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What Book Publishers Should Learn From Harry Potter
New submitter Volanin writes "The e-book versions of the Harry Potter series are being released through Pottermore, and J.K. Rowling has chosen to do a number of interesting things with them, including releasing them without DRM restrictions. 'One of the encouraging things about the Pottermore launch is that the books will be available on virtually every platform simultaneously, including the Sony Reader, the Nook, the Kindle and Google's e-book service. ... even Amazon has bowed to the power of the series and done what would previously have seemed unthinkable: it sends users who come to the titles on Amazon to Pottermore to finish the transaction.'"
What Book Publishers Should Learn From Harry Potter
They should learn form this that we wanted these 5+ years ago, preferably released simultaneously with the print version, and ideally the print versions should have included one free e-Version each.
What will they learn from this? They'll learn that they can fake it and promote themselves as "DRM-Free" by releasing material that everyone already owns in another form (and therefore piracy doesn't much matter), which continuing to burden new releases and reference material under as onerous of a lock as they can clamp on.
No, it costs them $0.80 to print and send you a papterback version. The cost of the content is what you are paying $7.99 for.
I've already downloaded and read all the Harry Potter books. By waiting this long to release them in ebook format, they only encourage pirating of the ebooks.
Be seeing you...
And the problem with this - assuming it doesn't interfere with the function of the book in any way - is what exactly? It's like a registered serial number - it's *your* copy. Quite honestly, it's probably the single best copy protection method out there - both from an enforcement ("See this? It's yours") and rights (But make backups and change formats as much as you want) way.
-If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well.
Having purchased one DRM'ed Nook book before I got a Kindle, and one DRM'ed kindle book since then, I wised up and now I only purchase DRM free ebooks (generally epub), manage the collection with Calibre, and convert the books as needed for loading on devices.
If a book is not available without DRM, I do not purchase it.
WALSTIB!
I'm betting he is doing what an informed consumer should and putting his money where his mouth is when making an informed purchasing choice, in chosing not to support and fund a business model he doesn't like.