As for DRM, I don’t understand what that is, so I didn’t comment on that, so not sure if the above is really what you are talking about, sorry! Something that came to me about ebooks thats bugging me.

I’m hoping some code cracker will come up a cheap software to convert all different types of formats to the one you want until the market figures out format.

Doesn’t it make sense to make books easily available? They seem so concerned about the future piracy of a book they are hurting the first sale by making it frustrating for the consumer.

I love ebooks — but I’m not a big fan our our current “protect everything from everyone at all costs” legal environment, it’s dangerous.

I think it’s more like “protect some things from some people,” but I get your general point and agree.

Rights that gather around the general category of expression are being curtailed, and most people don’t even realize how efficiently and effectively endangered those rights now are. It’s dangerous and it’s scary, IMO, mostly because it’s happening with so much passive acceptance.

Actually, I have no problem at all getting straight pdf when I buy from publishers. It’s just when I go to retailers that I have an issue.

Sorry I should have said DRM’d .pdf files. When I bought my ebooks from Harlequin (direct from Harlequin not from a retailer) I had to use digital editions. I had to have the latest edition of digital editions or the file would not download. I had to have the latest version of digital editions or I couldn’t view the books I’d already bought. I also lost a couple of books because of this forced upgrade. Adobe’s solution was to download again, you can’t do that if the retailer no longer exists. I refuse to be beholden to adobe to view my books.

I read on my laptop, in .pdf format, but this experience has me leery of buying e-books, especially from a new source.

I have never had a problem buying and reading an ebook directly from an epublisher. I think most epublishers are savvy enough to know how DRM and stupid issues like Digital Editions, etc, annoy their customers. I have yet to buy an ebook from a major print pub, mostly because of the price thing–DRM and compatibility problems only add to my reluctance.

I see the DRM like I see some of TSA’s procedures at airport security: the thought counts for something, but does having to take off my sweater, my shoes, my laptop out of it’s bag, and putting all my liquid items in a separate plastic baggie really increase security? Or does it just irritate people instead of solving the problem?

And I HATE the prices of ebooks when compared to print prices. It’s the same intellectual property, right? Is there just as much cost distributing a digital file as there is a book that must be typeset, printed, packed, shipped, unpacked, and shelved? Whenever I pay the same price for an ebook as I would for a print book, I feel like I’m getting willingly fleeced.

And for pity’s sake, we need some sort of uniformity in formatting. For movies, we have DVDs, which are now shifting to BluRay and that other one–three main formats. For music, we have CDs and mp3–two biggies. How many formats are there for ebooks? If the people who make the readers are worried about profits, why not have one format your reader can support, sell a converter for it, and have the pubs and distributors sell a single master format? Anything that will get it closer to the ease of buying a print book and opening it right away will increase the likelihood of people buying ebooks instead of pirating–which at this point is aften easier than jumping though the various digital hoops between paying for an ebook to reading said ebook.

I think that ultimately e-books will be in libraries, too.

My library already has them. Been had them. Mostly in adobe and mobipocket neither of which I use for reading.

So I completely agree with all the complaints about the *hassle* of DRM, but I worry even more about the impact of DRM on reasonable copyright limitations like the First Sale doctrine.

Robin:
I agree completely. Not to mention that, under the current draconian laws, any attempt to get around DRM (or any digital protection, regardless of how trivial the protection is) is a violation of the dreaded DMCA, which is itself a federal felony. So while we all can go through the multiple annoying steps to get the e-books we’ve purchased into a format our various readers can understand, technically we’re risking serious fines and jail time by doing so here in the ‘Land of the Free’.

I love ebooks — but I’m not a big fan our our current “protect everything from everyone at all costs” legal environment, it’s dangerous.

I will be glad when the format wars are over and the e-book equivalents of 8-track tapes and Betamax (whichever those are) have been phased out of the market.

I think Jane’s idea of a big publisher studying the difference between DRM and DRM-free e-books is excellent. I would also welcome a study comparing the impact of e-book piracy and resale to that of print book resale. I’d leave out borrowing, though, because I think that ultimately e-books will be in libraries, too.

What DRM does do is inhibit sales.

Have to agree. It’s utterly ineffective at stopping piracy. It just keeps law-abiding readers from buying the book the legal way.

I read in one place that the average physical copy of a book experiences 9 owners with only one of them having purchased the book and provided a royalty to the author.

At least you know the book will eventually fall apart or be dropped in the bathtub, instead of being copied efforlessly until basically every reader who wants it could get it for nothing, all pretty much at the same time…

The music industry ascribes approximately 10% of its lowered retail sales to piracy. I suppose the question is how much the UBS market makes up of retail sales altogether.

My sense is that DRM free books do not increase the likelihood of piracy. It’s very easy to strip a book of DRM if you know how to do it. Furthermore, not being in eformat also doesn’t prevent digital piracy – witness the JK Rowling books.

What DRM does do is inhibit sales.

As for the actual dollar loss of authors due to piracy, it’s almost unquantifiable. Not every download of a book is a lost sale as many people download simply to have and never to read. All of the empirical (albeit not very scientific) evidence we have shows increases in paper sales when free ebooks are made available.

It’s hard to know if that would change if there was a greater impact of digital reading on the publishing market.

I wish the same publishers would also investigate the degree to which paper book re-sales and rental/swapping impact their profits (compared to ebook piracy). Right now paperbackswap has over 2 million books available free to its members, booksfree allows you to rent paper and audio books, and my local UBS has thousands of used mysteries and romances for a dollar each (the hundreds of Harlequin titles are 75 cents). Neither the author or the publisher gets any money from these re-uses. I wonder if the levels of piracy for non-DRM books would come anywhere near the money a publisher loses when a used book is borrowed, rented, swapped, and/or sold and re-sold dozens of times.