Book Publishers Making the Same Mistakes as Record Labels?

Techdirt points out an interesting query in Slate asking why book publishers appear to be making the same mistake that record labels did with the iTunes service with DRM, and single-vendor lock-in. "Back in 2005, we noted that Apple's dominance over the online music space, which upset the record labels tremendously, was actually the record labels' own fault for demanding DRM. That single demand created massive lock-in and network effects that allowed Apple to completely dominate the market. If the record labels had, instead, pushed for an open solution, then anyone else could have built stores/players to work as well, and it could have minimized Apple's ability to control the market. Yes, everyone is now opening up (including Apple), but it took a long time, and Apple had already established its dominant position. So why are book publishers doing the same thing?"

Comments

Not all of them. Baen does not.

[gweihir]

Have a look at Baen books: They publish everything also as downloadable without any DRM (HTML/RTF/PDF) and you can buy months (4-6 books) or individual books. Individual books cost about the paperback price, a month costs about twice that. You typically also get the first 1/3 of a book as fee sample. They also have a "free library" where you get older books in the same formats entirely for free.

Eric Flint coordinates the free library. He has a series of postings on the effect and it seems to be very postive, with older books suddenly producing significat income for the authors, which they did not before.

Of course this only works for good quality books, but for them it works. I found myself buying more and trying authors I would otherwise have overlooked.

References:
http://www.baen.com/
http://www.baen.com/library/