Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken Maltby
There are times when a retailer will "give away" some of their stock to
encourage sales of the rest (loss leaders, is a term I've heard used), but a
retailer who actually has "poor product control" is soon out of business.
I think we have a different view of what prevents a loss of sales for ebooks.
First, a mass pirating of a book is something reserved for the most popular,
in demand properties. DRM in no way prevents that. Nowadays, the pirating
often takes place before any ebooks are released.
DRM is intended to prevent the casual sharing of PURCHASED ebooks. If you
consider this occasional occurrence as a lost sale, rather than exposing another
ebook reader to your work, then so be it. But how often do you think people
who buy books themselves, are interested in supplying others who don't buy
them? I would think the rare "You Gotta Read This!" based give away, to be in
the author's long term interest.
Luck;
Ken
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There is of course no way to actually know exactly what is lost by people giving copies of the digital work away because there is no way to actually know the numbers and of course some people that get a free copy may never have read it otherwise, but don't you think it is rather stressful for an author to constantly hear conversations about how, say, Amazon is so much worse than other sellers because they make it more difficult to do this thing.
Amazon's competence seems to be preying on your mind and of course then your mindset preys on my mind.