Quote:
Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer
Just to add to Tompe's point, Tor also specializes in the science fiction genre, so its reasonable to assume that the average Tor reader is more sensitive to and knowledgeable about DRM than the average reader. So for Tor, their could be an uptick in sales. Certainly a number of people on this site have said they won't buy a book with DRM.
Raising prices wouldn't be without precedent though, iTunes did that when the went DRM free. On the other hand, the game retailer site Good Old Games offers PC games that are DRM free, and doesn't price higher than its competitors for the same games that the competitors offer only with DRM.
For Apple, the real justification for raising prices was that they were offering a more valuable product (music files without the annoying restrictions) so people were willing to pay more. I doubt they did anything but profit from that move, even though "sharing" of music files must be at least as prevalent as sharing of book files.
|
So the likelihood is that prices willl stay the same or rise. As to whether there will be significant losses from casual sharing, the purpose of this experiment is to generate data on this issue. There will be solid results in a year or so. If there are no significant losses, I will change my mind on the issue and switch to urging publishers to abandon DRM.
If there are significant losses, well, I don't expect the anti DRMIsts to change their minds, rather their arguments will change.
Its worth noting that Charles Stross agrees that going DRM free won't add to publisher revenues. At best, he hopes that revenues won't go down.