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Originally Posted by Doranna Durgin
I'm new to this process and just learning the issues... I like what you say about it, and although my first couple of backlist ebooks are up at Kindle with DRM (but DRM free at Smashwords), I think I'll make a different choice in the future--and keep reading here so I can better understand the big picture of things.
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I think the vast majority of folks on MR are opposed to DRM, but we're aware that at least for the moment, we're stuck with it.
DRM exists for two main reasons:
1. To lock you into a vendor. This is the case with what Amazon does. They use a proprietary form of DRM, and if you want to read a purchased, commercial title on a Kindle or with the Kindle app for various platforms, you have to
buy it from Amazon. Amazon wants to sell you ebooks, and wants to be the only source from which you can buy them. Their pricing, selection, service and convenience is such that most Kindle owners don't see this as an issue, but it is lock-in, and the point of the exercise.
2. To prevent piracy. This is a lot thornier, and comes down to perceptions about the market.
I side with Cory Doctorow, who commented "A writer's biggest problem isn't piracy, it's
obscurity." As a mid-list writer, your biggest challenge is simply reaching the audience who might like your work and letting them know you and your books exist.
Yes, piracy exists. Yes, there are people who will cheerfully copy and share your copyrighted books with all and sundry. Just how big an issue
is this? What are you actually
losing in lost sales because someone could get a pirate copy instead of buying one? You don't know, and you
can't know. Sure, you can create an account on a file sharing site and monitor things like bit torrent files for ebooks to see how many seeds and how many peers there are. But that just tells you approximately how many illegal copies have been downloaded. It does
not tell you how many of those pirated books were actually read
instead of buying a legitimate one.
And it requires savvy and effort on the part of the downloader to locate and get the files, possibly installing software to let them do so. Only a small part of the market is likely to have the knowledge or take the trouble.
I worked in retail, a
long time ago, and we called it "shrinkage". Stock would be missing from the shelf, without a sales receipt to account for it. My employer spent a fair bit of time and trouble considering the best ways to counter the problem, from store layout to whether you used uniformed or plain clothes security staff, but ultimately, it would happen, was a cost of doing business, and somehow, we survived. It was a nuisance, not a disaster.
I may be an optimist, but my feeling is that the majority of the market is willing to pay for value. Your challenge is to provide value, price fairly, and make it as easy as possible for people to give you money.
Amazon excels at the last: Whispernet on the Kindle means instant gratification. You can select, pay for, and download a Kindle edition at
any time, day or night. Why go through the time and trouble required to locate and get a pirate copy?
The same holds true elsewhere. One inconclusive example is Baen Books. They offer ebook versions of everything in their catalog, plus ebooks from other publishers. Their ebooks are high quality, without the formatting and production issues others complain about from other vendors. They price very reasonably, and
don't apply DRM. They're doing fine, thank you. Out of curiosity, I looked at various pirate sites. I could find all sorts of other stuff, but
couldn't find Baen's selections, even though they have no DRM and would be trivial to pirate.
Baen trusts their readers, and the readers repay that trust with their dollars. I don't think it would occur to the vast majority of Baen customers to pirate a Baen title, and they would probably be offended at the idea.
Too much of DRM appears to me to stem from a a negative view of the market: "They're all a bunch of dirty so-and-sos who will rip us off unless we Take Steps to prevent it!" I reject that viewpoint. I think the majority of the market
is willing to pay for what it wants. There will be exceptions, but there always are. The exceptions won't be enough to to cause problems for the legitimate readers who just want to buy your book and read it, and not have to jump through DRM hoops or be restricted in where they can buy to do so.
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Dennis