Quote:
Originally Posted by dwanthny
I am curious if any enterprising author has approached his publisher with the concept of selling an ebook version of their work with two price points. Suggesting to the publisher that a DRM free version be made available for $?.?? more then the encrypted version and splitting the extra cash with the publisher.
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I think it's wrong that they are "selling" books with DRM. Period. Nobody should have to pay a premium to get what is already perceived as the offer. DRM encumbered files are a deception.
That said, I would happily pay less and accept DRM. I would, for example, pay to rent a book. In 20 years of reading I've only read two books twice. I would be ok paying to read it each time, assuming it was cheap like a movie rental.
But I hate these companies putting up big buttons that say "Buy" when you're not acquiring any ownership of anything. You're not "buying" a book. I find it underhanded and deceiving. I can go buy an actual book at the bookstore which I can easily scan and send on the internet in a relatively short amount of time, yet, these are not encrypted or something. There's no copy protection other than the time it takes to make a copy and that's becoming less and less. It won't be too long before you can cheaply buy a scanning rig to effectively copy one or two books each afternoon. Make a copy of your local library in the course of a couple years...
What's even more hilarious to me is that a company such as Amazon would be ignorant enough to continue using the DRM they know absolutely has been cracked for a long, long time even though they have another option that hasn't been cracked to my knowledge. The companies know that their DRM is useless garbage and yet they still punish the less technically savvy consumers with it. Makes no sense. I know three people, my wife and two of her friends, that were all about the Kindle until they found out they could never share books between each other without sharing one account (and thus romping over each others' bookmarks and latest page read). People share books. It's how they can tolerate paying $14 for trade paperbacks. That $14 pays for 3-5 people to read the book.
So if you're going to insist on punishing me with DRM I insist you give me a fair price for what you're actually selling me: rental. You're renting me a book, though supposedly indefinitely. It's still rental and I can't give it away or lend it out like a real book, so stop charging $10+ it should be more like $3-$5. And in exchange I'll let you delete that book off my device, say... 14 days after I've turned X pages, let's say 110% of total page turns. Or maybe a simpler 45 days or something would be better. I don't know. I rarely finish an individual book amongst the many I read in 5-14 days though so I know that wouldn't work out.
Ok rant over!
