Quote:
Originally Posted by mike_bike_kite
A fair price (~ $5) should be sufficient. If you increase the DRM technology then folks will just produce better software to remove it. I certainly wouldn't bother looking for badly formatted torrents if I could just buy the book for a fair price and in a format of my choosing. No DRM would also mean I'd own my copy. The idea of a button at the end of a book to pay the author sounds intelligent also.
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But is that a fair price to the publishers? Are e-books saving them enough in printing, shipping etc. that they make the same profit?
And is it a fair price to the author if they still get 10% of the price in royalties and now the price is lower despite their effort in writing the book being the same? Your donation idea is a good one, but the majority of people never donate to anything--at least in the US per some research I saw a while back.
So while I agree that fair pricing is important, it's still a touch issue. IMO fair pricing to me means an e-book with no DRM that costs the same (or a tad less) than the cheapest print version available at the time. Withtout DRM you're buying the same thing in the same format, and the creator put the same effort into making it regardless of format you bought it in--so price should be the same.
With DRM, I agree. You don't really, truly own the file so it shouldn't cost the same as the print version.