Analyzing Amazon's E-Book Loan Agreement

conel writes "The Economist has a knowledgeable mainstream take on the restrictions publishers are forcing on e-books. From the article: 'They wish you to engage in two separate hallucinations. First, that their limited license to read a work on a device or within software of their choosing is equivalent to the purchase of a physical item. Second, that the vast majority of e-books are persistent objects rather than disposable culture. ... Just as with music, DRM will be cracked. As more people possess portable reading devices, the demand and availability for pirated content will also rise. (Many popular e-books can now be found easily on file-sharing sites, something that was not the case even a few months ago, as Adrian Hon recently pointed out.)"

Comments

Re:One publisher seems to have a clue...

[Bigjeff5]

Their free ebook program has pretty conclusively proven that books that are past their peak sales mark (usually 2-6 months after first publish) see a substantial increase in sales after publishing the ebook for free.

Don't hide it, promote it!

The prime palaver section really details why this works, but the lengthy introduction on the front page is good enough for it to make sense to most people.

This quote really sums up the real problem quite nicely:

Income doesn't derive from preventing theft, it comes from making sales. A certain amount of loss due to theft is simply one of the overhead costs. Obviously, taking simple measures to eliminate as much theft as possible is sensible. But at a certain point -- and much sooner than you might think -- the measures you take to prevent theft can start cutting your income.