Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemurion
Harry, I disagree that DRM is required for commercial success in the eBook market. Given that the print publisher with the greatest commercial success in that market is Baen, which has a policy of actively fighting DRM, the linkage seems spurious.
What's needed to ensure commercial success in the market is a certain volume of sales. Baen gets that volume because they don't use DRM. Therefore I would say that not only is DRM not essential, but also that it's a detriment to the market as a whole.
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Trouble is, we can't make a balanced judgement because, for obvious reasons, most publishers regard such information as commercially confidential.
Yes, Baen are a success, but they are a specialist publishers and not necessarily representative of the publishing market as a whole. They sell a few hundred different books - compare that to MobiPocket's 30,000+ DRM-protected books. How commercially successful are those books? unfortunately, we have no way of knowing.
What seems clear is that many
publishers will not publish e-Books without DRM, because rightly or wrong they believe that doing so will open the flood-gates to their books being illegally copied. Whether that is a valid concern I don't know, but judging from the number of people on this site who openly admit to illegally downloading eBooks it seems to have some basis in reality.
As I've said before, personally I'm not bothered about DRM, because most of the books I read I never re-read. If I spend $5 on a DRM-protected book from Fictionwise (or whoever) I read it and I probably won't want to read it again. I'm really not concerned about whether or not I'll be able to re-read it in 10 years time. For me, that $5 is a "one time" entertainment cost, like going to see a movie or having a meal somewhere.
I buy a large range of different books from different sites; most without, but a few with, DRM.