Quote:
Originally Posted by carld
I wonder if what Baen is doing works so well why are they still the only company of any significance doing this? Baen's been selling their books without DRM for years now, and they're still the only one's doing so.
PS: Yes, I know I said I was done with this thread, and I was, but Baen interests me.
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A few more publishers who are DRM-free include:
J. Wiley and Sons
The National Academies Press
O'Reilly Media
I'm not sure where the NAP falls in terms of size. But Wiley is much MUCH bigger than Baen -- they're traded on the NYSE.
Wiley and the NAP both report that switching from DRM to DRM-free hasn't caused them any increase in piracy that they can tell.
My uncle was on Wiley's Board of Directors* when they changed over to DRM-free. He tells me that as they converted publications from DRM to no-DRM, they saw step-wise increases of paper sales shortly afterwards for each book so converted. That's right, PAPER sales measurably UP shortly after the bits became no-DRM. At the same time, eSales went from insignificant to "enough to care about." Note that this was pre-Kindle. All I know post-Kindle is that they're still think that piracy isn't a problem -- I have no idea what data they use to make that determination, however.
As for why so few other companies are following in Baen's footsteps, one can only guess. My personal guess is that it's mostly a matter of agility. Baen's approach happened because the Publisher and owner (Jim Baen) had a whim of steel and decreed that it would be so. And one guy can make decisions far more quickly than even a small organization, much less a large one. Further, as controlling owner and top executive, Jim could take whatever risks he felt were appropriate with no need to convince other managers, investment analysts, corporate parents, etc. --
the company was his to risk.
History has shown that he was correct (IMHO), but that was entirely uncertain eleven years ago when he kicked off Webscriptions and Baen's DRM-free policy. Back then,
even I would have questioned the sanity of a major publishing house CEO who'd made a similar choice. Heck -- I thought Jim Baen was nuts!
As for Baen's financials, I have no idea. It's a privately held company, so they need not disclose anything to the public. We do know, however, that Baen has grown substantially over the last decade, even as the publishing industry as a whole has been shrinking. We also know that Toni Weisskopf (now the Publisher and top boss) says that their e-Sales are larger than all foreign sales combined (including Canada), and that those sales have been growing faster than paper sales. (Note: both of these statements are a couple of years old. If you want more up to date info, ask Toni. Who knows... she might answer!)
Xenophon
* Note that all these statements are also
somewhere in Wiley's official public statements -- no insider information here, other than getting it from the horse's mouth rather than via press release or SEC filing.