|
JK Rowling just joins the chorus of folks who are proving that DRM does not matter -- Smashwords, Angry Robot, O'Reilly, Baen and on and on.
IMO, Rowling realized how much money she was losing out on by not having ebooks out (pirated ecopies of Deathly Hallows were on the torrents within what, 24 hours of the book coming out?).
She clearly realized that DRM is a speed bump to dedicated pirates and a huge annoyance and hassle to honest readers who just want to give her money and get their book.
I believe Charlie Stross is absolutely right on this -- the only hope for mainstream publishers is to abandon DRM. That's the only way they can dent Amazon's market control: "Buy from us and read on anything."
If they go DRM-free, the hardware the reader uses is irrelevant and you eliminate "platform lockin" where readers always buy from the vendor who sold them their reader. If they go DRM-free, the commodotize the ebook readers in the same way that a "PC is a PC," whether it's an HP, a Dell or generic white box. It's the content and software you use on the PC that matters.
|