What are the advantages and disadvantages of digital rights management for self-published authors?

Question

DRM (digital rights management) is being used in just about every electronic format, including files used in electronic readers. My question is whether this is a good thing or a bad thing for writers, or does it really matter?

Since an author with a "traditional" publishing contract really has no control, this is really targetted more towards self-published authors who are also responsible for doing their own promotion and marketing.

I would like to know if not using DRM can result in your work being pirated or will it be a non-issue? If people do end up giving away copies, does DRM have the potential to lead to others buying the work out of guilt or possibly buying one of your other books? From a marketing perspective, does this make good business sense?

Answer 1

This is basically a question of marketing strategy.

The major pro of DRM is that it helps avoid pirating; the major con is that it limits accessibility and portability, and can annoy readers and users.

So it seems to me that the primary consideration should be: "Is pirating going to cost me so much, that I'm better off risking limiting and annoying users?".

For most independent, self-publishing authors, I think publicity is the biggest concern. If you're popular enough that pirated copies are really costing you, that probably means you're doing astoundingly well. Whereas finding readers is tough; you don't want to turn anybody off because of incompatible readers or annoying registration processes - they might easily skip your book entirely. So by default, I'd lean towards DRM free. But here are some additional considerations:

• For publishers, DRM probably makes a lot more sense than it does for a single author. If your own personal titles are being pirated, you might not be losing a lot; if you've got hundreds of titles being pirated, that might be more of a dent.
• You may have certain idealogical preferences - about pirating, or copyright, or current DRM practices - which you'd like to reflect by your choice of whether or not to use DRM.
• You may want to use a publishing platform which does or does not utilize DRM; if you don't have strong preferences on DRM, this issue may be secondary to publishing on the best platform you can.

Answer 2

DRM has been pretty harmful in my experience with creating and selling information products.

I used some fairly heavy handed DRM when I first started out. I realized this was a mistake after taking feedback from my customers and analyzing conversion rates. I ended up doing a lot of testing on implementations of DRM to determine what worked and what did not. The only type of DRM currently I maintain is a very light watermark when someone prints one of my products. I am not certain if that really counts as DRM, but it doesn't affect my sales.

I ended up with much higher return purchases as a direct result of removing DRM. This represents a higher level of trust and satisfaction based on customer feedback.

One additional thought. A little emotional blackmail in the eBook really helps convert people who do pirate it.

I hope my perspective is helpful. I am new to this site, so let me know if I screwed something up.

Answer 3

If an ebook has DRM, it tends to be tied to a specific reader (actually, a specific physical reader-device). Since devices are, to some extent, short-lived and libraries are (or should arguable be able to be) long-lived, DRM directly harms the end consumer.

If the DRM is implemented with call-backs to a central server (not the case, as far as I am aware, with any ebook format, but quite common in computer games), the usefulness of the product is limited to the lifetime of the DRM-grant-access service. There's no real incentive for the original publisher to keep it running, once "the long tail" has been entered, so things protected by such a DRM are only useful as long as the publisher thinks they should be.

On the balance, I'd say that not including DRM is the right thing. Even with DRM, it's not hard for the ebook consumer to strip the DRM (I understand it is at the "install a piece of software, press a button" level of complexity, these days). By slapping DRM on the published content, you are annoying legitimate customers and not deterring people wanting to illegally copy the work(s).

Answer 4

It varies for each reader, but the majority(at least the vocal majority) say that if I pay for a book, I should own it fully. It should be mine to move to another e-reader, another PC/laptop, or anywhere else.

DRM normally doesn't allow this. With DRM, you never really own any book, you just rent it, and it can be removed any time, like it happened with Amazon. You can't give it to friends to read, give it over to charity shops or anything else you can do with paper books.

That said, if the big publishers start pushing DRM, there is little the public can do, except boycott e-books. Which is what is stopping many like me from buying an E-reader.

In your case, unless you self publish, your publisher will decide the issue for you. If you do self publish, keep in mind that many books that don't have DRM, still sell a lot. People are still honest enough to pay for them.

Answer 5

As Standback pointed out, it is mainly a marketing issue. Therefore I suggest that you test your market to find the answer.

If you write a series of books and offer the first one DRM-free, you can watch the numbers and comments of your customers. After that you can use DRM for the second one (you should explain on your blog/website that you use DRM now and why and add an address where to complain). Again watch the numbers and the reaction.

If the numbers are better without DRM, apologise to your readers and offer the second DRM-free. If the DRM version is a success keep testing.

It should be mentioned, that some of the DRM problems (like giving the book to friends) are addressed with existing DRM solutions. But I haven't used them myself, I only read about it. You should make crystal clear to your customers what is possible with your chosen DRM and what not.

Answer 6

As I mentioned in my edited version of the original question, this is a question that was presented to one of the other writer's groups that I am a part of, and I wanted to see what folks here thought of the issue. I thought I would go ahead and share what came out of the other discussion.

As it has already been mentioned, if you are under contract to a "traditional" publisher, the writer doesn't have much input on this decision. The publisher is going to do what they believe to be in their own best interests, and that makes sound business sense.

However, for a self-published author focusing primarily on e-books, it is a completely different matter. What most of them have decided is that it does not make sense to use DRM for their books. The reason, as mentioned in other answers here, is that they are more concerned about getting readers, so if anyone wants to share the book, they are okay with that. They feel that the possible benefit of obtaining a new follower outweighs the potential lost revenue.

To further expand on that, a good number of them actually offer at least one book for free in the express hopes that people will enjoy it so much they will go back and buy something else the author has available. In a similar vein, many will offer a loss-leader, or a very low priced book, with the same intention. Bottom line, for them it is more important to obtain a following.

Interestingly enough, we found that a good number of more successful authors agreed with these same principles. They felt that the need to continue to increase a following coupled with the risk of alienating some people by using DRM meant that it made more sense for them to NOT use it.