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Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward
A few factual clarifcations first...
Stephen King started writing a novel, The Plant, a chapter at a time, release as an e-book with no DRM by suscription. Half way through, he decided he was not getting enough suscribers for the next chapter, so he stopped. Please note, he made $440,000 US dollars from his subscribers for the half written book by the time he quit. Gone all that well, therefore is a matter of perspective. Many authors would beg, borrow, or steal for those sort of numbers.
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1) Stephen King made $440,000 US because he's Stephen King. Compare that number to the sum he usually makes for a book. Comparing it to a lesser-known author isn't really a valid comparison, if what you're trying to do is measure the success of the technique (rather than the success of the author).
2) King released the chapters DRM-free on the condition that 75% of the people who downloaded them would pay for them (I think the price was $1, if I remember right.) He stopped because he wasn't even getting
that from people.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward
Some vendor has, for a number of years. Baen books. Science fiction and Fantasy specialist, admittedly, but they have not been cutting back, dropping all new publishing, ect. that has been occurring at the top 6 publishers. I highly recommend reading Eric Flint's "Salvos Against Big Brother" colums in Baen's Universe magazine. Eric Flint is a sucessful professional niche writer, and has explicit sales numbers to back up (from his own published works!) why e-books without DRM have made him more successful.
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Granted, Baen has been doing this for a while. They're the equivalent of where eMusic was several years back in the online music industry. Small vendors can afford to do DRM-free ebooks because it's better for them to have their e-books readable by as many people as possible (rather than tied to a specific device). Larger vendors have more to lose.
It should also be noted that book publishers currently have a lot less incentive to go digital than the music industry did. The barrier to copying a book is a lot higher than the barrier to copying a CD. Essentially, that means that the risk of digitizing is higher, since you're removing the biggest obstacle to copying. (The DRM is actually trivial, by comparison.)
At this point, Amazon represents the best hope for ebook readers. If Amazon succeeds, ebook readers will become ubiquitous. If they fail, ebook readers may become relics.