E-books to outsell print by 2018 says new report

[conan50]

Baen has been doing this for quite awhile. They even offer many free ebooks. If it was a massive fail to get rid of DRM they would have gone out of the business of ebooks.
https://www.baenebooks.com/t-drm.aspx
"Baen has shown that putting up electronic versions of books doesn't cost you sales. It gains you a larger audience for all of your books. As a result, [Baen have] done quite well."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baen_Ebooks

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by meeera

I do expect B&M shops to not spend time and money on useless security measures that inconvenience their customers and drive up prices.

Having to wait in a checkout line far more inconveniences me than DRM.

Now, I have heard of the rare bookstore, perhaps located on an island, which keeps it's doors unlocked and operates in an overnight self-service mode. If it works, I think it's a tribute to the people of that island, rather than to the bookstore.

Going back to the Tor situation, Tor is an imprint -- a brand name -- of big five publisher Macmillan.

People who like science fiction and fantasy might be induced to look more favorably on a book just because it is Tor-branded. In that sense, being DRM-free probably helps give people a good feeling about that brand, and helps with sales.

Contrast Tor with another Macmillan imprint, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Because the content of Farrar, Straus and Giroux is so miscellaneous, no one is going to be influenced to read a book because it is from that imprint. So it makes sense to give Farrar, Straus and Giroux books the moderate protection which comes with DRM, even at the price of alienating an extremely tiny group of people who have brand awareness when reading a Farrar, Straus and Giroux title.

Or it could be that you Tor readers are just better people than Farrar, Straus and Giroux readers like yours truly. I have no evidence at all otherwise. But whatever the reasons , Macmillan is making a business decision, not a moral one, when it comes to which imprints will get DRM.

It's in our interests as readers that they make the right business decisions so they can have as strong an infrastructure as possible to produce the books we like best.

[eschwartz]

Tor may not (or may ) be gaining sales, but they are definitely making more profit now they don't have to pay the Adobe tax.

[conan50]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

And then their are the pirates. Jim Butcher had a study done that found there were 10 of his books pirated for every one sold. Even if only 1 in 10 people actually read the book and would have bought or borrowed it legitimately he is probably out a million or so.




.

Helen

I would tell Jim Butcher to go DRM free, lower the prices of his ebooks, and thank God anyone even wants to read his badly written books enough to steal them :-) I generally like that type of book but couldn't get through the first few pages of one of his badly written novels.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by conan50

I would tell Jim Butcher to go DRM free, lower the prices of his ebooks, and thank God anyone even wants to read his badly written books enough to steal them :-) I generally like that type of book but couldn't get through the first few pages of one of his badly written novels.

A similar complaint will be made by someone, about anything. No one likes everything, and there is nothing that everyone likes. Your personal tastes are not a reflection on any author's quality, much though you might wish you were the ultimate authority on quality books.

[conan50]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

A similar complaint will be made by someone, about anything. No one likes everything, and there is nothing that everyone likes. Your personal tastes are not a reflection on any author's quality, much though you might wish you were the ultimate authority on quality books.

Wow, taking things personal a bit much? ;-)
You were assuming in your quote about his lost sales that those multitude of stolen Butcher books were taken by people who would have actually bought the books instead--which I doubt. I think he is whining about lost sales he may never have gotten anyway. My comments are about him and the application of DRM :-)

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Tor may not (or may ) be gaining sales, but they are definitely making more profit now they don't have to pay the Adobe tax.

How much? Is this overall profit from increased sales or just saving the DRM fee? According to HarryT they (Tor) do have DRM on library books. I am pretty sure they could go another way than Overdrive, but choose not to. Perhaps I am wrong.

I am reasonably sure that Tor has not become substantially more successful financially since removing DRM or their parent company and its many imprints would be gradually switching over by now. This is just an opinion though.

I am not against DRM removal, just don't see it as my right to demand it. It doesn't cause me a major inconvenience or to any of the many ebook buyers, borrowers I know. Most are unaware and just buy a kindle/kobo book dependant on their device/app. Not saying it doesn't cause you inconvenience of course and if so I sympathise.

I am interested in the topic and would be grateful for a link or two saying how much more profit Tor is making by saving the Adobe Fee. Are most of their purchaser using epub? Do they make an equivalent amount by not using Amazon DRM?

Thanks in advance for the info.

Helen

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by conan50

I would tell Jim Butcher to go DRM free, lower the prices of his ebooks, and thank God anyone even wants to read his badly written books enough to steal them :-) I generally like that type of book but couldn't get through the first few pages of one of his badly written novels.

I am not a big Butcher fan but I find them reasonably written. I haven't noticed a lot of bad grammar or misspellings etc. They are entertaining and don't offend me as they seem to do you. In what way are they badly written compared to other books of this type? And if they are badly written why would lowering the price help.

Helen

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

I am interested in the topic and would be grateful for a link or two saying how much more profit Tor is making by saving the Adobe Fee.

Based on what I hope was adequate googling, their parent firm, the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, seems to be privately held. I can't find any financial results for the company as a whole, or its individual parts.

If Macmillan is like other big publishers, their profitability varies from year to year -- not because of their percentage of titles DRM'd, but because of whether they had an ultra-mega-bestseller that year.

[TCSimpson]

Kind of hard to quantify piracy by saying IF only 1 in 10 bought the book that pirated it, you would make a million more bucks. That's like saying if one in every 10000 that passed by a bookstore stopped to buy a book, then print books would be selling x amount. There's no data that can be provided to prove that any person who pirated would have bought the book. You could just as well offer the argument that because a book was pirated that now that author might have a chance of garnering new readers thus earning him revenue he wouldn't have had before: another thing that there is no data to support.

We can all agree that DRM does not prevent piracy. What it does is frustrate a paying reader who wants to read his book across his multiple devices, although apps help to resolve this issue. Imagine buying your favorite BluRay only to find that you need to buy a new copy for each player in your home. That's what DRM feels like to me.

As for the OP, just like there was a gradual take over in music, so shall it be in books. The physical book will not completely go away, but by and large the digital version will dominate due to ease of access as technology grows. How soon? No one truly knows, all they can do is try to predict.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

Based on what I hope was adequate googling, their parent firm, the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, seems to be privately held. I can't find any financial results for the company as a whole, or its individual parts.

If Macmillan is like other big publishers, their profitability varies from year to year -- not because of their percentage of titles DRM'd, but because of whether they had an ultra-mega-bestseller that year.

Holtzbrinck lists some figures for 2011 and 2012 on their website in English. Select "More" under Facts.

http://www.holtzbrinck.com/

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by TCSimpson

We can all agree that DRM does not prevent piracy.

No, we can't.

I suspect that if it even delays by 30 minutes how long it took a book to get onto a pirate site, it prevented a little piracy. Then when there is a takedown notice, it might delay the book's return by a few minutes. And if the pirated book is found a dozen illicit places on the internet without DRM, maybe, with, it's only ten.

This isn't much, but, hey, if it's dinner for a low to midlist author, I'm for it.

Also, while the effect on full-bore piracy is probably too low to measure, the effect on other terms of service violations could be more dramatic. This sounds about right to me:

http://www.idealog.com/blog/drm-may-...protect-sales/

. . . DRM prevents “casual sharing” (it sure stops me; and I think most people are more like me than they are like my friends who break DRM for sport) and I believe — based on faith, not on data — that enabling casual sharing would do real damage to ebook sales with the greatest damage to the biggest books.

[TCSimpson]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

No, we can't.

I suspect that if it even delays by 30 minutes how long it took a book to get onto a pirate site, it prevented a little piracy. Then when there is a takedown notice, it might delay the book's return by a few minutes. And if the pirated book is found a dozen illicit places on the internet without DRM, maybe, with, it's only ten.

This isn't much, but, hey, if it's dinner for a low to midlist author, I'm for it.

Also, while the effect on full-bore piracy is probably too low to measure, the effect on other terms of service violations could be more dramatic. This sounds about right to me:

http://www.idealog.com/blog/drm-may-...protect-sales/

If DRM prevented piracy, there would be no piracy of ebooks. Delaying does not equal prevention. When it comes to piracy I fall on the side of authors like Neil Gaiman and Paul Coelho
Neil Gaiman on Piracy
"Everyone who discovered your favorite author by being lent a book, put up your hands, and everyone who discovered their favorite author by walking in a bookstore and buying a book, raise your hands." (He found that maybe 5% of the people discovered their favorite author by going in the store and buying the book. By and large, the majority did not buy the book, they were lent it, THEN went on to continue to support that author.)
"You're not losing sales by having stuff out there. It's people lending books, and you can't look on that as a lost sale. It's not a lost sale. Nobody who would have bought your books is not buying because they can find it for free. What you're actually doing is advertising. You're reaching more people, you're raising awareness."

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by TCSimpson

Kind of hard to quantify piracy by saying IF only 1 in 10 bought the book that pirated it, you would make a million more bucks. That's like saying if one in every 10000 that passed by a bookstore stopped to buy a book, then print books would be selling x amount. There's no data that can be provided to prove that any person who pirated would have bought the book. You could just as well offer the argument that because a book was pirated that now that author might have a chance of garnering new readers thus earning him revenue he wouldn't have had before: another thing that there is no data to support.

We can all agree that DRM does not prevent piracy. What it does is frustrate a paying reader who wants to read his book across his multiple devices, although apps help to resolve this issue. Imagine buying your favorite BluRay only to find that you need to buy a new copy for each player in your home. That's what DRM feels like to me.

As for the OP, just like there was a gradual take over in music, so shall it be in books. The physical book will not completely go away, but by and large the digital version will dominate due to ease of access as technology grows. How soon? No one truly knows, all they can do is try to predict.

I do think DRM does prevent unintentional piracy. The person who gives a copy to a friend or two who then passes it along to a friend or two so soon their are many people who have a copy whether they want it or not. I agree it does not thwart the intentional pirate, who would probably not have bought the book anyway.

Pretty sure there won't be a gradual takeover in ebooks as with music, and it actually seemed pretty sudden to me with music, unless publishers are prepared to sell their books for a buck apiece and where would that eave the royalties paid to authors? Still I could be wrong and they will all go crazy tomorrow and sell ebooks for a nickel a pop. Then you can say I told you so.

But why? as fjtorres pointed out different demographics with ebooks than music. The majority of book buyers reads one or two a month and are adults able to and comfortable with paying the same prices for paper books. In fact many are happy to pay extra for the convenience. And some people take extra pride in reading a book that they don't find in listening to a song. And music as such has a long tradition of being free simply by turning on the radio. Many of us spent our allowances on records, tapes, CDs and DVDs but we also listened to long hours of broadcast music. Books you had to buy or borrow. I don't even know of an audiobook broadcasting station, do you?

And perhaps you think that books are written as fast as a pop music song? Perhaps they are but I don't think so. Not that I know of course, but doesn't seem likely.

I have no liking for DRM but I see the publishers reason for using it, and I definitely support their right to use it just as I support my right to try and keep my property safe.

These are business people with all kinds of ways to determine if DRM or lack of it would make them more money, and it is their right to want to make more money, just as it is mine.

Pretty sure they have spent time and money on studies to determine whether the music model of selling would be to their advantage.

Although they are capable of stupidity or miscalculated risks I don't think they are the stupid simple souls you take them for.

Helen

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by meeera

I do expect B&M shops to not spend time and money on useless security measures that inconvenience their customers and drive up prices. Yes, they should lock their doors. No, they should not insist that everyone who enters their shop should buy a lollipop and twirl an orange ribbon around their head while travelling through the shop. DRM is more like the latter than the former.

Pictures please of the lollipop buying orange ribbon twirling. I missed the event dammit

Helen