How would people behave?
Here’s a little snippet from a NY Times article -
Shayna Englin, a political consultant in Washington who purchased a Kindle this year, also says she reads more than ever: a book a week, about three times her old pace.
But she has actually never paid for an e-book. Exploiting a loophole in Amazon’s system, Ms. Englin has linked her Kindle to the Amazon account of some nearby friends, allowing all of them to read books like “The Lost Symbol” at the same time — while paying for them only once …
… adding that this is nearly the same as lending a physical book to friends. “We haven’t really looked closely at Amazon’s terms of service. But I do suspect we are breaking the rules.”
This brings up our question again – If eBooks had no DRM i.e. no checks, no restrictions – How would people behave?
Perhaps people would behave perfectly.
However, Perfect by whose definition?
- Perfect as Publishers define it?
- Perfect as people who think books should be free define Perfect?
- Perhaps some other definition of Perfect entirely.
Lets consider some of these definitions.
People behaving Perfectly according to Publishers’ and Authors’ definition of Perfect.
In this case eBooks would cost the same as Hardcovers, perhaps even more. People would happily pay the price (even if it were higher).
This is not happening so let’s not dwell on this scenario.
It does highlight an important point – Publishers (and perhaps Authors too) are not averse to taking all the savings from the transition to ebooks and putting it in their own pockets.
People behaving Perfectly according to their own definitions of Perfect
This is where things get really interesting.
Case 1: Perfect means Free Books
Let’s consider a world where everyone thinks books should be free. You remove DRM and they behave perfectly and stop paying. What happens then?
It does make you wonder about whether the Internet is already working perfectly.
- What if eBooks never took off on the Internet because people who read eBooks online were getting them for free?
- What if ‘DRM makes things difficult’ is really code language for ‘DRM makes it difficult to treat ebooks perfectly’?
This is the possibility that anti-DRM people never talk about.
What if ‘stop treating customers like thieves’ is not a good argument because although customers are not thieves they just won’t pay for books.
Case 2: Perfect means Always Pay for Books
This is the golden argument – that if DRM were removed, everyone would start paying for books.
There are a few holes in this argument though -
- What case have we ever seen where everyone pays for a product without DRM? Surely, if a No-DRM model works perfectly there must be an industry (not a single outlier, an industry) that is a shining example.
- What incentive is there for people who are getting their books free, illegally, to switch over to paying for books?
- What’s the guarantee that people who are currently paying would keep paying. Take the NY Times article – there’s a family sharing feature in the Kindle and people are already misusing it. Once there’s no DRM that same ‘it’s just sharing of books’ attitude might mean a whole town buying just one copy.
No one knows what happens without DRM
We really don’t. It’s easy for anti-DRM proponents to say remove DRM. However, what’s going to happen if it doesn’t work – It’s not really a step that can be undone.
The truth is …
We can’t really predict how people would behave if eBooks had no DRM
Much as we would like to assume the stars would align and things would be awesome if we removed DRM, there are very few signs that point in that direction.
In fact, we don’t really know whether
- It would be some amazing, perfect world where sales increase and publishers make more money and customers get more reasonably priced, DRM free books. OR
- It would mean the end of the books industry.
Unlike music and movies there are no concerts and movie theaters for books.
Think about what we have -
There’s no known solution. There’s no revenue stream other than books.
People are casual enough about flouting the rules to talk about it on the New York Times.
There was a recent post saying publishers are the real pirates for having DRM. How can you make the colossal jump of calling Publishers and Authors pirates for having DRM when
- They create the product and are entitled to sell it or license it at whatever terms they like.
- No one knows what would happen without DRM.
We don’t live in a fairy tale world where everyone is going to do the right thing and pay for the books they read.
It’s just tiring that people are pushing idealistic world views in an imperfect world. DRM has become some sort of crusade – However, it’s a crusade that only makes sense in an imaginary world.
eReader companies understand this – thankfully
That’s why no company has started a DRM free push. On every other front – features, price, distribution, partnerships – there’s relentless competition.
Yet, nothing on the DRM front. Why?
Because if we remove DRM and people stop paying then there’s nothing left.
Think about how far we’ve come -
Prices of ebooks are down to $10. Prices of hardcovers are being dropped to $10. You can read the ebook on your eReader and on your iPhone, and now even on your PC. You can have it read to you.
Still, people are complaining about DRM.
Why are people not embracing $10 and eReader benefits?
This is why – The real truth is that
- Publishers would gladly charge $25 per ebook.
- Readers would gladly read for free.
Both parties are eager to take advantage of the other while also being worried they might get stiffed.
If there was nothing forcing people to pay for books, most wouldn’t -
- Like the NY Times article person who’s sharing friends’ books and has never bought an ebook.
- Like the people downloading pirated books.
- People who want prices to come down from $10 to $5 or $3.
- Like the author who calls publishers pirates for having DRM.
It’s unreasonable for publishers to expect $25 ebooks, and it’s equally unreasonable for readers to expect $3 prices or ebooks sold without DRM.
It’s time to pick a win-win solution.
$9.99 is a necessary move on the part of Publishers. Accepting DRM and accepting the $9.99 price point is a necessary move on the part of readers.
Filed under: publishing, thoughts Tagged: | ebooks, necessity of drm
At last – common sense. The real problem with DRM is interopability (is that a word?) I would be happy with sensible pricing, not being locked into one system and being able to read the book I ‘bought’ on any device I own now or in the future – without needing a degree in the black arts. Perhaps the coalition of Amazon competitors embracing DRM’d ePub will solve that.
I hope so.
You totally miss how the music industry, led by Amazon, has moved to DRM free. If you really want an album you can pirate it, but millions of people every day buy music from Amazon and iTunes, why?
Speed, security (knowing what you are getting and the quality you want) and lastly when you give people a reasonably priced alternative to stealing most of them will buy.
Your posting is a good summary of the issues, but it overuses the idea of “perfect”. It’s true that removing DRM wouldn’t lead to perfect, “golden” behavior on the part of book buyers. There would still be some people who would never pay for books. But I think that overall, most readers would be honest and would continue to be happy to pay for books. In fact, I suspect that book sales would increase because there would now be fewer limits on book use. For example, if Amazon opened their Kindle store and removed DRM, people who didn’t own Kindles but wanted to read books on other devices like home computers or netbooks or Palm smartphones would be able to buy books that were formerly unavailable to them. I know I would have fit this profile before I bought a Kindle; Amazon lost a lot of sales from me because of this.
But it doesn’t look like we’ll get to know any time soon whether this scenario would come true.
I gave away over 20K copies of my podcast novel and understand the power of free and the need for convenience and customer choice. However, if the arguments against DRM are truly about being able to port your books easily between devices and other such issues, then surely a system that lets you do that would satisfy. Yes, DRM-less will achieve that aim and yes you can point to some successes in the music world, but what’s the probelm if you can do all these things anyway?
I agree that in time the removal of DRM may happen but what’s the rush? Allow me to buy easily, move between competitors (taking my books with me), let me use any online store, any time, lend my books to friends or family, enable my purchase to survive the death of a single company and do all this with ease and the argument against DRM becomes a crusade centred on dogma.
It might take a few minutes, a day or a week to write a song. It is often a buzz simply to play to an audience and an artist can reap the financial and social awards of success through live concerts etc.
Writing is different. There is so much rubbish talked about it from those who have not spent years locked away on their own trying to create something new. The odds of making a living have always been long and that’s unlikely to change but at least there is a chance. It keeps many of us going.
People who love books should be wary. There are many voices out there with their own agendas (this is a general point – not throwing stones). I agree that punishing honest readers is not the way to go. Neither is the Kindle lock-in.
Things are changing fast. Keep pushing for that freedom. Keep shouting. But the arguments should be centred on what can and cannot be done, not in blind obedience to the technicalities of how it is accomplished.
> If eBooks had no DRM…
Then more people would buy them. The same thing happened with MP3s. In the early years that MP3s were on sale with DRM such as on ITunes, sure some people bought them, but not me and not anyone that I personally knew.
When DRM was removed, I immediately bought an iPod and regularly buy songs. I simply will not let DRM decide where and how I listen to music. Same with eBooks.
> No one knows what happens without DRM
Not true. O’Reilly sells all of their eBooks without any DRM. http://oreilly.com/ebooks/
And to be honest, 85% of my eBooks are from O’Reilly. Another 5% are from Apress, which only looks their PDFs with your e-mail address. While not ideal, that can be easily removed. The other 10% are various free eBooks.
While I am quite interested in going entirely for eBooks in the future, I refuse to purchase a book with DRM. Unfortunately I think that, like MP3s, it will take several years before the industry realizes this point. So I will mostly likely not make many eBook purchases except from certain publishers such as O’Reilly.
Also, the industry really needs to pick a standard format. I’m extremely happy with PDFs, but there seems to be a push for ePub. It’s ridiculous to buy any Kindle book and not be able to read it on any other device including your own PC. If anything, DRM is preventing eBooks from reaching their full potential. The industry needs to learn from MP3s.
One comment about the price: it should be relative to the price of a paperback, not hard cover.
I usually buy paperbacks, and not only because they’re cheaper, but also because they take less space on the shelf (true, an eBook reader solves this problem for good).
So I believe $9.99 is still excessive. In my opinion, $7.99 would be the right price.
I didn’t see any mention of the observation that popular books that are not available in e-book format from the author is usually pirated within one day of the hard book release. People that want to read Rowling’s books on an e-reader at any price will go to the dark net and get a copy. Those, like me, that will not go to the dark net for a copy will forgo the book altogether. O’Reilly is not the only one that has DRM free books. Baen started this years ago and you prediction has not been realized, they are still in business and few of their books are found on pirated sites. Steve Jordan’s books are all DRM free and he is still in business. In addition Steve sells his books for $3.50 because he gets to keep most of that . He also offers less expensive bundles, as does Baen. Hard copies of books have some residual value, whether loaned, given away or sold. E-Books do not and thus are worth less. The argument that if all the DRM problems went away with a better DRM scheme so that books are owned instead of rented, it would have to be done in a fashion that worked with library books, worked on all available devices now and into the future and didn’t depend on any company to maintain the keys to the vault. In its present form, DRM is a deterrent to sales and does virtually nothing to protect the author or publisher if he publishes on paper. This article was very poorly researched.
Um. Sorry, but no. $9.99 is ridiculous for anything but new books or books that are higher over all editions. With almost zero printing and distribution costs, it’s a smack in the face for publishers to expect $9.99 for books that are already out in paperback. I fume every time I see a book priced $9.99 on the Kindle store when 48 used paperback copies are going for $2 each.
I’m an early adopter and a huge ebook reader, but I’ve made a promise to myself that I will never pay $9.99 for an ebook unless it is less than 2 months old.
I really think that people need to study more the people who have been publishing ebooks successfully for more than 10 years — Baen Publishing. Their price point is closer to the paperback price, and they _abhor_ DRM. One of the authors (Eric Flint) has written a series of essays on epublishing that are well worth reading. Some of them are available here (http://www.baen.com/library/palaver_index.htm) … start with #6. More have been running as a column in the Baen’s Universe eMagazine. He makes sense, and it’s not just theory — Baen puts it into practice.
@Richard
My God!!! Someone else who actually Knows about BAEN. I’ve been a faithful purchaser of ebooks from Baen since they started it, back in 1999 (I think?). DRM is really not as applicable to books as i would think it would be to music. Keep the price *fair* and everyone will pay for it. And yea, there will be people that would occasionally give a DRM-free ebook to a friend hopeing to hook them onto a series, so they would have even more things in common. But BAEN is the only publisher (though they also sell some e-reads, tor and a couple other publishers books too) that truly believes they have more to gain than loose by selling hot-off-the-press (so to speak) ebooks for a fair price.
Really the Publishers need to follow BAEN’s lead, Lets get serious here, there’s ONLY ONE ELECTRONIC COPY of an ebook. When you buy one, your not buying 1 of 10,000. your getting a copy of 1. Amazon, B&N, Fictionwise they all have a copy of that 1 book. So where’s the major expenses??? Give the author more on his royalty (then watch and see how fast they sign up for thier work to be ebooks). and pay the artist (who makes the cover art work) and the editor good wages. There’s no printing costs, no guessing how many copies to print off to meet demand. Just pure profit. Hey drop the price of an ebook down to $4.99 (about 1978′s price range) and everyone wins. Author wins, publisher wins and we win.
pardon me as I get off my soapbox.
I read a lot of Baen books, the older ones are free ! the new ones are quite cheap (cheaper than amazon) and drm free.
the big point of the drm is: in the future will I be sure to still be able to read my books ? there is the format obsolescence, the fact the compagny have only a limited life span. For the use of DRM it must be an official (ie by law supported) site who allow me to always get my books back even if I change my computer or ebook reader, and to allow me to give my book to frends or to pass them to my children as a family librairy.