Quote:
Originally Posted by stonetools
THey have looked at the same data and come to a different conclusion.
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.
THose arguing for the gamble argue the following:
1. DRM is really annoying to us experts.
2.Large scale casual sharing won't happen ( because nobody likes getting emailed free copies of bestsellers, I guess).
3.Even if it does does happen, it will generate more sales of obscure books. What about its effect on bestsellers?-Er, have I told you DRM is REALLY annoying?).
4. A tiny number of authors and publishers have made a living in niche markets offering non DRM work. Whats the evidence that going without DRM will work on a larger scale? Well, what's the evidence It WON"T work? Hey, lets give it a go, cause, you know, what could go wrong?
5. People could lose their books because some store could go out of business! Well, wouldn't it be easy to strip DRM in that emergency situation? Well yes, but that's not the point.
5. DRM is really, really, REALLY annoying.
Based on this, its obvious to me why publishers aren't leaping into the dark. I think the better approach would be to allay the concerns of the digerati by pressing for a better DRM regime-but that really won't satisfy the purists. Anyway, I think there really isn't much more to say about the answer to my question. We just don't know, and when people don't know, they opt for the status quo.
[SNIP] |
On #1: Actually, we have plenty of evidence that DRM becomes annoying to non-experts when stores or DRM-providers shut down.
On #2: We also have plenty of evidence that whatever large-scale casual sharing may be happening for bestsellers, it seems to lack significant negative impact on the
sales of those bestsellers. See my prior post about little Baen occupying more than 1% of the total available slots on the NYT hardcover fiction bestsellers list.
On #3: You ask "what about bestsellers?" Well, what about them? The only available evidence to date is "not a problem." See that earlier post, again. You say it'll obviously be a problem. So... I showed you some <heavy irony> actual evidence </heavy irony>. You've responded with an assertion. I reply that evidence trumps assertion. The available evidence is too scarce to be conclusive, but it still outweighs unsupported assertion.
On #4: Few of the posters here have suggested that the BPH should blindly copy Baen or O'Reilly. Rather, we suggest that they examine closely those publishers and their business models. Then, the BPH need to consider carefully how to restructure themselves for the future. It seems likely that there are plenty of business models that
can work. But the head-in-the-sand, we-know-better, you're-all-pirates assertions we see appear far more like a wrongheaded refusal to look at real successes than like outcome of the kind of hard-headed business and customer focused review that the BPH clearly need.
On #5: The
experts can strip the DRM easily. Usually. The non-experts just get pissed off, instead. And the DRM still didn't prevent piracy, 'cause that only requires one expert who's willing to upload (if the path is via DRM-breaking), or zero experts for books that are just scanned-and-proofed or typed in.
And on the second #5: Treating your customers like thieves is not generally considered to be a good way to foster goodwill amongst those customers. Last I heard, anyway. The retailers I know who have those locked-down iPods, etc., uniformly say that they wish they didn't need to lock them down (partly because it costs them money to do so, and loses them sales, to boot!). But they have real-world experience that demonstrates it to be necessary, with hard numbers to back up the assertion. By comparison, the BPH (and you) seem to have only fears and assertions.
The folks arguing against you are the ones with the real-world examples and hard numbers. Hmmmm....
So... We're not asking for a leap into the dark, but for a much more careful consideration of business models. Lucky for us, the companies that get it right (or right enough) will survive, and the others, well... let's just say that they'll change their business model one way or another. (Note that "right" doesn't mean they wind up agreeing with me, just that they do well enough to continue in business.)
And that "better DRM regime" you mention? If "preventing piracy" and "allowing legitimate users access to their content" are both part of its requirements, it's
provably impossible to build.
Xenophon
Oh yeah, two more DRM-free publishers:
Wiley (
www.wiley.com) makes all their material available in bits for free. They report that sales of paper went UP when the bits became available.
(my best reference isn't linkable: my uncle was on their Board of Directors at the time. He's my source)
The National Academies Press makes all its publications available in bits for free. They report that as they moved to put their reports online, sales of dead tree format products showed a significant uptick soon after the online version went live.