Quote:
Originally Posted by Cinisajoy
Amazon offers DRM as an option. If they didn't have that option none of the big 5 would let Amazon distribute their books.
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I think that Katsunami has raised an interesting point.
Certainly back around 2005/7 when Amazon were getting ready to launch Kindle, they would not have got the major publishers on board without allowing DRM, since ebooks were such a small part of the publishers' income, and Amazon wasn't a big part of that market.
But now? With ebooks being around 20% of their revenue, and Amazon being (at a guess) 80% of that revenue, would they be willing to sacrifice 16% of their income to maintain DRM on their ebooks?
Given how much they've already held back ebook sales with their pricing policy, I can't see all the the big publishers allowing DRM-free sales if Amazon forced the issue now, even if one or two might.
So I don't see Amazon going that route now. But in another five years? Who knows.