|
My participation here runs the gamut. Strip away my publishing credentials and running a rather large indie store which carries digital products, you'll have someone who loves the digital medium. In the past year, I have switched to reading 100% of my leisure reading to digital. This prompted me to focus the direction of my company towards going digital in the near future.
As added perspective, I've been a published author since 1995 (before becoming a publisher) so I do have some strong views as an author (pro-DRM).
So basically here's where I stand on the DRM issue from all my perspectives:
Publisher (Pro-DRM). The reason being is that an typical indie publisher makes an average profit per title of less than $2000. Piracy in this regards (and on a mass level as in posting work on websites, etc) would cause problems due to indie publishers not having the money for legal representation to handle such matters.
Author (Pro-DRM). Take into consideration that a novel takes me approximately 6-7 months of my life to write. A lot of emotional pain and long hours at the computer. When I'm finished I'm drained emotionally. And for all the work and sacrifice, my publisher sends me an advance check for $500-$1000. In the end, with royalties, I'll receive maybe $2k. That's about 1/10 of what it would take for me to survive for that 6-7 months work. The idea of having a file of my work floating around for readers to share while I'm starving is just too much for me to even consider.
Bookseller (Anti DRM): Simply it's a nightmare to deal with and a pain in my ass.
Reader (Anti-DRM): I'd rather have my purchases be free and clear without having to worry about any repercussions of being locked out of access later on.
However, in the end, the one thing that I'll honestly admit is that why I lean on the side of DRM is my general personality. I'm generally not a very trusting person when it comes to business. The honesty policy doesn't work for me due to the fact that 1 person taking advantage of abusing the system could ultimately wipe out 1000 sales to honest buyers due to the time and expense needed to deal with problems.
I've seen my independent businesses get screwed so many times by people taking advantage of them. And when this happens, and money is taken out of my pocket, it's ultimately money taken away from my family. Since I'm not a corporation, it's tough to just look the other way.
I wish it were easier.
Another factor for me with only offering Kindle and PDF at this time is that I own a Kindle, so it was a gateway for me to keep quality control on layouts and such. My publishing company is Mac-based, so when doing research I found that it's not so clear cut to actually have files converted to all the other formats needed to offer a comprehensive digital array of formats.
PDFs were a given since all of my physical titles are in that format to begin with and I love the design control you have with PDF. But I will agree that I don't care much for reading on a computer, like most of you.
|