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Derek, you cannot take your behavior as a model. Most people will not buy if they can not buy it and still have it no matter what. That is: unless they are educated. IF they are educated THEN perhaps it will be viable to use that sort of model. This is the model I prefer. An author puts his book for sale, perhaps half the book is free. If people want the rest, they pay a just price. And the digital copy comes clean, no DRM attached. Fine. Another model is: you publish the first novel in a series, for free. The rest of the series is not free. None has DRM. This is great, Derek. But if you want to convince the industry to do it, you have to take the economics seriously and stop pushing for a Digital Revolution like so many anti-DRM people do.
As to publishers who do not release old titles digitally, this is not that different to paper books. There are a lot of old books that are not released anymore and that I would like them to be. I would favor a law that would allow one to publish an electronic title a given publisher refuses to publish digitally.
As to Baen, it is funny as this always comes to the fore in these discussions. I would like that model to prosper. However, that is not what I see. If it did prosper, they would expand and others would do the same. As far as I know, it is not prospering at all and it might not even be around next year.
BTW, tell me, why would anyone pay for Atlantis if they can have the same for free with Open Office? Because it is better? That means that freeware must be junk or else you are out of business. Remember how Microsoft defeated Netscape? Giving away for free something. How could they compete with that except by giving theirs away for free also? But, alas, if you give it for free, you will go bust sooner or later. Or else, you get some Big Corporation behind you, like Google is behind Firefox.
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