[wodin]

Call me a cynic, but I’m thinking the biggest reason the publishers are invested in DRM is that they don’t want anyone to find out just how irrelevant they’ve become. They used to provide value added by editing, typesetting, printing, binding, warehousing, shipping, etc. Things that your average author had neither the resources nor skills to do himself.

In today’s digital world, all those things are well within the realm of not only being possible, but not really very hard, and the only real value added that the publishers provides is marketing the products. And with places like Amazon and Baen even that is not beyond the realm of possibility.

If Publishers can convince everyone that only they can provide the NECESSARY (sic) DRM, well, maybe their cash cow will last a little longer.