Quote:
Originally Posted by stonetools
OK, let's sum up.
We know of one small genre publisher who has had success offering non DRMED work (Baen
There is a one publisher of niche nonfiction is is successful offering non DRMED work (O'Reilly)
There are a handful of authors who make a living offering non DRM work. ( Most of those apparently publish in the proprietary Kindle format and apparently make their sales for reading on a closed device, but let that pass  )
This is not a significant record upon which to base a major gamble like dropping DRM. |
1) We know of dozens of other publishers, and many individual authors, who are achieving financial stability & success without DRM.
2) Why isn't it enough of a record? Is there any statistical data showing that DRM
increases sales?
Quote:
what-the-powers-that-be-think-about-drm-and-an-explanation-of-the-cloud
at least one publisher (and the poster,) thinks the solution is to move everything to the cloud. Apparently, HTML 5.0 will allow the offline reading of ebooks stored in the cloud, so you can read ebooks without requiring a persistent wifi or cellular connection. Maybe that's solution.
Discuss.
|
Will HTML 5.0 let me read those books on my Sony PRS-505? On my Clie? Import them to my daughter's no-registered-credit-card Kindle? Read on a Jetbook? If they're readable offline, are they loadable on a dialup connection?
If not, it's just another walled-garden model that says "if you want to buy our books, you have to buy our approved device first."
Will they be readable in 15 years? I have 15-year-old ebooks now. I haven't been buying that long; my oldest purchased ebook is a bit more than 4 years old. Will this cloud guarantee that ebooks are available that long? Or will they be revocable by publisher's whim, or if sales contracts change?