn their trade this way.

[atanner]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

So, there you have it. This whole thread is a publicity stunt to get air time for his company.

What on Earth are you talking about?? What company would that be?? When did I mention anything in that direction?

Anyways, thanks to those that gave us such great input!

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by meeera

Now I'm completely lost again. Why would something along these lines (assuming it was novel, which this example isn't particularly) be published in a small-run DRM-protected ebook, instead of as an article in a medical journal? No doctor I've ever met is looking to learn their trade this way.

This is nit-picking a little. Grant the chap their premise (high value, small market ebooks) and go from there.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

This is nit-picking a little. Grant the chap their premise (high value, small market ebooks) and go from there.

Not nit-picking at all. It's hard to help someone with their issue without having any sense of what their involvement is and where they're coming from or what their market actually is. The reality is that to have a decent chance of suggesting a useful direction, we need to have a sense for this market we're being told exists. Are they a small group of highly interconnected people? People scattered over the globe with no connections to each other? A single group of student in a single university? Something else? Social watermarking isn't going to stop a family or a small business or a tight friends group sharing within their walls, for example, but it might lower the chances of a student offering a book on a shared bulletin board or a professional uploading it to a torrent site. If members of the target group are scattered and have no connections with others in the same group, I wouldn't see the point of DRM at all (well, I can't see the point of it anyway, but if I was a DRM fan I wouldn't see the point of it under those circumstances).

And the fact is that this particular example has been given makes me think that this market doesn't exist at all, since it's so wildly improbable, and makes me wonder whether this is all a hand-waving business startup idea, not a real thing that exists in the world -- so why should I grant the premise without any further questions?

We're not someone's magical freebie business research panel, committed to answering all questions exactly as asked without seeking further information (or digressing or opinionating, for that matter).

[atanner]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

You're welcome. There is at least one firm that specialises in this area, if you don't want to spend the time rolling your own method. J K Rowling used them for the Harry Potter ebooks (although I thought they missed a trick by not having a pretty personalised bookplate).

Which firm is this?