Quote:
Originally Posted by speakingtohe
I am kind of missing the point of J. K. Rowling proving otherwise.
I thought that she had only recently entered the ebook market and was a very successful author already.
I think people who are Harry Potter fans would have bought her books regardless of the method used.
The fact that she made a decision for Watermark does not, IMO, make it any better or worse than any other DRM for authors in general.
Helen
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Well, I didn't think we were talking about "published as ebooks only" or "authors who are only successful because of ebooks".
And from what I've read she sold HP ebooks worth 1 million pounds in just 3 days, which I would read as very successful. Even more so since the books have been pirated for years - and still sold so well (if you can believe the claim, that is).
Not saying that these books wouldn't have been successful with hard DRM - but it proves that books
can be succesful without hard DRM and that hard DRM is therefore not necessarily required to sell your books successfully.
To me, watermarking is far better than hard DRM, because it does not limit me to reading it on a Kindle only if I've bought it for that one should I later decide to switch to a Sony, for example. But that's just me, of course.
Of course I would prefer no DRM at all and no watermarking also - nothing says so much "I don't trust you" as DRM or watermarking, it's true. But to me it currently seems that watermarking is the lesser evil (providing no one gets prosecuted for illegal sharing because someone stole their file and shared it or faked their watermark, if that is possible...).