People who want no DRM are impractical dreamers...

[toddos]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Well, they could just not write or publish books anymore, which means that we'll be just reduced to reading each other's comments.

I think everyone who likes to read lots of good books has a vested interst in a flourishinbg book business

I think you've missed the point. Authors will continue to write books whether or not the publishing industry pays the guy who operates the printing press. In an ebook world, that guy is no longer necessary and it is not incumbent upon me as the consumer of ebooks to ensure that he can feed his family in his chosen career path that is now obsolete. Taken to the extreme, the entire "publishing industry" essentially goes away, replaced by authors working directly with distribution pipelines (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc). When the author can directly publish his book to the Kindle store, what need is there for Random House?

There are a ton of people who will lose their jobs if that happens. None of them will be authors, though. As a reader, my only concern is whether or not my favorite author continues to make books available in a way that I can purchase them. If he no longer needs the entire publishing industry apparatus to do that, it's not my problem that a bunch of people no longer have a job.

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by kennyc

No need to be an ass.

"Puts on high school persona".
Hey, she started it. " High school persona off ."


But I guess she has the favored position around here, and I don't. I can handle it.

[Freeshadow]

@stonetools IMO queentess gave you a serious and detailed answer
it was "vote with your wallet" in detail showing you how a positive vote should look like.

@kenny
maybe he has a personal need to be - we can never know...

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Well you did answer. But I was looking for "serious, detailed answer".

Songs sold by iTunes Music Store:

Can you spot when the iTunes Music Store went DRM-free?

No, it wasn't in 2008 after selling 5 billion songs. It was at the start of 2009, after selling 6 billion songs. Note that sales speeded up when they went DRM free after slowing a bit.

Make ebooks easy to buy and use, and most people will buy them in preference to making the effort to share them around.

[stonetools]

Authors will continue to write books whether or not the publishing industry pays the guy who operates the printing press.

But they won't continue to write and publish books if THEY don't get paid. I love me some Joe Abercrombie. But he doesn't HAVE to write books. He just can go back to writing screenplays if he can't make a living writing novels.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Can we assure that writers and publishers can make a good living in a post DRM world?

What makes you think they won't?

[stonetools]

Make ebooks easy to buy and use, and most people will buy them in preference to making the effort to share them around.

Is the music business the same as the ebook business? Frankly, I don't know . I'd like to have lots more discussion on that. I do not that the music business has gone down a lot in revenue over the past decade, ITunes notwithstanding. I would not use the music business as an example of success in going DRM free.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Because the copying or property is easier when it is digital.

Not everyone had/has a copy machine that can easily copy books, but everyone has a copy machine that can copy files.

But everyone did have access to second hand book shops and libraries, yet writers were still able to make money. How is that possible?

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

What makes you think they won't?

WEll, THEY think they won't. Then there is the cautionary example of the music business.

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

But everyone did have access to second hand book shops and libraries, yet writers were still able to make money. How is that possible?

WE're going in circles here. Read the above post on casual sharing. Thanks

[toddos]

Originally Posted by stonetools

But they won't continue to write and publish books if THEY don't get paid. I love me some Joe Abercrombie. But he doesn't HAVE to write books. He just can go back to publishing screenplays if he can't make a living writing novels.

Who said the author wasn't getting paid?

The publishing industry == all of the crap that traditional paper publishing requires. Big publishing houses that can afford to pay for large print runs up front and thus are unwilling to take a chance on an unknown. They negotiate all of the steps necessary to take an author's manuscript and turn it into a finished, paper copy that you can hold in your hand.

The ebook industry does away with a lot of that. Not all of it, sure, but a lot. Copy editors and marketing will still be required. New jobs will be available for typesetting ebooks rather than typesetting for printing presses. But there's no printing press to run, no up-front cash layout required to generate inventory to sell, no warehouse required to store the books, no shipping costs to get the books out to book stores, no brick and mortar book stores to sell these books to the end user.

The publishing industry is still stuck in the paper mindset. They price ebooks like paperbooks event though they cost a fraction of the cost of a paper book to make. They then try to protect this by using DRM, and they have an old fashioned idea of having to "make up" lost revenue, as if anything were lost.

Here's an idea -- when most (or all) of the middlemen are cut out, the author can sell his books at a lower price while making just as much or more in royalties per sale (because all of those middlemen are now gone). The author makes more money and is thus incentivized to write more books even as the "publishing industry" is collapsing. And it's perfectly okay for that publishing industry to collapse, because it's based on an outdated business model that no longer applies to ebooks.

That's not to say that all publishers will go away. There's definitely value in having some amount of middlemen, whether it's because an author doesn't want to do all of the legwork himself, or to provide turnkey copy editing and typesetting services, or to convert the book into all of the various different formats and submit it to the various different ebook stores for sale, or whatever. Those publishers will thrive, because they evolved their business model and are not trying to hold on to an outdated model that they somehow feel they're entitled to.

You assume that DRM-free == piracy == authors not getting paid, which has been disproven for years by the music industry.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by stonetools

WEll, THEY think they won't. Then there is the cautionary example of the music business.

Who are "THEY"? I could name plenty of writers who are making a decent living selling ebooks without any DRM.

[toddos]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Is the music business the same as the ebook business? Frankly, I don't know . I'd like to have lots more discussion on that. I do not that the music business has gone down a lot in revenue over the past decade, ITunes notwithstanding. I would not use the music business as an example of success in going DRM free.

Revenue in the music industry has gone down for whom? Are the artists being paid less? Or are middle-managers at EMI and other labels struggling to afford their hooker and blow costs because the fundamental shift in how music is sold has made them obsolete? I'm guessing it's the latter.

When it comes to music (and books, and movies, and any other art form), exactly two groups of people matter -- the artist(s) and the consumers. Digital media has closed the gap between those two, much to the consternation of middlemen everywhere.

Stonetools, do you happen to work in the publishing industry, perhaps in an area that is fast becoming obsolete, like managing print runs?

[MartinC]

Originally Posted by toddos

Taken to the extreme, the entire "publishing industry" essentially goes away, replaced by authors working directly with distribution pipelines (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc). When the author can directly publish his book to the Kindle store, what need is there for Random House?

Traditional publishers have another function besides making their shareholders rich. When a publisher (I mean of course a "real" one) offers you a contract he is saying I value your work enough to invest in it. This objective confirmation of the quality of your work is entirely missing from the self-publishing model. Something of the sort is very necessary, and it's hard to see where it's going to come from if you puiblish directly.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Is the music business the same as the ebook business? Frankly, I don't know . I'd like to have lots more discussion on that. I do not that the music business has gone down a lot in revenue over the past decade, ITunes notwithstanding. I would not use the music business as an example of success in going DRM free.

We are not discussing whether ebooks in general are good or bad for the publishing industry. That's irrelevant. Ebooks are going to become the dominant form of book no matter what the publishing industry does.

We are discussing whether having DRM on ebooks will be better or worse for the publishing industry. In other words, will having DRM on ebooks cause more ebooks to be sold or fewer ebooks to be sold.

In this context, looking at electronic music sales is very relevant. Not overall music sales, or how the music industry as a whole is coping, but just electronic music sales.

We have some good data for this. We have figures from the dominant electronic music retailer for the past eight years. For six of those years, they sold only DRMed music. For the past two years, they've sold only DRM free music.

If the DRM on the music files increased sales, and removing DRM from the music files reduced sales, we'd expect to see this in the chart. I don't say we'd expect to see a drop in sales, because electronic music sales are still at an early stage of growth. But we'd expect to see some effect.

The only obvious check in the growth is actually in the year before iTunes went DRM-free. This is the year that the DRM music in the iTunes Music store was competing against the DRM-free music from Amazon.

I think it's clear that the figures show that removing DRM from the music in the iTunes Music Store did not adversely affect music sales.

I don't see any reason that selling ebooks without DRM would have any negative effect on sales of ebooks either.

I have now provided a detailed explanation, with verifiable data, for why I don't think that selling ebooks without DRM will harm publishers or authors.

Please explain why you persist in your belief that DRM is essential.