Quote:
Originally Posted by latepaul
The economics are different.
You buy a novel to read for leisure*, you buy a textbook because it's necessary for your study. Novels are cheaper. Students often have less money.
Which means that the casual piracy which goes on, is probably more about convenience than saving money for novel readers. That's why Tor could go DRM-free and see no drop in sales. A textbook publisher has good reason to believe that the same would not happen for them.
(*unless you're a book reviewer but then it may well be free anyway)
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Any publisher that wants to rationalize DRM will do so without regard for facts.
Any publisher that is intellectually honest will realize the greater issues surrounding DRM.
What the heck does the likelihood of pirating have anything to do with the matter?
Moving on...
Often textbooks come with one-use codes to e.g. create an account at website X which manages the coursework. Pirated textbooks don't help with that. In fact, that particular scam even makes buying used textbooks a problem.
Textbooks are indeed special snowflakes, but I would argue that is because they, digital or paper, have DRM (of a sort) that is truly the pinnacle of the art. It certainly isn't because they need to fear you pirating the mere words.