Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
With all due respect to authors and their right to be paid for their work, I believe the practice of "casually sharing books" to be far too ingrained in our reading culture/history for there to be any hope of a renaissance simply because of a medium shift from physical to digital.
Any publisher or author who truly believes their ultimate success/failure hinges on changing that cultural mindset (or on educating the masses on the differences between handing a book to someone and copying a file for them) should probably consider not producing ebooks at all. I don't say that to be mean, I just honestly believe it.
We have always shared our favorite stories/authors with those close to us, and we will very likely always want/try to continue to do so. Whether via paper or electrons. I've tried really hard, but I just can't view it as a "bad" thing.
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I don't disagree. The habit is there. It will happen. But the original topic was (somewhere long ago) to point out pros and cons. And the pro for me is that DRM does often stop casual sharing.
I've tried pretty hard too, but I have not been able to view it is a good thing for me.
I see both sides of this coin, because I am a reader. I have a friend who so rarely has funds to buy books that she gets 99 percent of her books from the library. There are times I'd really love for her to join us in a buddy or book club read, but unless I buy her the book, she can't afford the book. Because they are indie books, they aren't in libraries very often. They aren't always lendable either. So I do know that urge. I just happen to believe that for me, the only way to "share" is to buy a gift copy. Even if I knew she would become a "future" buyer of all the other books, it would never work for me to just make that copy and share it.