Comments on: TeleRead Poll: How many more e-books would you buy each year without DRM around?

By: Richard

Richard — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 17:41:16 +0000

DRM is a small part of the picture.

An e-book must be both DRM-free AND in a non-proprietary, openly documented format. This does not mean a public-domain format, or a format that no company controls the standard to; but one that is openly documented, that anybody can implement.

Then I would buy more e-books, but until both conditions are true then the answer is “No change”, because a non-DRM’d ebook in a proprietary format is only slightly more useful than a DRM’d ebook.

By: Branko Collin

Branko Collin — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 14:31:46 +0000

DRM adds to the price. After all, the publisher needs to buy or license the technology. If a publisher prices DRMed works to what they are worth, which is far less than the un-DRMed version, he has to recoup the cost from the DRM technology from elsewhere.

By: skyguy

skyguy — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 13:30:31 +0000

I live in Japan…so I’d LOVE to be able to buy DRM free ebooks, assuming the price were reasonable (say, half the hardcover price). But I’m not going to spend money on books I eventually won’t be able to access.

By: Ron Lauzon

Ron Lauzon — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 13:30:25 +0000

If it has DRM, it must be priced at a “throw away” price (and for eBooks that’s less than $1) or I will not buy it.

Any non-DRM eBook that costs more than half as much as a paper book is poor value and I will not buy it.

All that removing DRM does is make the eBook more valuable and, therefore, I would pay more for it.