Quote:
Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel
agreed. although i also think that in addition to buying ebooks, we should write to the publishers and tell them we hate drm.
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It is a way but I think economic incentives will drive publishers to drop DRM even if we don't email them. I described this rather briefly in my previous post mainly aimed at HarryT, but I guess he missed my post.
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...&postcount=119
From what I read, adding DRM to each book costs money. As more books are sold, publishers will realize that they are losing money by keeping DRM. They can have more money in their pocket (profit) even if they sell the same number of books (unit sales) by dropping DRM (cost reduction).
For example, let's say it costs 5cents to add DRM to each book. If a certain ebook sells 1 million copies, then publishers are losing money (1 million x 0.05 = $50,000) by keeping DRM. If the ebook sells 10 million copies, they are losing $500,000. As more books are sold, they are losing more money. This will make publishers rethink about keeping DRM especially when they realize that most DRMs are already useless anyway.
So, I will not worry too much about current DRM situation. It is good idea to email publishers but once the market is established, publishers (or at least their accountants) will realize that dropping DRM is more profitable
for them even if they do not care about consumers' convenience at all. I think this is what happened to Apple iTunes as well.