Time for e-books to catch up with DRM back-off in audio books:
Now that audiobook publishers are backing off from DRM–Penguin appears ready to follow Random House—isn’t it time for this to happen on the e-book side? Just a few points:
1. The audiobook industry enjoys more than $923 million in annual sales, according to the Audio Publishers Association, as reported in the New York Times. It dwarfs e-bookdom. Why is a much-larger industry more adventurous than the e-book one?
2. Actually at least one major store, Fictionwise, which now owns eReader.com, already is encouraging publishers to abandon DRM. "Protected" titles just don’t move as briskly as the nonprotected ones do. Hello, Amazon, Sony, Borders, and others? A lesson here?
3. Major e-stores needn’t immediately remove DRM from every book. They could consult with authors, perhaps starting with newcomers who’ll benefit from the greater ease of buying, using and owning their books. The Tom Clancys and James Pattersons could always follow.
4. Stores could still use social DRM, digital watermarking and other measures to fight piracy. eReader, for example, uses encrypted credit card information. This is hardly a perfect solution but far superior to the Draconian copy limits that owners of multiple e-book devices must suffer.
5. Audiobook publishers have wisely worried about one company, such as Audible (about to be bought by Amazon, if shareholders approve) enjoying too much influence. How about Amazon, in the area of e-books? "Book publishers," as reported in the Times, "do not want to make the same error originally made by the music labels and limit consumers to a single online store to buy digital files that will play on the iPod. Doing so would give that single store owner — Apple — too much influence." Beware of the Kindle model!
Related: DRM-free doesn’t mean copyright free, in TechDirt.
March 8th, 2008 at 11:44 am
That blanket statement about protected titles not moving as briskly as the unprotected titles needs a little elaboration. Fictionwise offers a hefty number of DRM titles, and a lot of unprotected titles, but it offers something else that few other sites offer — short stories by prominent print-world authors, especially in the sf category. You’ll find a nice selection of short fiction by Harlan Ellison, Damon Knight, Kate Wilhelm, Barry Malzberg, Robert Silverberg and others there (and nearly all of Silverberg’s most important short sf is present). The short fiction is not DRMd. Does the sale of two unencrypted Silverberg short stories count for more than the sale of one DRMd Joyce Carol Oates novel?
Fictionwise also offers protected and unprotected editions of a number of classics, and here we can start to get a number that gives the real picture for DRMd vs non-DRMd titles. A protected copy of David Copperfield (granted, with whatever intro and notes Modern Library or Penguin included with their edition) vs an unprotected bare-bones copy imported from, say, Project Gutenberg and reformatted at Fictionwise for different platforms. Which of those sells more? For print publishers (who in many cases also control the e-rights if I understand it correctly) even that comparison may not mean much — after all, most of their focus will be on current releases, not public domain backlist, and the non-DRMd Project Gutenberg import is often considerably cheaper. When we see somebody take the plunge by releasing simultaneously a DRMd and a non-DRMd edition, priced the same, of a current hot title and then watch the sales on each, we’ll start seeing persuasive numbers. A new writer may be willing to do that, but unless we’re talking about a new writer with a big push behind him, we may not be talking about somebody whose sales will mean anything significant. Seems to me it’ll have to be a Clancy or a Patterson or a Nora Roberts or a Stephen King title to give a real picture with large enough numbers to be persuasive.
Bests to all,
–tr
March 8th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Thanks for your different perspective, Tony. You can dissect the Fictionwise numbers, but the Pendergrast brothers themselves are hardly the biggest boosters of DRM. I think it’s significant that unknown authors without DRM are outselling stars with “protected” books. As Ficbot and many another TeleRead regular will agree with me, DRM imposes major inconveniences on readers. That said, I appreciate your speaking up. Please continue. David
March 8th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
I’m not boosting DRM either — I’m just not certain that anything other than an apples-to-apples comparison of sales is going to be very persuasive to publishers who may still view unprotected ebooks as an invitation to piracy. From time to time I’ve run across comments to the effect of “Nope, I’ll never buy an ebook with DRM — I only buy unprotected ebooks.” Well, if you see comments like that often enough, if you still view the web as the music publishers often have, see it as loaded with people who don’t want to pay for material and who want to send thousands of unauthorized (and of course unpaid for) copies of unprotected files out over the internet, what will it take to persuade you that publishing editions without DRM can still be good business and that you won’t be burned badly enough by pirated copies to matter?
Fictionwise, with its mix of protected and unprotected editions, is in a nice position to start providing those numbers, but the apples-to-apples comparison has been possible only with public domain work. But it occurs to me that with Fictionwise now owning EReader, the Pendergrasts may be able to compare numbers for protected and unprotected copy sales with some of Robert Silverberg’s novels. Not public domain, offered in unsecured multiple formats at Fictionwise and in secured format at EReader. While Silverberg’s numbers won’t be in the same range as King’s or Grisham’s, might the comparison of sales of his novels in DRMd and non-DRMd editions be persuasive to publishers? Silverberg’s been a major name in science fiction for 40 years. Maybe a look at the sales of his titles might make a difference to publishers who are leery of dropping DRM? If I were the Pendergrasts, and wanted to start driving a stake through DRM, I’d be looking at Silverberg’s sales at Fictionwise and at EReader; if Mr. Silverberg felt like providing information, it might also be worth their while to ask him if he or his print publishers had seen any significant problems with pirated copies of his ebooks.
Bests,
Tony
March 8th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Thanks for your thoughtful posts, Tony. I think the real problem I have with the approach the publishers seem to be taking here (aside from the lack of common sense they exhibit—I mean, come on, are pirated copies of the Modern Library edition of Great Expectations really such a threat to the bottom line of anybody’s business? Would the 3 people who might buy such a book really be doing it to spread it far and wide on the torrents?) is the circularity of the whole argument. If they don’t offer the titles in non-protected format, they’ll never know if it will end well. But they never WILL offer them because they don’t KNOW if it will end well. It’s a chicken-and-egg argument. I for one just want to make sure that if I buy a book today, I can still read it tomorrow, as I can with paper books, even if I change devices. DRM does not guarantee me safety as far as this subject goes, and that’s why I don’t buy anything with DRM.
March 9th, 2008 at 10:50 am
Tony Rabig discusses the subtleties of comparing the sales numbers of items with DRM restrictions and without restrictions. The main post above discusses audiobooks, and there are examples in the marketplace right now of matching content with and without DRM.
A big-budget movie starring Will Smith “based” on the story “I Am Legend” by Richard Matheson was released recently. The Blackstone Audio website sells an audiobook of “I Am Legend and Other Stories” as an MP3 CD without DRM restrictions. The Audible website sells the same audio content as a download in a proprietary format with DRM restrictions. eMusic sells it as an MP3 download without DRM restrictions. A movie release often increases sales substantially for a book, so perhaps Blackstone Audio is getting valuable feedback about format preferences.
Unfortunately, the comparison of sales figures is complicated because eMusic is a subscription website. You cannot simply purchase an individual audiobook from eMusic. Also Audible encourages subscriptions, and the best prices are reserved for subscribers. So both websites use business models that push customer lock-in and that makes sales comparisons more difficult to interpret. In addition the prices being charged vary considerably between formats and venues. Here are some examples of items with and without DRM:
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson – Unabridged – Blackstone Audio
$9.99 – downloadable MP3s at eMusic – not DRM restricted
$14.68 – downloadable Audible format - DRM restricted – for members
$11.48 - downloadable Audible format - DRM restricted – Platinum sub
$29.95 – MP3 CD - Library edition direct from Blackstone Audio
$13.57 - Audio CDs at Amazon
Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk – Unabridged – Blackstone Audio
$9.99 – downloadable MP3s at eMusic – not DRM restricted – 1 cred
$16.15 – downloadable Audible format - DRM restricted – for members
$11.48 - downloadable Audible format - DRM restricted – Platinum sub
$15.56 - Audio CDs at Amazon
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood - Unabridged - Random House Audio
$19.99 – downloadable MP3s at eMusic – not DRM restricted - 2 creds
$19.58 – downloadable Audible format - DRM restricted – for members
$11.48 - downloadable Audible format - DRM restricted – Platinum sub
$29.70 – Audio CDs at Amazon
Finally, it should be noted that Audible Corporation does support the burning of CDs from Audible files if you have a Windows system and Nero software. So DRM can be removed with some “official” support.