Unlocking the Gates of Alexandria: DRM, Competition and Access to E-Books

[ApK]

Originally Posted by shalym

So Tor Macmillan isn't considered a BPH?

No, Tor is a genre imprint.
Did all of Macmillan ever try going DRM free? For that matter is even Macmillan considered a BHP? I really don't know. Were they among "the big five?"

[conan50]

Originally Posted by ApK

The Bible was originally written with a table of contents??

LOL! Yeah, a stone table of contents :-)

[conan50]

Originally Posted by ApK

No, Tor is a genre imprint.
Did all of Macmillan ever try going DRM free? For that matter is even Macmillan considered a BHP? I really don't know. Were they among "the big five?"

Baen seems to be doing OK without DRM, and though Macmillan owns Tor/Forge, that is a huge chunk of book publishing. https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/pu...r/pub_id/40076
BTW pretty much any and all future ebooks I buy will be Baen, Tor/Forge ebooks. To those of us who this subject matters, we should encourage good behavior in the publishing industry.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by conan50

Baen seems to be doing OK without DRM, and though Macmillan owns Tor/Forge, that is a huge chunk of book publishing. https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/pu...r/pub_id/40076
BTW pretty much any and all future ebooks I buy will be Baen, Tor/Forge ebooks. To those of us who this subject matters, we should encourage good behavior in the publishing industry.

But the book market is not all fantasy and sf.
The most popular books are not put out by those companies.

[conan50]

Originally Posted by ApK

But the book market is not all fantasy and sf.
The most popular books are not put out by those companies.

Right, I forgot the thousands of independent publisher/authors who do not put drm on their ebooks. But you are correct, you can't get everything drm-free. But if a guy is 'allergic' to drm, and I have a growing allergy, you can avoid buying drm ebooks through legal means by borrowing books from the library, using Overdrive, and pick up the occasional print book.
PS-don't forget Forge is DRM free and has westerns and historicals.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by conan50

Right, I forgot the thousands of independent publisher/authors who do not put drm on their ebooks. But you are correct, you can't get everything drm-free. But if a guy is 'allergic' to drm, and I have a growing allergy, you can avoid buying drm ebooks through legal means by borrowing books from the library, using Overdrive, and pick up the occasional print book.
PS-don't forget Forge is DRM free and has westerns and historical.

Who are you trying to convince? If you think you have some sales data that the BPHs lack or are ignoring, post it, by all means.
And another salient point is that most people (not 'most people on mobileread') are NOT DRM-allergic. They could not care less and it doesn't affect them a whit.
If sales actually dropped because of DRM enough that the BPHs had to notice, that would be cool! And unlikely.

[shalym]

Originally Posted by ApK

Who are you trying to convince? If you think you have some sales data that the BPHs lack or are ignoring, post it, by all means.
And another salient point is that most people (not 'most people on mobileread') are NOT DRM-allergic. They could not care less and it doesn't affect them a whit.
If sales actually dropped because of DRM enough that the BPHs had to notice, that would be cool! And unlikely.

Is anyone actually saying that sales have *dropped* because books have DRM? What the articles I linked to said is that removing DRM had no impact on how often the books were pirated. This is the data that I thought you were looking for. So what you're looking for is proof that e-book sales have dropped because the BPH are putting DRM on their books? I'm not sure that data exists.

Shari

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by ApK

Who are you trying to convince? If you think you have some sales data that the BPHs lack or are ignoring, post it, by all means.
And another salient point is that most people (not 'most people on mobileread') are NOT DRM-allergic. They could not care less and it doesn't affect them a whit.
If sales actually dropped because of DRM enough that the BPHs had to notice, that would be cool! And unlikely.

Most people don't have a problem until they discover all ebooks can't be used on all devices. My mother had two Nook devices go bad on her so she bought a Kindle. The first time she borrowed a library book I got a call asking how to read an epub on her Kindle. Luckily this book had a Kindle version available and no waiting list.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by shalym

IlSo what you're looking for is proof that e-book sales have dropped because the BPH are putting DRM on their books? I'm not sure that data exists.

Shari

I'm saying that's probably what it will take to get rid of DRM altogether.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

Most people don't have a problem until they discover all ebooks can't be used on all devices. My mother had two Nook devices go bad on her so she bought a Kindle. The first time she borrowed a library book I got a call asking how to read an epub on her Kindle. Luckily this book had a Kindle version available and no waiting list.

Most people don't have a problem period. You're saying you know a person who was momentarily inconvenienced. I could dig up a case or two as well. I'm saying the media is not abuzz with thousands of folks clamoring about it, demanding refunds, organizing boycotts, filing class action suits, demanding government intervention, or even...heaven forbid...altering their buying habits. None of the things consumers regularly do when things bug them en masse.
I bet we could find more people upset (and confused) that they have to rebuy an app when they switch from or to an iPhone, and I don't think Apple and Google are going to make a single binary compatible OS because of it.

[conan50]

Originally Posted by ApK

Who are you trying to convince? If you think you have some sales data that the BPHs lack or are ignoring, post it, by all means.
And another salient point is that most people (not 'most people on mobileread') are NOT DRM-allergic. They could not care less and it doesn't affect them a whit.
If sales actually dropped because of DRM enough that the BPHs had to notice, that would be cool! And unlikely.

I could ask the same :-) Why are you defending DRM?
Most people are not allergic until they get stung. If B&N drop nook for good tomorrow, millions of people will find themselves without access to their ebooks. This has happened before.
Sales increase because of DRM, and it costs consumers. Have a Kindle? Want to use a Kobo instead? You are out of luck unless either--you rip the DRM from your Kindle books, or you had the foresight and bought Kindle books without DRM. Or you could buy your ebooks all over again.
It is not complicated. No DRM = good for consumers. With DRM = good for publishers, until people stop buying ebooks because they can't access them.

Edit: Right now all the liability for ebooks is on the consumer side. You buy an ebook, if you don't like it, you can't resell it, you can't even give it away. Even without DRM it is not clear that it is legal to give the ebook away. With print books you can do all those things. Ebooks are one of the worst possible investments at this point. Get an ebook and discover you don't like it, you might as well have set fire to a $10 bill.
The publishers need a new paradigm for ebooks. They can begin freeing them of DRM to start with, and they need to create a pathway to resell or at least donate ebooks. Not everyone reads an ebook more than once. And we have all got stuck with promising ebooks that were actually lemons.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by ApK

No, Tor is a genre imprint.
Did all of Macmillan ever try going DRM free?

It looks like they/their parent company may be in the process of doing exactly that, if by "DRM" in this context you mean "digital locks", not watermarking.

http://publishingperspectives.com/20...l-of-the-past/

"The latest to abandon hard DRM is Holtzbrinck, which owns Droemer Knaur, Fischer, Rowohlt and Kiepenheuer & Witsch. Peter Kraus vom Cleff, Managing Director of Rowohlt, said: “Recent experience in Germany and abroad has shown that a digital watermark protects the copyright of our authors just as well as hard DRM. We’re convinced that soft DRM simplifies the use our ebooks for our readers.” "

[ApK]

Originally Posted by meeera

It looks like they/their parent company may be in the process of doing exactly that, if by "DRM" in this context you mean "digital locks", not watermarking.

That would be awesome.

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by conan50

The publishers need a new paradigm for ebooks. They can begin freeing them of DRM to start with, and they need to create a pathway to resell or at least donate ebooks. Not everyone reads an ebook more than once. And we have all got stuck with promising ebooks that were actually lemons.

<Rant>
Either they need a new paradigm or they don't. How come everyone complaining about ebooks always brings up resale, its not a paper book, there are differences just because it is digital, get used to it. What are the resale rights for digital only music/movies/software?

If ebooks and pbooks need to be the same then hand me the paperback I can change and re-size the font on and we will go from there.
</Rant>

DRM is not much of an issue for most people because they never re-read so Nook closing will be less of an issue than you are making out. Also, as near as I can tell, the person on the street thinks they are buying an book for a Kindle/Nook/Kobo, they don't seem to think they will be interchangeable in the same way they approach xBox/PlayStation/PC or VHS/DVD/BluRay. Anything not standard ADE ePub doesn't even call itself an ebook (NookBook, Kindle Book)

DRM only affects the average user when it doesn't work, or they try to give a copy to someone.

We are not average users.

[conan50]

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

<Rant>
Either they need a new paradigm or they don't. How come everyone complaining about ebooks always brings up resale, its not a paper book, there are differences just because it is digital, get used to it. What are the resale rights for digital only music/movies/software?

If ebooks and pbooks need to be the same then hand me the paperback I can change and re-size the font on and we will go from there.
</Rant>

DRM is not much of an issue for most people because they never re-read so Nook closing will be less of an issue than you are making out. Also, as near as I can tell, the person on the street thinks they are buying an book for a Kindle/Nook/Kobo, they don't seem to think they will be interchangeable in the same way they approach xBox/PlayStation/PC or VHS/DVD/BluRay. Anything not standard ADE ePub doesn't even call itself an ebook (NookBook, Kindle Book)

DRM only affects the average user when it doesn't work, or they try to give a copy to someone.

We are not average users.

Resell would not be an issue if they did not charge as much or more for some ebooks from major publishers. It costs them less to produce an ebook, yet they charge as much or more than print books, and you have no options to resell or pass the ebook on to someone else.
BTW you can share digital music. And even digital movies via Ultraviolet. Ebook sharing is limited, if at all, to particular devices.
I completely disagree with you regarding people losing their ebooks being no big deal. If I lose my entire collection of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis ebooks I would raise plenty of ___ about it. Yet if those books were DRM free and I had them all backed up and could read them anywhere, I would lose no sleep over B&N going under.
DRM affects a user anytime there is a possibility of losing access to their ebooks. If their account gets closed or hacked at Amazon or anywhere else and they lose access to their account, or as I mentioned, if someone like B&N goes under, so do their ebooks. That will not happen to your blu-ray movie collection even if Sony bit the dust, because other manufacturers make blu-ray players. It would not even happen to an Ultraviolet digital movie collection, as there are half a dozen companies involved in Ultraviolet. Nor could it ever happen to your digital music collection. Only with DRM ebooks.