[sourcejedi]

Algiedi: I wish it were that easy to resolve the conflict.

For the majority of book sales, I don't think there's no room for "extra" value that couldn't be pirated. Either it works as a digital file, or (as in this case), it only really works in paper. Bundled extras wouldn't be anything more than a gimmick. I just want to read the story!

In the large, the extra value that can't be pirated is tied up in how you get that digital file. Legitimacy is part of it, obviously. But there's also the convenience you get with buying from Amazon, for example, relative to searching pirate sites, and trying to judge the quality of the a file posted by someone you don't know. Or services like the Kindle has with synchronization of reading positions, annotations etc between phone/dedicated reader/laptop. Or just knowing that the book you bought is supposed to work on your specific reader, and in case it doesn't there's a responsive customer support line.

[All of which goes against the hacker creed - all this value is being provided due to vendor-lockin at the moment - but we're a relatively small constituency. DRM is never "light", but it can be well-thought out and designed to make the closed system as convenient as possible.]

Currently that's all outside the direct control of the publisher (or "content producer"). Bundling e-books with p-books might help, e.g. avoiding exasperated book buyers learning how to pirate, and improve/modernize their image. But that's not really the point of ebooks; the reason they're worth using at all is that they're not tied to a single physical object, and the digital file can stand on its own.