July AUTHOR EARNINGS report brings focus on DRM

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by crossi

That seems very strange to me. Up until I got an ereader I'd never lived without multiple overflowing bookcases and boxes of books stacked in corners and under beds. From threads here it seems that that is a common reason why people got ereaders. Unless you reread them there is no point in keeping a read book instead of just tossing it afterwards. If people don't reread what's the point of having your own library as so many here have said they have? I have books I've been rereading since grade school like Burnett's "A Little Princess" and "The Secret Garden". In fact any book that I don't want to reread I consider a wasted purchase. Before my ereader I had 4 bookcases and 29 boxes of "keepers" and I only had that few because I didn't have room for more and had to cull my less favorites.

Yeah, me too--I like to own books and I reread them, and even if I never actually reread them, I like to know I can if I want to. And I imagine the majority of the folks here have a similar mindset. But I think that in the general population, we're a tiny minority. I think most people just buy a handful of books every year and never care about going back to them, so losing access because of DRM isn't much of an issue for them.

[SteveEisenberg]

This recent study is relevant:

The Effect of Piracy Protection in Book Publishing

The study won't convince anybody here concerning DRM because the piracy protection mechanism it studies is issuance of takedown notices.

Also, there were too few titles in the experiment to say much about subgroups. You can interpret it to say that piracy harms bestseller sales while benefiting authors with low sales. However, the evidence that it benefits low sales authors is of questionable statistical significance.

The study does prove that book takedown notices reduce piracy and, overall, increase book sales.

[crossi]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Yeah, me too--I like to own books and I reread them, and even if I never actually reread them, I like to know I can if I want to. And I imagine the majority of the folks here have a similar mindset. But I think that in the general population, we're a tiny minority. I think most people just buy a handful of books every year and never care about going back to them, so losing access because of DRM isn't much of an issue for them.

If you only buy a handful of books a year an ereader seems kind of pointless. Like someone who only goes to one game a year buying a season ticket. Of cousre they are much cheaper than they were at first, but still.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by crossi

If you only buy a handful of books a year an ereader seems kind of pointless. Like someone who only goes to one game a year buying a season ticket. Of cousre they are much cheaper than they were at first, but still.

Not really. Some people just like gadgets. Plus an e-reader means no books accumulating around the house that they need to get rid of.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Not really. Some people just like gadgets. Plus an e-reader means no books accumulating around the house that they need to get rid of.

Some people only buy a hand full of books for specific events, i.e. going to the beach (i.e. summer beach books), or going on a trip. Getting an ereader makes perfect sense for them. You also have to keep in mind that many people read on tablets now, so that ereader serves other purposes.

[Difflugia]

I think there are more tech-savvy readers than people seem to estimate, at least as relates to e-reading. The technical bar to running Calibre isn't particularly high and I would bet that the number of people using it would be enough to affect sales. I just checked the stats for Moon+ Reader for Android and Google says that more than 100,000 people have installed it (the free version has over 10,000,000 installs, but I'm hesitant to guess how many of those actually use it). While those people could use Calibre to remove the DRM, I've seen a number of people here at MobileRead say that (for whatever reason) they won't remove DRM even though they know that they can.

I'm betting that the simplest reason for the numbers is that books without DRM see more demand relative to books with DRM.

[jgaiser]

Originally Posted by Difflugia

I think there are more tech-savvy readers than people seem to estimate, at least as relates to e-reading. The technical bar to running Calibre isn't particularly high and I would bet that the number of people using it would be enough to affect sales.

I spend a bit of time on reddit.com in /r/books sub and calibre is well thought of there and there's lots of pointers to Apprentice Alf. I acknowledge that most ebook users (something greater that 50%) don't really care about DRM, but do agree that the number of tech-savvy users is probably greater than we mobileread users encounter day-to-day.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by crossi

If you are comparing two books, one with DRM and one without, better sales for the non-DRM'd book would not tell you if the better sales were due to the lack of DRM, a better book, more publicity or other cause. Comparing 120,000 books whose only difference is the presence or lack of DRM the other variables tend to average out. Maybe all the non-DRM'd books all had something else in common that none of the DRM'd books did that was increasing their sales but that seems unlikely. In any case have you heard of any individual choosing not to buy a book because it didn't have DRM? I have heard of the opposite case.

I have to agree with this. Most readers I interact with (mobilereaders nonwithstanding) don't even know DRM exists. This makes no sense to me at all. I'd have to believe that the non-drm'd books had something else in common. Not that it matters as it doesn't change my stance on the topic, but it makes me a bit more suspicious of the entire report.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by crossi

If you only buy a handful of books a year an ereader seems kind of pointless. Like someone who only goes to one game a year buying a season ticket. Of cousre they are much cheaper than they were at first, but still.

So, portability, ease of carrying multiple, possibly large books at once, ease of reading with one hand, no page flipping by the breeze ot the spine, search, font size adjustability, and built in illumination are all kind of pointless?

[BearMountainBooks]

I've sold books both with and without DRM--for YEARS at a time both directions. I've never noticed a difference in sales and in 7 or 8 years of selling books, I have had ONE person write me and say, "Did you know this story has DRM on it?" Yes, I knew. I sell non-drm'd versions of many of my books from my blog. I thought that would mean that mostly fans who would be protective of my work would buy from there. Turns out at least one of them happily mailed the file to a friend and thought nothing of it. I know this because I received the nicest email from the person who got the file telling me what a wonderful book it was and how her friend had mailed it to her...

Had the original purchaser bought on Amazon, DRM or not, she would have had a more difficult time figuring out how to mail the file. But the thing is, when a file is easily mailed or "given" away, there is a certain percentage of the population that thinks nothing of giving that file away if it is easy. They not only don't know about DRM, they don't even care that it exists. They certainly aren't buying based on whether a file contains it or not.

If readers really don't buy a file simply because it has DRM on it, well the publishers would go out of business because according to the article 100 percent of them use it (minus tor? and Baen?) Or is this article trying to say that there's a double standard? It's okay for large publishers to force DRM on the public, but they are going to sort and punish indies who use DRM?

Really? That implies there are a HUGE number of readers who are parsing what to read based on DRM and based on whether the book is indie ... and that seems to be a pretty large stretch to me.

I am quite sure a large number of readers are technically savvy. I'm equally certain a large number aren't. And while I can believe a small subset of either of those groups might base their purchase on DRM, the color of a book cover, the number of pages, etc I find the correlation in the report entirely lacking.

[Kumabjorn]

Obviously everyone has different standards and different experiences but if I should judge the publics Tech savvines as defined by friends and family who request Tech support for their phones, computers, tablets, and readers, then the verdict is in. They are all idiots. And I mean this in the friendliest way possible. There is no way these people know about DRM or how to do anything about it.

[crossi]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

So, portability, ease of carrying multiple, possibly large books at once, ease of reading with one hand, no page flipping by the breeze ot the spine, search, font size adjustability, and built in illumination are all kind of pointless?

Not at all pointless. For heavy readers. The ones who need these things because they carry a book with them everywhere. For those who read maybe 5 book a year, I think that's the national average, and likely only read for a few minutes a few times a week most likely at home, the expense of an ereader seems unnecessary. For those people reading is simply not a high priority. It's appalling but a large number of people in the US don't read ANY books.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Me too.
However, I have a cousin who buys books, reads them, and flipps them to the local used book shop and a friend who would buy hardcovers, read them, and donate them to the local library. One reason he loves his kindle is he doesn't have to worry about flipping the books when he's done reading. Both are heavy readers that don't reread.

Takes all kinds.

Your friend could solve his problem by just throwing books away when he is done with them. It would come to the same thing, and be cheaper by the cost of an ereader.

Of course, there is still:

Originally Posted by j.p.s

[...] portability, ease of carrying multiple, possibly large books at once, ease of reading with one hand, no page flipping by the breeze ot the spine, search, font size adjustability, and built in illumination [...]

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by crossi

Not at all pointless. For heavy readers. The ones who need these things because they carry a book with them everywhere. For those who read maybe 5 book a year, I think that's the national average, and likely only read for a few minutes a few times a week most likely at home, the expense of an ereader seems unnecessary. For those people reading is simply not a high priority. It's appalling but a large number of people in the US don't read ANY books.

I only read a few books per year. It usually takes me over a month to read a book. I read 1 to 3 books a week from second grade through high school. That dropped to 1 to 3 books per month in college and grad school. After school, it dropped to less than a book a year, sometimes with years between finishing one book and startiing another. I went from almost always finiishing a book to almost never finishing a book. This went on for decades.

I tried reading on laptops. Didn;t work. Then in 2009 I bought a Kindle 2 and gradually started reading more. But I am still only up to a few books per year. But that is still hundreds percent above what I was doing for many years and has been going on for several years. It is all due to having a decent ereader. I only have a few minutes to read per day, and almost all of them are away from home. Even at home, reading on an e-reader works better for me.

Also, even though savings on e-books below street price is often tiny or negative, the occasional big savings can cover the cost of a reader pretty quickly.

I carry my books everywhere precisely because I don't have much time for reading and don't always know when that time will be.

[Josieb1]

I have a kindle, and Kobo and a Nook. I buy my books from small independent publishers. I am lucky that as I read genre fiction I have loads of direct publishers to buy from, at my last count it was about 16. By choice I will not buy DRM books, only Amazon, Kobo and Nook use DRM in my world. I need every book I buy to be available on ePub and mobi. Most publishers give me both versions, for those that don't I use calibre to convert the version I buy (usually mobi) to the other version.

If I couldn't do that I wouldn't have multiple ereaders and I would buy a fraction of my books. I hate DRM with a passion, it's never good for the reader.