Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
Baen has an idea how much money they're actually losing to "pirates:" less than they'd lose by treating their customers all as potential thieves. Baen is also aware that, for the time being, ebook freebies increase paper sales. Eventually, that'll probably change & they may have to rethink their policies--but they've been working for a decade, and that's plenty long enough for any business plan that deals with cutting-edge technology.
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The Free Library began as promotion for the dead tree editions. Jim Baen stated in an email that he didn't see opportunities for profit in pure electronic publishing at the time.
But that was years ago, and electronic publishing is a source of profit for them now. The last I heard, the Webscriptions operation brings in more revenue than
all foreign sales. Arnold Bailey set up and runs the Webscriptions service for Baen for a cut of the take, and I believe he's doing
very nicely, thank you.
It's possible their policies might change if paper books wither and die (which I don't expect to happen), but I doubt it. No DRM is an intrinsic part of Baen's identity. I expect any attempt to change that would cause far more problems than it would solve.
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Dennis