1. I, like so many of my friends, love to read. I currently purchase paperbacks at Costco, Sams, Amazon and B&N. We sometimes share or exchange books since honestly we are working class and books aren’t cheap. I would rather read than watch alot of the “prime time” junk available on TV and I prefer to wait till a book goes to paperback to avoid a hard cover price.

2. I am reading this column since the ereader subject interests me enough that I have pre-ordered a Nook. I am trying to learn about formats and the reason I resisted a Kindle for so long was because I learned that their format didn’t work on other books.

3. I purchased the Nook because it will read: pdf, epub and a few other formats plus play MP3 tracks. I don’t bother with audible books, and what really excites me is that I can use the “reader” to read library books as well as purchased books.

4. I liked the Nook because its frame seems less thick, more attractive and less bulky in design. Sure the little color touch screen is nice to sort thru covers but the virtual keyboard there is more important.

5. I intend to share or swap my owned books with friends like we currently do. It appears that the Nooks book lending process is a bit limited but I am hoping that enough “techies” figure out a workaround using the Android OS, to allow us to swap and share our own books.

6. I refuse to purchase a book that I can’t read on my PC or share. That is simply BS! If I pay for it then it must be MINE, this is not a book “borrowing” fee I pay when I purchase a book, I want to keep it, move it to a newer reader down the road or toss it if it turns out to be crap.

I hope that as formats are developed or agreed to, that a universal system is developed that will then encourage true competition between ereader manufacturers which in turn, should give us better options and hopefully, lower prices down the road. I respect a public library zapping or locking up a “borrowed” book after 14 days but it would be hell if I paid for the book and 2 years down the road I can’t migrate to a newer reader.

Publishers and authors need to pay attention to these issues and make their ebooks available to the widest audience possible. I think it easier to pay for a legal ebook than trying to learn or figure out how to get pirate copies, expose my pc to corrupted or infected files, etc. People will carry ereaders that are easy to use and will buy ebooks that are reasonably priced and these should be less than the hard copy. I mean really, why buy something “virtual” when you can get the “real thing” cheaper?

Thank you for allowing me to rant. I believe in the future of ereaders just like the Ipods and other music devices when they first arrived on the scene. Folks will continue to enjoy music and books, we simply can now take them with us easily and enjoy them anywhere!!!

The day someone can tell me how politely saying “Please don’t steal from me” will override those peoples’ penchant for making any lame excuse to take what they want, is the day I start believing in social DRM…

I know Steve’s books are often available without DRM (except where retailers impose DRM).

Not often, in fact… always. It’s one of the reasons I decided not to allow my books to be pushed from Smashwords up to the Kindle, Sony and B&N stores: To maintain control, and to make sure DRM wasn’t incorporated into my works.

Rob is right: When a retailer sells in a manner you don’t like, the solution is to shop elsewhere… not to steal from their shop. There may be bad laws that should be opposed by civil disobedience… but this isn’t one of them. It’s just a book. If you don’t like the terms, you don’t need the book.

My wish and goal is that readers would do the same. If you don’t like DRM (and I certainly understand why people wouldn’t), why not buy from publishers and retailers who don’t impose DRM? I know Steve’s books are often available without DRM (except where retailers impose DRM). My own books are the same…available in multiformat from Fictionwise, OmniLit and directly from the publisher. It certainly isn’t as if the big NY publishers offer a universally superior reading experience.

Piracy is destructive not only to the authors and publishers whose books are pirated, but also to those of us who offer our books at affordable prices without DRM encumberence because every time a Dan Brown or J.K. Rowling book is pirated and read, that takes that many reading hours from reading our books.

Rob Preece
Publisher

My biggest concern is that people who cannot get the e-books they want in the way they want them will simply obtain bootleg copies (which will not compensate their creators), rather than make an organized effort to encourage the publishers to sell the e-books the way they want them… without DRM.

If publishers saw evidence that consumers would pay for non-DRM’d products, and not download bootleg copies, they’d be more willing to offer products that way. Unfortunately, that is not what they see or hear from consumers. So you can’t blame them for wanting to protect their products.

Your example of people who buy books, then go download bootlegged copies, is not necessarily representative of the majority of e-book readers. In fact, many readers who learn how easily they can download bootleg copies won’t bother to buy printed copies on the next go-round. So, yes, those people should be able to get non-DRM’d books at fair prices, to do with as they please, to keep them out of the bootleg sites.

Unfortunately, some of those people will do the wrong things with those e-books. That’s why it’s important to appeal to the public’s sense of fair play and honesty not to rip producers off just because they can. And a message like that is often taken more seriously when there is at least a chance of getting caught, or getting in trouble, if it is violated… sad, but true.

Yes, I’m in favor of product security. However, I know that existing DRM systems provide nothing of the sort, which makes them counter-productive, and might as well be scrapped. If it means we have to suffer with losses through theft until workable security can be devised, so be it… that’s the market we producers will have to live with.

But DRM does prevent me from using the device I want, tweaking the output presentation (such as removing the ridiculously large borders on most commercial texts), using new feature such as text to speech, and keeping my content for as long as I wish.

The pirate copy has ease of downloading, ease of transferring, and no restrictions. I won’t say that DRM “encourages” piracy, but when someone is offering a better product for less money…

You posit that people will download the commercial text and use a cracking tool. However, those tools are difficult for most people to use and certainly much more difficult than snagging a copy from a download site. It is far more likely that the “ethical” readers will purchase the book and then use the download _as_ their cracked copy. However, encouraging readers to become familiar and comfortable with, even supporting of, the pirate experience is a really bad strategy.

I know you are in favor of DRM (if someone comes up with one you find acceptable … which I believe to be impossible), but I bought your books for very simple reasons: it was cheap, convenient, and easy.

but it may not be unrealistic to think that such people might care about the quality and accuracy of the texts they’re downloading. how do they know they’re getting the actual text they want? has a pirate changed the ending, just for fun? and how about formatting (line-breaks, chapter-breaks etc.)?

DRM limitations may “encourage” people to crack them, for their own use. But that is a long way from sharing it with others, or downloading it to the darknet, or whatever.

Personally, I think reliable methods of tracking (most) illegitimate file transfers and penalizing those who sent them is a good idea… even if the penalty is just a charge against their account, equal to the consumer price of the content, to be sent to the publisher of the content.

ISPs may not be policemen, but there are precedents for industries being directed to include various safety or security systems for the public good… assuming there was such a system available, which we do not have, yet, anyway.

Since we don’t have a reliable security system in place, it is therefore vital that we take action where we can, promoting social responsibility… which doesn’t require big flags to be put on people’s content, “reminding” them not to give it away. Make sure they don’t need reminding… and make sure consumers don’t have an incentive to take bootlegged copies of works… that’s the ticket.

http://www.publishers.org/main/IndustryStats/documents/S12008Final.pdf

which shows total sales in 2008 being $600 million down on 2007. Amazing how that ‘piracy’ figure jumps up an down over the years!

What’s surprising is how fast ebook sales are rising, given the format problems, DRM and insane pricing strategies.

http://www.idpf.org/doc_library/industrystats.htm