Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemurion
Personally I think DRM is the stupidest thing since cajun barbeque sushi. It's a waste of time and effort and the best thing it can do is disappear.
However, it is a fact of the industry that DRM is currently required for at least certain books at certain sales venues. It may be at the behest of the author, the publisher, or even the sales venue. Regardless of my opinion, it does exist, it is applied to ebooks and someone has to pay for it.
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You were talking about why market testing ebook only versions are not viable because of the upfront costs. DRM is an optional cost. Since we are talking about a potential new release model, it's irrelevant that somebody in the chain believes it's necessary in the conventional model.
I think it's an interesting and very viable idea. The problem with self-published books lies with readers having to sort the wheat from the chaff. A publisher lending its support to a title would be an obvious way to mitigate this problem, and something that requires very little adapatation to their business since I would think the vast majority of titles that get self-published passed through the vetting process of at least one publisher first anyway. The upfront costs of publishing an ebook are very heavily discretionary. It's completely up to them how much money they put into, say, editing, promotion and, yes, DRM. Authors of such titles can be offered contracts based more heavily on sales than upfront payments.
As I see it, this greatly increases the number of titles they can publish. It helps solve a problem in a way which is potentially profitable for them. If the "wheat from the chaff" problem is solved by other means (and I'm sure it will be eventually), they may find themselves in the position of having uncomfortably little to offer versus self-publication.