[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Little.Egret

Perhaps, but most have to take what they are given and the contract they sign may not even mention DRM.

I am unaware of any authors who refused a Baen publication contract or sued TOR when they removed all DRM.

Why would you be? Are you an agent? In the publishing biz with Baen or TOR? In a position to be privvy to that information? Where did you get your statistics?

Do you have sample statistics on what proportion of KDP authors ticked the "no DRM" box?

Or perhaps we should start with how many know it is there?

No, I don't have access to some imaginary statistic--but I have over 3,000 clients, on over 3700 eBooks, in the last decade, all of whom I've dealt with, personally. I have an intimate knowledge of how many not only want DRM, but would go to rather extensive lengths about it. "Most," most certainly do not have to take what they are given; you're talking about trade-pubbed authors, who are now in the significant minority. By millions, I'd point out.

Of all of those, plus a few thousand with whom I corresponded, or spoke, for whom we didn't do books, would you like to take a WILD guess as to how many I recall, that expressly did NOT want DRM? Wanna?

FEWER THAN TEN. I can recall every conversation I had, with an author, who said that they neither wanted nor intended to use DRM. Every. single. discussion. That's how rare that is. I couldn't BEGIN to remember every single one that told me quite vehemently that they DID want it.

I've done uploading for some untold number. We give them a questionnaire, to complete, which includes the DRM question, Y/N. Know how many opted for the N? None. Not one.

What about how many decided not to publish on SW (Smashwords) when they learned that they don't have DRM?

Pretty much ALL of them.

My clientele ranges from multi-million selling clients to the most unknown, and everybody in-between. Clients that had some of the biggest publishing contracts, in history, and some that never will. I'd say that's a fairly representative sampling, wouldn't you???

Now, you can talk all you want about Baen, Tor, etc. You can hate DRM if you wish. You can argue that because those two exist, that somehow, all authors everywhere have given up on DRM, or that they don't even know where to click to enable it, (you seem not to hold their intellectual capacity in very high regard...) but in addition to all this--which I know firsthand, not through Internet Yammer and hearsay--I answer several emails, every single week, from author clients and others, asking me how to put DRM on their OWN files, before they send them to friends, neighbors, reviewers, etc.

Originally Posted by darryl

@Hitch. Very interesting post. I wasn't aware that such a high percentage of authors want DRM. I presume that statistic comes from your own experience in business?

Yes, see above, Darryl.

I don't disagree with your comments about casual copying and the purpose of DRM. Though the problem, of course, is that removing DRM is not limited only to the technically sophisticated or to the sort of people who visit this site. It is truly just a quick search away, and so-called "digital natives" are pretty good at searching for just about anything they want.

I'm not saying that it is remotely hard. Amazon has just, of course, made it quite a bit harder, but, sure. But I think that I can also say that of the thousands of authors that I've dealt with and hundreds of publishers, you guys think that MRers, and other somewhat tecchie folks are "normal." I think you're wrong.

I would have thought like you, prior to starting my biz, and since so doing (a decade now), I've been shocked to realize that the average person is not remotely tech savvy. Of 100+ Word files that I see, in, say, a month, NOT ONE will have used styles or headings, or any of the more-advanced functions in Word. Not ONE. Most of my clients don't know what "downloading" actually means, or how to do it--they think it's clicking a Word file or jpeg, in an email. Most don't know where their "downloads" folder is, and on and on and on. Our publisher clients--businesses, some of whom you've heard of--don't, either.

You guys assume and project. You assume and project that the "average person" will do this or that. That they know what you do, or half of what you do, etc. I'm here to tell you that the "average person" doesn't. Most Amazon users don't know how to SIDELOAD their eBooks. (Think I'm lying? Ask bloody Amazon if I am.) You think those folks will even GOOGLE removing DRM, to "format shift?" I think not. Most couldn't care LESS about format shifting.

Again, in my clientele--lawyers, doctors, philosophers, publishers, Ph.D.s (recent, too), and so on. Yet, I can say with authority that if they ran into the wee brick wall you mention below, Darryl, they'd simply stop. How do I know that? Because I see, repeatedly, what they do, trying to follow our fairly simple instructions just to download and open their ebooks. You think folks that struggle with that, are going to go looking for Apprentice Alf? And follow his not-exactly-step-by-step instructions? Lotsaluck with that.

To take your example, let's say that someone tries to copy an Adobe epub protected book onto the computer of one of their friends or family members, only to find to their astonishment that the copy won't work. How many truly just give up, or even think about it and decide they shouldn't be doing it? Yes, there are certainly some. But are there enough to justify the cost to themselves and the detriments to their customers? It is in some ways like putting a low fence around a property. It makes people aware by its mere existence that they should not be entering the property without authorisation, but denies the possibility of physical unauthorised entry only to those few physically incapable of climbing it. I don't know if we really have the information or statistics to come to a definitive answer.

See what I've said, above. I neither recommend or recommend against DRM. I do what my clients say. It's not my job to discuss DRM with them, above "yes/no." I have precisely zero interest in participating in this conversation for the nine-millionth-time, because nobody ever changes their mind, and just because a mere handful of "cool kid" authors decided that THEIR wallets can withstand the pilfering, does NOT mean that the vast bulk of content creators, in all fields, think that DRM is a waste of time, or that they want to, from their perspective, enable thievery. I'm most certainly NOT going to lecture some author to not use DRM.

It's THEIR work, their book--it's not mine. And it's not anyone else's, inconvenient or not. I have NO right to tell them what to do, or counsel them to go one way or the other. And neither does anyone else. I would consider it shockingly presumptuous for me to think that it's appropriate for me to tell an author that they should or must do this or that, with their own property.

'nuff said.

Hitch