Quote:
Originally Posted by GoSharks
The idea that the publishers would go to the time , energy and expense to develop a new (stronger) DRM scheme, then not eventually apply it to all of their books is naive. They will certainly roll it out in the venues they care least about, like Overdrive/libraries, but if it works it will end up being used everywhere. Forever having multiple protection schemes depending on where a product is distributed would be a logistical headache no business would intentionally inflict upon itself.  |
Adobe has spent the time and money, presumably at publishers' insistence, but possibly to try to pretect their revenue stream from ADE ($0.22 per book bought, remember). But I'm hopeful that more publishers will realise that DRM is just costing them money before too long.
US monthly ebook sales are at least $100 million. Let's say that only 25% are DRMed ePubs. That's $25million/month. Let's say average book price is $3 (a low estimate, but about what I pay). That's about 8 million ADE ePubs a month. That's $1.76 million dollars income for Adobe per month, just from US sales. Then there's library lending, and foreign sales.
So having ePubs sold with DRM gets Adobe
at least $20 million/year. And that's rounding down, taking low estimates, and ignoring lots of foreign sales. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that Adobe gets more than $50 million per year from ADE DRM on book sales and loans.
Are you surprised that they're willing to spend some money to protect that revenue?