Greetings,

I'm a Linux user here.

I hope your fight against piracy goes well for you.

Just wanted to let you know that I was looking forward to purchasing a "Trible of Mentors" and "The Rise and Fall of American Growth" at your store when I saw that your ebook policy includes DRM (there are technically ways to crack it btw, but even if I did that, I would feel bad supporting you with my money when you insist on distributing your ebooks in so an unfriendly format so I won't).

I would probably have purchased some more ebooks from you in the future, but I won't do that either.

So, I'm not sure how many sales you are losing from not distributing DRM-free (I'm pretty sure that even though you are selling the books with DRM, I could find the books downloads for free on Google if I was inclined to do it), but you definitely lost some sales from me now and in the future because of DRM.

Have a great day.

Eric


Maybe it would register more for distributors if even a fraction of customers who skips buying because of their DRM schemes actually let them know about it.

Why do you care? It's available only for US.

ebooks?! drm ?! is this thread created by a bot or what's actually going on? oO

In my case, it was available both in the US and Canada.

I just find the current state of ebooks distribution for more mainstream books to be very bad.

I cannot quantify the sales volume they are losing because of it, but they must be losing on sales. Na, it's just my ranting of the day based on something I observed and my encouraging others who feel equally passionate about this to be more vocal about it with retailers.

after opening it a second time i got it :D
I first did not get the ebook connection with gog but know i realized it's just to target the other store ^^ / write them emails ^^ - first tried to make a connection with gog but could not remember ebooks ever being sold here

Yeah, thinking about it, I could probably have phrased my title and post differently to make my intent more clear.

Oh well, the missed opportunities of life :P.

Some Linux distros allow drm content, right? Fighting with it to get it to work is annoying though.

I buy paperbacks, mainly 2nd hand. I looked into getting one of those Amazon Kindle things and quickly realised the books you have on there are only rented. No thank you. My mum's kindle (a gift, not from me) is also collecting dust due to the drm. Nice mum I got, right?

Good thing I can read some old and free books on my laptop. http://www.gutenberg.org is one of several great places to get them.

Since all mobiles except those running iOS or Android seem to be either dead/dying ecosystems or simple models, it looks bad for drm free on mobile as Google and Apple are fond of drm.

My guess is we who read ebooks on Linux systems are very few in the eyes of the publishers where mobiles, tablets and ebook readers are seen as the large markets.

I have problems believing an email from me would make any difference. I guess I am old, cynical and disillusioned :-(

Used hardback is $11 over on Amazon, a few bucks more then their ebook which also had DRM.

If it's that important of an issue, buy the dead tree version but make sure you fire off an email to Amazon as well because of their own DRM. I'm not saying it's not an importantr issue but, as you noted, if you're going to go after a single reseller, go after all of them.

Not saying it's not an important issue in this case. It's like going after Papa John about their sponsorship of the NFL. Now that they've given it up, you've yet to hear a single protest about Pizza Hut picking it up.

edit: And if it's really that large of an issue for you, why aren't you buying it directly from the publisher which would be fully supporting the author?

https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10544.html

Since a couple of years ago, I've strongly favored consuming intellectual property digitally.

Part of it is the environment, but also, just the clutter (between books, musics, movies and games, the space taken by intellectual property can be significant) and the convenience of having access to a lot more content on the go with my laptop.

I've emailed various providers in the past (mostly music and book distributions) and in at least 2 instances, the communication is likely to have had an impact (in one case, the author replied to me directly and the store "magically" started promoting their ebooks offering more shortly after that and in the other, the music album I wanted to purchase magically poped up on 7digital's catalog 1-2 weeks after I made the request via email).

I think you are probably right in that 70%+ of the market simply does not care that the content they are accessing is locked to a device and probably that 70%+ of the remaining doesn't care enough to refrain from buying if the format is not DRM-free.

Still, I have a hunch that they are probably missing on 5%-10% of sales because of DRM policies that don't really work (illegal unlocked books are still making their way across the internet).

I don't think that distributors have a strong pre-diposition to reach out to that 5%-10% segment of the market and it can't hurt to send a remainder once in a while that yes, we exist and they are missing out on potential sales. It's not as if books are all the rage right now and they couldn't use a couple more sales.

Giants (like Amazon) who have a lot of pre-existing inertia are less likely to react to such requests, but smaller providers who are more nimble and looking for an edge are more likely to at least give it some consideration.

I think the mainstream books industry could gain a lot from realizing what the music industry and niche book industry has known for a while now: that they don't exactly have a lot leverage as the majority won't be interested to pay for what they are offering so they could really benefit from simply giving the minority of consumers who are willing to pay what they actually want rather than j*rk with them.