Quote:
Originally Posted by AnemicOak
Amazon required it only for publishers who were going through the Mobipocket service to get their books on Kindle originally. That stopped being required as they migrated to handling everything in house. Or at least that's what some publishers/editors have told a few authors that tried to get their books to be DRM free three or four years ago. I have heard that some third party services don't offer options and just DRM everything. Kind of like how various ebook distributors used to do.
I don't doubt that it's been required, or at least no option for NOT having it was available, over the years but it's not required today at least not anywhere I can come up with (maybe some 3rd party distros do?).
But my real question was with Ken's statement that "they" were doing something to "convince or incentivize" authors and publishers that they should use DRM. That's what I asked for some kind of info on as I've never heard or seen anything about this. What are they doing to convince folks? What incentives are they offering them?
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Initially from what I heard, authors were told that the publisher platform didn't have an option to go DRM-free. No idea if that is true or if that's been changed. My *speculation* is that initially Amazon assumed and offered DRM to help entice publishers to the table--"look, it's safe!" and never thought there would be a day they wouldn't want it. So it may have been added later to the publisher upload platform (Their platforms are not the same as KDPs. The services have options that I do not have such as the aforementioned pre-release and pre-release pricing.)
I'm not much help on the incentive area. There are incentives for lending and a few other options (if you go exclusive I think you must allow lending--and I don't mean borrows. If you go exclusive, you get 70 percent commissions in some countries where you otherwise get 35) ...but I don't think I've ever seen any incentive for DRM. My impression from the way it is setup is that Amazon doesn't care one way or the other for KDP authors. There's a box, check it and live with it.
I have never seen any emails or discussion on it from Amazon. They do send out emails and tweets regarding their exclusive program and how great it is, but nothing on DRM so far as I know.