From the "Salvos Against Big Brother 7" - Books: The Opaque Market - in the 7th issue of Jim Baen's Universe (June 2007 e-arc)
For the first 5 salvos check the preview site of the magazine, where each one is available in the corresponding issue.
http://preview.baens-universe.com
Excerpt from Mr. Flint:
"Again, it's simple. The book market is so opaque that, willy-nilly, almost all book-buyers react by being extremely conservative in their buying habits. "Conservative," at least, in terms of which authors they're willing to spend money on, if not necessarily in terms of how much money they spend overall.
They simply have no choice. They have neither the time nor the money—especially the time—to do anything remotely resembling a thorough search of the market to see which authors they might like more than any other. They can't even do that in one corner of the market, such as science fiction and fantasy, much less the market as a whole.
So, with the exception of a few adventurous types, most readers stick with a small number of authors whom they've come to know that they generally like. They venture afield only rarely, for the good and simple reason that people are generally reluctant to spend money—and time, perhaps, even more so—on what amounts to a pig in a poke. Unless they have some reason to think they might enjoy an unfamiliar author, they will simply ignore them. For years, and years, and years.
I always urge every author who tries to argue with me on the significance of so-called "electronic piracy" to do a little experiment. Go to your nearest big bookstore and plant yourself somewhere that gives you a good view of the shelves where your book or books are located. Then, simply count the number of browsers in the course of an hour or two who don't even glance at one of your titles. Forget taking it off the shelves, looking at the back cover, etc. etc, and then putting it back. I'm talking about the potential customers who ignore you completely.
Try it sometime. What you'll discover is that for every potential customer who takes even a couple of seconds to consider your title, dozens will pass your books by without so much as a glance.
That's the opacity of the book market at work. The real problem faced by authors isn't theft, it's invisibility. For the overwhelming majority of their potential customers, they simply don't exist.
This is even true, by the way, for the best-selling authors, although not to the same degree. Just about every literate person today has heard of J.K. Rowling or Stephen King or Tom Clancy or Nora Roberts or John Grisham. But what percentage of their potential customers have never actually read them?
The answer is 90% and up, for even the best-selling authors. For one reason or another, even though potential readers have heard of the author—in many cases, in fact, because of what they've heard of that author—most of them simply don't consider buying their titles. And, in many cases, based on information which is completely inaccurate.
To go back to my experiment, what you will discover is that every author loses more potential sales in one day due to the opacity of the market than they'd lose from "electronic piracy" in the course of an entire year. That being so, it's simply common sense to look for any methods that improve your visibility in the market—and steer clear of any that make the opacity of the market even worse.
Like DRM.
I'll explore this further in my next essay, where I'll go into considerable detail showing how fair use has always been the author's best friend, when it comes to promoting themselves and their works. And I will demonstrate that:
1) There is nothing that is "new" or "unparalleled" about the so-called danger of "electronic piracy."
2) From the standpoint of the narrow economic self-interest of an author (or publisher), a generous and expansive attitude toward fair use is every bit as beneficial as it is to society as a whole.
3) Any author or publisher who supports DRM is, even in the narrowest terms of their own selfish interests...
Logically challenged. Most polite term I can use.
In the meantime, contemplate "invisibility" for the next two months. Try my little experiment—and then go online and spend the same hour or so trying to find pirated copies of your work.
And then, do some simple arithmetic, comparing your losses in one column to those in the other and extrapolating the result across a period of months and years. If you're still deeply fretful about "online piracy" at the end, I can only hope you never get caught in a burning building—since you'll obviously spend your time worrying about whether you're wearing the right color socks to be seen in public rather than getting out of the fire."