More on DRM and ebooks
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More on DRM and ebooks
1–10 of 24 posts
Re: More on DRM and ebooks
#2Be very interesting to see if this spreads to the rest of Macmillan after a trial period, as well as if the other publishers will react similarly.
No matter what, though, this is a good sign and motivates me to make sure I pick up more Tor books.
Re: More on DRM and ebooks
#3I hope publishers have begun to realize that proprietary DRM only furthers the lock-in of parties like Apple and Amazon, and makes it even harder to resist their bargaining power, because now millions of your customers have huge libraries that only are readable on $COMPANY_DEVICE, therefore they are much more likely to buy that device in the future, and you will be forced to sell through them.
Re: More on DRM and ebooks
#4This will definitely make me buy more Tor books.
I'm one of the "voracious" readers that Charlie mentions and while I really like the Kindle DX hardware, I'm increasingly concerned at being tied into an Amazon ecosystem long term.
Baen, O'Reilly , Pragmatic Programmers and Fictionwise are some of the places I look for new books for my Kindle before Amazon these days, as they have DRM free titles.
Re: More on DRM and ebooks
#5This will definitely make me buy more Tor books. I'm one of the "voracious" readers that Charlie mentions and while I really like the Kindle DX hardware, I'm increasingly concerned at being tied into an Amazon ecosystem long term. Baen, O'Reilly , Pragmatic Programmers and Fictionwise are some of the places I look for new books for my Kindle before Amazon these days, as they have DRM free titles.
I'm one of the "voracious" readers that Charlie mentions and while I really like the Kindle DX hardware, I'm increasingly concerned at being tied into an Amazon ecosystem long term.
I have an atavistic attachment to paper books, [1] but even so, I have a Kindle that I use primarily for Instapaper and, more occasionally, for out-of-copyright books. I'm reluctant to buy DRM'ed books for the same reason you are, and for the same reasons Stross articulates: no one knows what the publishing / reading landscape is going to look like in two years, let alone five, but the paper books I bought when I was 12 still work quite nicely.
[1] http://jseliger.com/2012/02/16/amazon-com-daniel-kahneman-an...
Re: More on DRM and ebooks
#6I figure this is inevitable, since music downloads have largely gone DRM-free as well.
Re: More on DRM and ebooks
#7I've been saying it for a while: the publishing industry right now is where the music industry was ~3 years ago. The cycle is going to be exactly the same. At one point big music figured out that removing DRM let them sell more songs, and they finally dropped it. It looks like publishers are starting to realize the same thing. About time, too--I have an ereader that I like to use but I refuse to buy DRM ebooks on principle, and the selection of unread Gutenberg books is growing rather slim :)
Eventually publishers will also bring down the prices of their books ($10-$15 for an ebook? Really?) and discover that they can bring in even more profit. But that discovery is a year or two down the line still.
Thanks Charlie for giving them an eloquent and firm nudge in the right direction!
Re: More on DRM and ebooks
#8I've been saying it for a while: the publishing industry right now is where the music industry was ~3 years ago. The cycle is going to be exactly the same. At one point big music figured out that removing DRM let them sell more songs, and they finally dropped it. It looks like publishers are starting to realize the same thing. About time, too--I have an ereader that I like to use but I refuse to buy DRM ebooks on pri…
Agreed. I don't have quite the qualms regarding DRM you do (most things I only read once so it's a tad moot), but do despise it and avoid it when possible. When it's gone I'll buy considerably more ebooks.
I was reviewing my epubs/ebooks a while ago to see which had breakable DRM (for one reason or another...). I discovered that of my 30 or so ebooks, only Steven Levy's "Hackers" wasn't DRM'd. Rather ironic, and quite a welcome discovery.
On another note, I've bought two of Charlie's books in electronic format recently... perhaps I should've waited? ;)
Re: More on DRM and ebooks
#9I'm surprised that he doesn't address the effect of DRM on Amazon's infamous $9.99 pricing strategy.
Part of the reason the government went after the publishers and Apple rather than Amazon, even though Amazon has a near-monopoly on ebook sales, is the they tend to believe that predatory pricing is inherently self-limiting, whereas cartels directly and immediately harm consumers. No one in the physical book retailing world would mark every hardcover in their store down to $9.99. Sure, it would drive a lot of customers into the store, but there would be no lasting value. Eventually they would be forced to raise prices and customers would go elsewhere.
Amazon is only interested in selling ebooks at a loss because it establishes a Kindle monopoly. Kindle can only have a monopoly because DRM represents a huge barrier to entry. When they eventually raise retail prices to a sustainable level, DRM ensures that anyone with an existing Kindle library won't be as price-sensitive as someone who can easily decamp to a competing platform. If the publishers drop DRM now they remove the incentive for Amazon to engage in predatory pricing.
Re: More on DRM and ebooks
#10This will definitely make me buy more Tor books. I'm one of the "voracious" readers that Charlie mentions and while I really like the Kindle DX hardware, I'm increasingly concerned at being tied into an Amazon ecosystem long term. Baen, O'Reilly , Pragmatic Programmers and Fictionwise are some of the places I look for new books for my Kindle before Amazon these days, as they have DRM free titles.
I went with a Nook Touch instead of a Kindle, because it is very easy to get your hands on standard epub and load them at will. Loading e-books from outside the Amazon ecosystem can be done, but it is a cumbersome process at best. The Nook feels less tied to the B&N ecosystem than the Kindle is to Amazon. This is true for Sony and possibly Kobo as well, but I prefer the Nook as a device.