DRM Good or Bad?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Gardenman

Without drm any epub book will work on any reader except kindle.

Apple claims their eBooks are ePub. Maybe some are. But some are not and won't work.

B&N's ePub are ePub and so are the others except Apple.

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by Lazer

what would you suggest I do? Where would YOU guys sell a non-fiction forensic ebook? (The best thing I did was the POD on Amazon by the way)

Same place I would sell any other book... EVERYWHERE that will accept it. Amazon + B&N is probably 90-95% of my market, but in my mind the greatest enemy of a indy author in any genre is ANONYMITY. That is no one knows to go looking for them, so the more places they can get listed the better their odds of are being found. Generating name recognition is key. IMO

I use Lulu.com for POD and they sell through Amazon. I have been considering looking in to Create Space (Amazon) but have not had time yet.

[Lazer]

Originally Posted by Belle2Be

Are you published enough to have the luxury of a target audience?

Belle: I'm not sure I'm understanding your question. If you mean I have an audience that "follows" me, absolutely not.

What I can tell you is this: When I go to my market and tell them where they can buy my book, it sells. A few people just stumble upon it while looking for the subject it covers.

[no.guru]

Lazer, I have to agree it's good to see your civil discussion on this topic.

I want to ask you this, however: What would you say to me if I buy one of your books, but I remove the DRM? I remove DRM from all ebooks I purchase. Nothing personal.

I don't distribute your book to anyone else; I buy it for my own use. I strip DRM because I want to keep the book to read again or to refer to later, and I want it to be available to me on any device.

I'm just curious about your reaction.

[Lazer]

Originally Posted by no.guru

Lazer, I have to agree it's good to see your civil discussion on this topic.

I want to ask you this, however: What would you say to me if I buy one of your books, but I remove the DRM? I remove DRM from all ebooks I purchase. Nothing personal.

I don't distribute your book to anyone else; I buy it for my own use. I strip DRM because I want to keep the book to read again or to refer to later, and I want it to be available to me on any device.

I'm just curious about your reaction.

I would have absolutely no problem with it. It's your copy. Move it to Calibre and print it if you want. I just don't want to see my copyright violated and somebody trying to distribute it for free, or worse to sell it for their profit. (not that my works are worth much)

Cold here. Somebody lied about the first day of spring.

[Justin Nemo]

Originally Posted by Gardenman

Without drm any epub book will work on any reader except kindle.

I've got loads of non DRM books on my Kindle.

[DrNefario]

Originally Posted by Lazer

My answer: It's no different than buying music from iTunes.

I'm pretty sure music from iTunes is DRM-free these days... (I don't know for sure because I still buy CDs and rip them myself.)

To be honest, I'm okay with your model. If you want to charge me rental prices for what is effectively a rental, then that's fine with me. Most of the time that's exactly what I do with my Kindle anyway - read the book then delete it.

I do have two ereaders, though, and I like it when I can choose which one I want to use. (And I can't use either to read iBooks. Thanks, Apple.) If nothing else it gives me goodwill towards those publishers that allow me to download both formats (Baen, Poisoned Pen, Book View Cafe, etc), which means I might give them favourable mentions in random forum posts.

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by Lazer

I would have absolutely no problem with it. It's your copy. Move it to Calibre and print it if you want. I just don't want to see my copyright violated and somebody trying to distribute it for free, or worse to sell it for their profit. (not that my works are worth much)

Cold here. Somebody lied about the first day of spring.

Right, so ... ummm how does DRM help with that exactly?

[Muckraker]

I don't put DRM on any of my eBooks.

In my opinion, the digital reader demographic is completely different than the music/movies/games demographic. I honestly don't see piracy of books becoming a major issue for the same reason kids steal CDs and games at Wal-Mart instead of the newest Twilight book.

Also, it has come to the point where paying is quite a bit easier than stealing. A couple years ago I dabbled in file-sharing when my kids wanted to watch a particular movie or my wife wanted some songs for her cheapo mp3 player. It was somewhat easy to find the files and I only got nailed with viruses a handful of times.

My wife recently wanted some songs so I Googled to find the "free" pirated versions. It was a pain in the butt. I got one virus and a number of the songs I downloaded turned out to be some sort of remixes that my wife was not amused by. Fed up, I went to Amazon and clicked the songs I wanted and bang there they were on a cloud drive. I dumped them on my computer to get them on her mp3 player then she put them on her computer from the cloud and put them on her work computer from the cloud as well.

I don't bother looking for "free" stuff anymore. It's not free if I am spending more than five seconds finding it or working around pirating issues. When I see an eBook I want on Amazon I click the Buy button and the hunt is over. If I wanted to pirate it the search would be just beginning.

[anamardoll]

I'm amused at the "Sony Readers are 10%" meme. The last "what was the last eReader you used" poll had Sony briefly win over Kindle before they finally (last I checked) tied.

Granted, that was on MR, where hardcore readers hang out, and the hardcore readers tend to lean towards larger libraries and thus the reader with the most robust library management. However, "heavy users" also buy the most books, so...

Sony Readers are far from dead. I know several people in real life who own their readers.

[ScalyFreak]

Originally Posted by Lazer

No disrespect; you are not my book's market. That's not a problem for either one of us. Even if it wasn't DRM protected you would not be interested in a book about analyzing firearms evidence at a crime scene. Am I wrong? Am I missing a market component here?

What makes so sure that wouldn't interest me, or any other possible buyer who decided to go borrow a library book on the same topic, rather than buy an eBook with DRM?

Originally Posted by Lazer

And about copyright and patent laws? I think it's pretty damn close to being the same issue and DRM (as poor as it is) and copyright are intermixed. Or am I wrong?

They are similar, but the example you used was a poor one. What happened to your father was not piracy. If everyone who bought one of his devices made a replica to give to each of their friends, that would have been piracy. What happened to your father is the equivalent of a NYTimes Best-Seller author stealing your next idea, sell it and make million from it, and never sharing the profits with you. Not even close to the same thing as the "email it to all your friends" that you are so worried about.

Originally Posted by Lazer

I would have absolutely no problem with it. It's your copy. Move it to Calibre and print it if you want. I just don't want to see my copyright violated and somebody trying to distribute it for free

So since you don't care at all what the buyer does with the book, and it's an established fact that DRM does nothing to stop pirates from distributing a book if they want to, why bother with it? To make yourself feel better? And I don't mean that quite as condescendingly as it comes out, you're hardly alone. The music industry, the movie industry, and the PC gaming industry uses DRM for exactly the same reasons. They all know it doesn't work, but it helps them sleep better at night as long as they can try to pretend it does.

Meanwhile, anyone who wants to pirate your books will continue to do so and there is nothing you can do to stop them.

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by ScalyFreak

So since you don't care at all what the buyer does with the book, and it's an established fact that DRM does nothing to stop pirates from distributing a book if they want to, why bother with it? To make yourself feel better? And I don't mean that quite as condescendingly as it comes out, you're hardly alone. The music industry, the movie industry, and the PC gaming industry uses DRM for exactly the same reasons. They all know it doesn't work, but it helps them sleep better at night as long as they can try to pretend it does.

This. It pisses me off so much, as an author, to see an author essentially say: "If you can strip the DRM, good for you. If you can't strip the DRM, then RE-BUY MY BOOK if you ever change eReaders."

Do authors not understand how incredibly narcissistic that makes us sound as a group? There are people on Mobile Read who won't buy from indie authors anymore because they've been burned by DRM or by dreadful formatting that converts badly or by an author removing their book for Kindle exclusivity and the reader losing their copy. And the author response has, in many cases, been to say "Well, send me more money!"

I'm not directing this at anyone in this thread, mind you, this is a general comment, but as an author, it's very painful for me to see authors behave in ways that alienate customers against indies as a whole.

[Justin Nemo]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

Do authors not understand how incredibly narcissistic that makes us sound as a group? There are people on Mobile Read who won't buy from indie authors anymore because they've been burned by DRM or by dreadful formatting that converts badly or by an author removing their book for Kindle exclusivity and the reader losing their copy. And the author response has, in many cases, been to say "Well, send me more money!"

I'm not directing this at anyone in this thread, mind you, this is a general comment, but as an author, it's very painful for me to see authors behave in ways that alienate customers against indies as a whole.

Wasn't it Will Eisner who said “A key to my thinking has always been the almost fanatical belief that what I was engaged in was a literary art form. That belief was compounded out of ego and necessity, I guess, a combination of the two. ”

Isn't egocentrism a prerequisite of being a writer?

The nice thing about egotists is that they don’t talk about other people.

[Lazer]

Originally Posted by ScalyFreak

What makes so sure that wouldn't interest me, or any other possible buyer who decided to go borrow a library book on the same topic, rather than buy an eBook with DRM?



They are similar, but the example you used was a poor one. What happened to your father was not piracy. If everyone who bought one of his devices made a replica to give to each of their friends, that would have been piracy. What happened to your father is the equivalent of a NYTimes Best-Seller author stealing your next idea, sell it and make million from it, and never sharing the profits with you. Not even close to the same thing as the "email it to all your friends" that you are so worried about.



So since you don't care at all what the buyer does with the book, and it's an established fact that DRM does nothing to stop pirates from distributing a book if they want to, why bother with it? To make yourself feel better? And I don't mean that quite as condescendingly as it comes out, you're hardly alone. The music industry, the movie industry, and the PC gaming industry uses DRM for exactly the same reasons. They all know it doesn't work, but it helps them sleep better at night as long as they can try to pretend it does.

Meanwhile, anyone who wants to pirate your books will continue to do so and there is nothing you can do to stop them.

Scaly:

You ask me why I felt you were outside my first book's market. To the best of my knowledge, my market is fairly limited to criminal investigators. Specifically those investigating crimes against wildlife using firearms. Here is what I think I know about you:
-you own a Droid phone
-female and married
-somewhat anti-establishment
-own what I'll call non-mainstream readers
-gamer
-probably into reading fantasy genre–based on your moniker and pic
-you read the news and keep up with what congress is up to and you probably don't get that news from a piece of paper

Nothing on that list tells me you aren't a great person and I'm betting you and your husband would make a good neighbor–so don't be upset with my belief of who you are. There's a also a good possibility that you're smarter than me in a lot of areas. Two bits says you have a college degree and possess a lot of YOUTH! How'd I do?

And thus I don't think you're my market! If I'm wrong, buy the DRM protected thing and read it on your Droid. Heck, strip the DRM off it and read it on one of your other devices. I don't care! Just don't distribute it from there.

I actually still believe that DRM slows piracy–I'm an optimist–optimism can sometime bite you in the but. It means somebody is going to have to buy it. It means somebody is going to have to strip the DRM. Effort is work, even though it's minimal.

I just wish my editor would send me the final polish on book 2 so I could upload it and check the DRM box!

Enjoy your day. Have a good read and I hope I haven't offended you.

TL

[ScalyFreak]

Originally Posted by Lazer

<snippety-snip>And thus I don't think you're my market!

None of what you listed about me (though most if it is correct and things I've said about myself multiple times here on MR) automatically means I wouldn't be interested in your book. Just something to keep in mind going forward, when you try to decide whether someone would want to read what you writ.

Originally Posted by Lazer

If I'm wrong, buy the DRM protected thing and read it on your Droid. Heck, strip the DRM off it and read it on one of your other devices. I don't care! Just don't distribute it from there.

Life is too short to waste time stripping DRM from a book that I would have to convert before I can read it on my preferred reading device anyway. Since you're hardly the only person writing books in this area, that makes it even less worthwhile. I'll just buy someone else's book instead, where I don't have to worry about DRM.

And just so you know, there are people who, after stripping the DRM, put the book up for free on a torrent just because they want to help out everyone else who wants to read the book but doesn't know how to strip DRM. In their minds, they're doing their fellow readers a favor, and helping you reach a wider audience.