Quote:
Originally Posted by luqmaninbmore
There is a big market for DRM free ebooks (Fictionwise even had the initiative to set up its own Kindle store); are the folks at B and N just too pig-headed to capitalize on it?
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In a word: Yes.
Ebooks are just starting to hit mainstream awareness, and the Big 6 publishers have a lot invested in DRM. They don't want mainstream customers to go looking for ebooks and discover two types: bestsellers by authors they've heard of, laden with crippling software, and indie-published books by authors they don't know, that are easy to use on any device and can be (legitimately or not) shared with friends.
They've got to be praying that Baen doesn't figure out how to sell ebooks at Amazon. (For a long time, Amazon wouldn't let publishers sell w/o DRM; that's possibly changing as more individual authors demand the right to sell their books DRM-free.)
Barnes & Noble doesn't want a non-DRM, multi-device ebookstore (with a better search engine) competing with their our-software-only, our-devices-only ebookstore that ties into their physical bookstore.
It looks very much like BN acquired Fictionwise in order to kill it.