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How Publishers Are Cutting Their Own Throats With eBook DRM
An anonymous reader writes "Sci-fi author Charlie Stross has written a post about how the Big Six book publishing companies have painted themselves into a corner in the rapidly growing ebook industry. Between user-unfriendly DRM and the Amazon juggernaut, they're slowly pushing themselves out of business. Quoting: 'Until 2008, ebooks were a tiny market segment, under 1% and easily overlooked; but in 2009 ebook sales began to rise exponentially, and ebooks now account for over 20% of all fiction sales. In some areas ebooks are up to 40% of the market and rising rapidly. (I am not making that last figure up: I'm speaking from my own sales figures.) And Amazon have got 80% of the ebook retail market. ... the Big Six's pig-headed insistence on DRM on ebooks is handing Amazon a stick with which to beat them harder. DRM on ebooks gives Amazon a great tool for locking ebook customers into the Kindle platform.'"
DRM on ebooks gives Amazon a great tool for locking ebook customers into the Kindle platform.'"
Which is why I'm not buying books from Amazon or B&N at this point. Either it's without DRM, or I'm not buying it. Baen's Webscriptions for me, at least at the moment.
I don't read AC A human right
... pricing an e-book $13 when the paperback is $6 is a much more visible issue for the average e-book buyer, at least judging from the various comments on amazon's message boards.
-- the cake is a lie
This pricing system is nothing new. All the modern Call of Duty games stay at $60 on Steam. The latest version rarely goes on sale, if so it's only like $10 off. Publishers of any sort only want to be paid what they think customers should pay.
Then, some indie mucky-muck makes something like Minecraft, Angry Birds, etc, charges so little, and sells millions. It's not fair!
"Here's a great book I just read. Let me lend it to you..."
in that case ebooks should cost 10% less than the paperback edition when it comes out, and 10% less than the hardcover before the paperback comes out.
And maybe they do "cost" 10% less. However, that's their cost. Their price to you, on the other hand, should be whatever they think you'll pay that gives them the most profit. It's how capitalism works: buy low, sell high. It really is that simple.
If they think you'll pay an extra $3 for the convenience of sitting on your butt while having the book whisked over the aether to your Kindle, then they'll happily collect it from you. If they think you'll pay an extra $5 for the smell of a dead tree, they'll be even more happy to collect that. And if they think you'll pay $79 for a Kindle today that will lock you into an investment of $15 DRM'd books, they're ecstatic.
The only part of the equation that matters is what the largest number of consumers are willing to pay in order to maximize profits to the stockholders. Nothing else, not fairness, not reasonableness, not public opinion, not whiny authors, not abusive commenters in the Amazon reviews, nor the public good, matters. Never forget that.
John
...except in Australia, where buying almost anything at all digitally/overseas and having it Fedex'd over here is still significantly cheaper than buying retail. I will definitely buy that $13 ebook since the paperback is $40+
"Industry standard DRM" is an oxymoron. If you can't implement it, then it's not a standard. You're locked into the sole supplier of the trade secret. When you mentioned that everyone has to run Wine just to be able to read the book, didn't that clue you into how ridiculous you must have sounded? How about the part when you mentioned a .. I don't know what to call it .. a "spec"(?!) that has one particular companies' name in it. Seriously, you might as well say the XBox is an industry standard; that wouldn't be any sillier.
You know what's an industry standard? You're reading it right now. HTML. (And that's a fragmented and contentious one!) You would never even be able to guess which browser I'm using because it doesn't matter. HTML just works, with more programs than you can shake a stick at. And if you don't like any of them, you can even write your own. Text. RTF. Even PDF -- it's hard to say this with a straight face -- but even PDF is standard compared to that other Adobe thing you just mention that nobody else in the world has ever heard of, which probably explains why nobody ever makes readers for it.
It's a crime to defeat DRM due to the DMCA. That's the end-around. Space-shifting was guaranteed under fair-use, USa Inc. didn't like that, so they made space-shifting impossible without breaking DRM, and then made breaking DRM illegal.
May not get me sued, but still shows you how things work around these here parts... what the motivation is, and who gets listened to.
Immoral. Whether they sue or not.
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