December 13th, 2009
I found this interesting post in my google reader this morning. Why publishers do stupid things with ebooks.
The information in the link Why ebook delays won’t save trade publishing is a good explanation of why traditional publishers think they have to resort to DRM and delayed releases. In short,they think of their customer as the book store and other distributors.
At PaperBox Books we know our customer is the reader, the person who will enjoy the story.
Happy reading!
Perry
No Comments | In: Industry | tags: DRM, publishing. | #
December 1st, 2009
Hi, well it’s December and NaNo is over (I won!! yay). I’m having a little problem engaging in the world where word counts don’t matter so I poked around some postings about e-publishing. I found a request on LinkedIn for a recommendation for the best DRM available.
Yikes, my eyes did the cartoon pop out on springs – boing. DRM is a hotly contested issue these days. I have to say I’m on the side of as little as possible – I hate the fact that Apple tries to control where and how I’ll play the music I bought from them.
I fall on the side of the argument that thinks of e-books as similar to paper books. If I pay you for it, I should be able to lend it to whoever I want and read it on whatever reader I have. A paper book gets shared and donated, just because you can put rules around a digital copy doesn’t mean you should.
It came home to me when I looked into downloading a Kindle book from Amazon.com. They use mobi format which I can read on my Blackberry from any other etailer. Surprisingly Amazon.com mobi is only readable on the Kindle or my PC. Hmmm, I don’t get the link between selling books and confining people to a proprietary software.
We’ll see these things change over the next while. I think we’re in the eight track v cassette or VHS v Beta stage of the hardware development and the end result will be common format and competition back to how many books get sold. I don’t know if Kindle will continue to be the reader of choice or not, I’ll just wait a few months before buying a reader.
What are your thoughts on DRM and the future.
Perry
1 Comment | In: Industry, Opinions | tags: DRM, opinion. | #