Tor, a MacMillan imprint going DRM free

[Blue Tyson]

Originally Posted by ScotiaBurrell

just ebooks?

no other stuff?

dead.

They've always been utterly useless with merchandise. Cool book covers etc - posters, t-shirts? Nope. Same for keyrings, stubbie holders or whatever.

[JSWolf]

MultiFormat at Fictionwise includes ePub.

[BeccaPrice]

I follow the Lois Bujold email list

Lois-Bujold mailing list
Lois-Bujold@lists.herald.co.uk
http://lists.herald.co.uk/cgi-bin/ma...fo/lois-bujold

and she said it there. Captain Vorpatril's Alliance isn't really a Vorkosigan book, it's all about Ivan, but unless her muse strikes her, she did say it would be the last in that universe. (and she'd warned people before Cryoburn that the way it ended would be the next step in Miles' development.)

[Hatgirl]

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

I follow the Lois Bujold email list

Lois-Bujold mailing list
Lois-Bujold@lists.herald.co.uk
http://lists.herald.co.uk/cgi-bin/ma...fo/lois-bujold

and she said it there. Captain Vorpatril's Alliance isn't really a Vorkosigan book, it's all about Ivan, but unless her muse strikes her, she did say it would be the last in that universe. (and she'd warned people before Cryoburn that the way it ended would be the next step in Miles' development.)

I've hunted in the archive, but I can't find her mentioning it there. Do you remember roughly when she said it? Like, this year, last year, early last year...

[BeccaPrice]

It was sometime this year, not long ago, when people were debating what her next project would be after Captain Vorpatril's Alliance. I can ask on list, if you'd like.

[Indio777]

Someone may have touched on this before, but Tor has often been seen as being more "libertarian" (in US sense of that term). If so maybe putting their money where their mouth is?

Whatever, I think it's a good thing.

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer

I doubt "casual sharing" for an ebook is particularly high, probably less than "casual sharing" for a physical book. Any costs associated with casual sharing should be more than made up by: (i) the positive press Tor is generating by making this move (it has been heavily reported); and (ii) the extra revenue generated from people that would have avoided Tor books because of the DRM.

Tor isn't removing DRM out of the goodness of their hearts, they're doing it to make money.

We shall see. IMO, Macmillan is doing this as a trial balloon to see exactly what the effects on the bottom line are before trying DRM free with it's more lucrative imprints.
Color me skeptical that many people are going to buy very many more Tor.com books simply because they go DRM free. Again , among technologists this is a Big Thing but the average reader doesn't know or care that Tor.com books were DRMed.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by stonetools

We shall see. IMO, Macmillan is doing this as a trial balloon to see exactly what the effects on the bottom line are before trying DRM free with it's more lucrative imprints.
Color me skeptical that many people are going to buy very many more Tor.com books simply because they go DRM free. Again , among technologists this is a Big Thing but the average reader doesn't know or care that Tor.com books were DRMed.

If you read Stross' blog entry about this you see that the argument was that the average TOR book buyer buy a lot of books and also notices the disadvantages with DRM. These readers support the mid-list. For the best sellers DRM or not probably does not matter.

[Ninjalawyer]

Originally Posted by stonetools

We shall see. IMO, Macmillan is doing this as a trial balloon to see exactly what the effects on the bottom line are before trying DRM free with it's more lucrative imprints.
Color me skeptical that many people are going to buy very many more Tor.com books simply because they go DRM free. Again , among technologists this is a Big Thing but the average reader doesn't know or care that Tor.com books were DRMed.

Just to add to Tompe's point, Tor also specializes in the science fiction genre, so its reasonable to assume that the average Tor reader is more sensitive to and knowledgeable about DRM than the average reader. So for Tor, their could be an uptick in sales. Certainly a number of people on this site have said they won't buy a book with DRM.

Raising prices wouldn't be without precedent though, iTunes did that when the went DRM free. On the other hand, the game retailer site Good Old Games offers PC games that are DRM free, and doesn't price higher than its competitors for the same games that the competitors offer only with DRM.

For Apple, the real justification for raising prices was that they were offering a more valuable product (music files without the annoying restrictions) so people were willing to pay more. I doubt they did anything but profit from that move, even though "sharing" of music files must be at least as prevalent as sharing of book files.

[JoeD]

Just by keeping prices the same, they'll make slightly more per book sold by avoiding the adobe DRM fees. They're also making sure customers that want to legally buy books will still have a legal means to do so should they ever need to pull out of an otherwise vendor locked-in store.

The first movers going DRM also get the most good PR value from it, which lets face it, publishers are in dire need of at the moment.

[GreenMonkey]

Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer

Just to add to Tompe's point, Tor also specializes in the science fiction genre, so its reasonable to assume that the average Tor reader is more sensitive to and knowledgeable about DRM than the average reader. So for Tor, their could be an uptick in sales. Certainly a number of people on this site have said they won't buy a book with DRM.

Raising prices wouldn't be without precedent though, iTunes did that when the went DRM free. On the other hand, the game retailer site Good Old Games offers PC games that are DRM free, and doesn't price higher than its competitors for the same games that the competitors offer only with DRM.

and GOG is another business that is thriving due to no-DRM sales. Do you really think people want to buy DOS and early Windows games from the 90s and early 2000s and want to deal with DRM? No. In fact, GOG actually removes any DRM on titles sold there (typically stuff to check a certain page on a manual or whatever). They have a loyal fanbase. No one would be buying 10 and 15-yr old PC games if they were DRM'd up. Because I think we already know how ridiculous 10-year old copy protection is.

People want to buy that kind of dated backlist game because they love the title and want to keep it forever...that mentality doesn't work with DRM. I think the same applies to your average voracious sci-fi reader. I think because we trend techie, and we're the ones called on to fix DRM for our friends and families (like recovering a DRM'd itunes library years ago, in my case) so we have a special dislike of it. DRM-free has value to us.

[Ninjalawyer]

Originally Posted by GreenMonkey

People want to buy that kind of dated backlist game because they love the title and want to keep it forever...that mentality doesn't work with DRM. I think the same applies to your average voracious sci-fi reader. I think because we trend techie, and we're the ones called on to fix DRM for our friends and families (like recovering a DRM'd itunes library years ago, in my case) so we have a special dislike of it. DRM-free has value to us.

I'm not disagreeing, but I just want to add that GoG also sells some modern games that are DRM free (e.g. Witcher 2, Botanicula, Legend of Grimrock, etc.).

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer

Raising prices wouldn't be without precedent though, iTunes did that when the went DRM free.

For Apple, the real justification for raising prices was that they were offering a more valuable product (music files without the annoying restrictions) so people were willing to pay more. I doubt they did anything but profit from that move, even though "sharing" of music files must be at least as prevalent as sharing of book files.

What happened with iTunes is that the publishers wanted to increase prices (which they couldn't do without Apple's agreement) and Apple wanted to remove DRM (which they couldn't do without the publisher's agreement). So the compromise was that the publishers allowed DRM to be removed and Apple allowed the publishers to charge 69c, 99c, or $1.29.

Apple had wanted to remove DRM for some time, because it makes things easier for the customer (and of course because it's not Apple's copyrighted music being sold). I suspect that e-book retailers, whether Amazon or B&N, feel about the same about DRM.

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer

Just to add to Tompe's point, Tor also specializes in the science fiction genre, so its reasonable to assume that the average Tor reader is more sensitive to and knowledgeable about DRM than the average reader. So for Tor, their could be an uptick in sales. Certainly a number of people on this site have said they won't buy a book with DRM.

Raising prices wouldn't be without precedent though, iTunes did that when the went DRM free. On the other hand, the game retailer site Good Old Games offers PC games that are DRM free, and doesn't price higher than its competitors for the same games that the competitors offer only with DRM.

For Apple, the real justification for raising prices was that they were offering a more valuable product (music files without the annoying restrictions) so people were willing to pay more. I doubt they did anything but profit from that move, even though "sharing" of music files must be at least as prevalent as sharing of book files.

So the likelihood is that prices willl stay the same or rise. As to whether there will be significant losses from casual sharing, the purpose of this experiment is to generate data on this issue. There will be solid results in a year or so. If there are no significant losses, I will change my mind on the issue and switch to urging publishers to abandon DRM.
If there are significant losses, well, I don't expect the anti DRMIsts to change their minds, rather their arguments will change.
Its worth noting that Charles Stross agrees that going DRM free won't add to publisher revenues. At best, he hopes that revenues won't go down.

[John F]

Originally Posted by stonetools

So the likelihood is that prices willl stay the same or rise. As to whether there will be significant losses from casual sharing, the purpose of this experiment is to generate data on this issue. There will be solid results in a year or so. If there are no significant losses, I will change my mind on the issue and switch to urging publishers to abandon DRM.
If there are significant losses, well, I don't expect the anti DRMIsts to change their minds, rather their arguments will change.
Its worth noting that Charles Stross agrees that going DRM free won't add to publisher revenues. At best, he hopes that revenues won't go down.

Could you be a little more specific, please? Not that we don't trust you to keep your word, but it could avoid some embarrassing back-peddling.