Tired of ebook pricing

[woe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Apple's "Fairplay" DRM actually was cracked. Google for more info.

iBooks DRM was cracked for a time a few years ago, but the crack was not kept up-to-date and the project is now dead. There is no working FairPlay crack for recent versions of iTunes.

Apple's DRM is, if you will, the 'best' in the business, because Apple have always been the DRM vendor that works most actively to counter cracks. When FairPlay gets cracked Apple change the encryption method in the next version of iTunes and the crackers have to reverse-engineer the system all over again. Eventually Apple removes support for the old version of iTunes and cracks that rely on that version cease to work.

Ten years ago there was a lot of work on cracking FairPlay, but that mostly evaporated when they stopped putting DRM on iTunes music five years ago. One skilled cracker did carry on maintaining his crack for DRMed videos and, later, briefly, iBooks, but he too finally got tired of the game and gave up.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by JohnRR

Don't forget that Amazon is charging US$2 more for many books internationally. International customers are paying more. I always use a proxy server to check the US price before I buy. It is crazy for me to pay $4.99 when the book is only $2.99 in the US site.

I also thought about commenting this with "it is crazy to pay $2.99 when you can get it for free".

I mean when you are starting to break the rules by buying the book from sellers that are not allowed to sell to you then why not just download the book and not pay anything?

And what about the $2 dollar the author loose when you break the rules?

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by tompe

I also thought about commenting this with "it is crazy to pay $2.99 when you can get it for free".

I mean when you are starting to break the rules by buying the book from sellers that are not allowed to sell to you then why not just download the book and not pay anything?

And what about the $2 dollar the author loose when you break the rules?

What about the $2 the author loses every time one of those thieves in cheap countries buys the book in a country where the price is naturally lower? Oh, right...

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by tompe

And what about the $2 dollar the author loose when you break the rules?

And why should Mr. X in the USA pay $4.99 for the exact same file that would cost me $6.99?

Diesel sells some Forgotten Realms books that only cost $3.48 there. They won't sell them to me. Those same books will cost me $9.61 at Amazon.com. Strangely enough, Feedbooks.com often WILL sell those books to me, for the price of $4.49. That's not $9.61, but it's still more than $3.48.

Who is losing now? Am I paying too much, or too little? It cannot be determined.

[Yapyap]

Originally Posted by tompe

And what about the $2 dollar the author loose when you break the rules?

I'm reasonably sure that Amazon $2 surcharge does not go to the author. Self-published authors certainly used to be very surprised about that addition - they had no idea; they were not the people adding it and they were not the people that surcharge reached.

I think the most common theory (as Amazon has never, to my knowledge, explained the actual reasons for it) is, or at least used to be, that the surcharge is added to Kindle books bought in the, um, non-essential markets in order to subsidise the "free" worldwide 3G that Amazon offers for book downloads.

If this is true, then if you want to make any argument here at all, argue that Amazon is losing money on all those evil people who skip the surcharge - but even that only applies, even vaguely, if those people in those countries use the "free" Kindle 3G to download their purchases. Lots of us don't even own a 3G-capable Kindle and use our own WiFi to download, so that shouldn't incur any extra costs to Amazon.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by woe

Apple's DRM is, if you will, the 'best' in the business, because Apple have always been the DRM vendor that works most actively to counter cracks.

I like it that you put 'best' in quotes - because the result, as we see here, is a whole lot of people swearing to never buy iBooks.

[Marcy]

Originally Posted by meeera

I like it that you put 'best' in quotes - because the result, as we see here, is a whole lot of people swearing to never buy iBooks.

Yes, this. My only iBooks are freebies and it will stay that way until I can actually own my books. Apple's DRM is so good it keeps me out of their store.

[PurpleStar]

Originally Posted by Marcy

Yes, this. My only iBooks are freebies and it will stay that way until I can actually own my books. Apple's DRM is so good it keeps me out of their store.

Me too. I buy music from iTunes, but nothing else.

[FinancialWar]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Yes, you could Torrent it. In that case, I hope your company one day decides that your work must be free as well.

Bad analogy. My work is not available not torrent, nor can my work be done by any software on torrent.

Where as ebooks can be easily downloaded from torrent, not that I do as to clarify.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by FinancialWar

Where as ebooks can be easily downloaded from torrent, not that I do as to clarify.

So why do you think that people "must be mad to pay for books"? Why is it "mad" to want to support the hard work of authors? Don't you think that they deserve to be paid, just as you expect to be paid for the work that you do?

[FinancialWar]

I support authors, but unfortunately most of the money you pay for a book, digital or paper, goes to the publisher and their shareholders.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by FinancialWar

I am talking from consumer's perspective, not from author's perspective.

But I think you're missing a point. I'm not a one time consumer, as it doesn't matter the author of the book I'm reading. I pay because I want the author keeps on reading (sorry, I don't buy they must be happy to give their books for free) and I can keep on getting new books.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by FinancialWar

I support authors, but unfortunately most of the money you pay for a book, digital or paper, goes to the publisher and their shareholders.

That still doesn't make it "mad" to pay for books. If nobody paid for books, there wouldn't be very many new books to read.

How do you get your books, if you don't pay for them, and you don't illegally download them?

[FinancialWar]

I legally download books, books without copyright. You know the really old ones from project Gutenberg.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by FinancialWar

I support authors, but unfortunately most of the money you pay for a book, digital or paper, goes to the publisher and their shareholders.

Well, now.
That depends on *which* books you buy.
A lot of books return most of their revenue to the author. Though exactly how many do so on any given day is a bit...contentious...
(And the vast majority of those are sold DRM-free...)