[BillSmithBooks]

It's pretty well known that within most major publishing houses, using DRM is part of the unchallengeable dogma...regardless of its effectiveness.

The question on DRM is simple:

* Will authors (and publishers) sell MORE books without DRM than with DRM?

Baen, O'Reilly, Smashwords, Book View Cafe, Angry Robot, DriveThruRPG/Fiction/Comics and many others are convinced that the answer to the question is Yes.

And I agree with them -- I can think of hundreds of ebooks that I refuse to buy because they are DRM-crippled.

I'd like to buy them, I have the cash right here, waiting for them...but I'm not paying for something they can arbitrarily take away or prevent me from reading on my device of choice when they feel like it.

We know DRM can be circumvented by those who want to, whether they use Apprentice Alf, buy used print books (depriving the author and publisher of ALL royalties), borrowing from a library, or scanning a book. DRM is nonsense, plain and simple.

But rather than "play the game" (buy, de-DRM and REWARD DRM-crippled books), I make a point of supporting the companies and authors that do "get it" and talking very publicly about the issue.

It is rather enjoyable to publicly needle these big companies, who live and die on quarterly profit reports, and remind them, "Hey, you could have had these extra hundreds of dollars, too...but no, not for you." If thousands and thousands of people did likewise, they would sit up and take notice.

The question is NOT how many pirated copies will be made and distributed that aren't paid for. Honestly, there is no way to tell how many people grab a book just for the sake of grabbing it because it is there.

If you have a book that was going to sell 10,000 copies and by going DRM-free you sell 20,000 copies, even if there are a million illicit copies out there, going DRM-free has been a huge success...you have doubled your revenue.

How do you judge success?

I wish publishers would dare to experiment. Take a handful of backlist books, sell them DRM-free (even if for a limited time), TELL US so we know they're DRM-free, and see what happens to sales.

Pick a few books that are selling weakly, if at all, get the authors onboard and give it a shot. Compare it to sales in previous months and sales of books that were selling comparable numbers before the "no DRM" experiment.