Quote:
Originally Posted by alphasun
I wonder would your attitude be the same if you were a living author making your living from one of those books?
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Author's get paid the same for an e-book with or without DRM. The question about DRM from an author's point of view should be: do I sell more books (e-books, and p-books by the way) if the e-book has DRM or not. What seems to maximize an author's income is low cost DRM-free e-books (perhaps only available when the paperback comes out, but an e-book can sell more hardbacks). Note that if you have many once popular titles that are now out of print or not selling well, then e-books are a new way to make money and DRM-free e-books are particularly good here. A substantial fraction of your "new" readers will already have the title in hardback or paperback - why do you want to annoy them with DRM.
Some authors seem to equate DRM-free with easily stolen. I don't think this is true, but the real question is why do you care? It does not matter how many people download a bootlegged copy. What matters is how many people pay for a legal copy. Even a bootlegged e-book can lead to a p-book sale.
If Amazon comes to dominates the e-book market, and requires DRM, then authors may indeed need to allow DRM (although it isn't usually their choice anyway). I think Amazon is making a strategic (long term) mistake not allowing other e-book sellers access to the Kindle with DRMed e-books. Most of their customers would buy from Amazon anyway, but now the only way for others to access the Kindle market is with DRM-free e-books.