Quote:
Originally Posted by Anke Wehner
How about this: Ditch DRM, and let a buyer enter an owner name at purchase. Put in the book a note, "This books belongs to [name]. If this isn't you, and you enjoyed the book, please consider buying your own copy to support the author", and ALLOW people casual sharing with family and friends.
The TOS now forbidding sharing books with ANYONE is ridiculous. Letting your husband read a book you bought goes against the letter of Amazon TOS. Really. Read them with your common sense switched off, just taking in the content.
Just as ridiculous is the idea that someone lending their book to someone else must be a lost sale, and nothing else. They might be a won reader.
Someone who never heard of the author and read a book after a friend let them read it for free might start buying books by that author.
How many books could you sell to someone who never read at all until they gave in to a friend's "here, I'm sure you'll love it, go on, try!" while pressing a book on them?
Publishers should stop only worrying about getting as large a piece of the cake as possible, and try enlarging the cake.
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I agree with Anke - Someone gave me a legal copy of a Baen book when I had a Palm T|X. It was "1632" by Eric Flint. I had never heard of the book or the author. I was hooked. I eventually bought a Kindle1, then a 2 and now a 3, all because someone gave me a legitimate copy. I loaded the book onto the Kindle, searched the Kindle for a unique word in the Palm version and was off and running with my place intact. Eric Flint said he was more afraid of obscurity than piracy. He has sold a lot of books, many of them to me. If that book had been rejected by the Kindle because it had the wrong format, it would have gone back to Amazon. Fortunately for me, it was a compatible format and so I kept the Kindle. I didn't know about the tower of babel when I ordered the Kindle and I should not have to be aware that they were like cell phones, you need several different phones to cover the territory, just like e-readers if you want to read all books from all sources. I guess the iPad comes closest to being a universal reader, although you have to hassle with opening the right app for the right book. I have no objection to DRM if it is transparent. Unfortunately it is not.