Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
As the article clearly states, it is not up to Amazon whether a book is DRM'ED or not; it is up to the publisher. So they can't choose to abolish DRM.
And as the article points out, indie publishers correctly see DRM-free as added value. So do readers, even those without Pavlovian reactions to the very mention of the term.  |
Well, 19 of the top 100 are DRM free, which means 81 of the top 100 have DRM. So all this seems to prove is that the average person buying books doesn't give a damn about DRM one way or another, if you just look at it as a blind statistic then 81% of people prefer DRM'd books
Frankly, DRM is so easy to remove for anyone that really cares that I doubt general buying habits are affected at all (Yes, some people here are a special case), I mean, I buy TOR books, but I also bought them before they were DRM free. As near as I can tell DRM is fullfilling it's intended purpose, Which is to stop casual sharing - or what amounts to casual sharing these days (which could be posting the book on your facebook page for 3 million of your closest
friends).
Until some
big name author releases a book DRM free (someone with a guaranteed approximate readership no matter how good the book is - Brown, Patterson, Cussler, someone like that) and sales are compared with the average of the previous books we won't really
know how the publishers cash cows will be affected, could be huge, could be no change at all. If a publisher tries this I doubt sales will go up for top sellers but, if they don't tank, some accountact may add everything up and decide that the money saved on applying the DRM is worth ditching the bloody thing. Stephen King may try it, he's tried serialised, e-only, p-only, pulp paperback only etc, no reason to think he wouldn't give a punt at DRM free.