One case in which dropping copy protection improved sales.
It’s been 18 months since O’Reilly, the world’s largest publisher of tech books, stopped using DRM on its ebooks. In the intervening time, O’Reilly’s ebook sales have increased by 104 percent. Now, when you talk about ebooks and DRM, there’s always someone who’ll say, “But what about [textbooks|technical books|RPG manuals]? Their target audience is so wired and online, why wouldn’t they just copy the books without paying? They’ve all got the technical know-how.”So much for that theory.
More here.
Addendum: see the comments below for good reason to dismiss this particular datum.
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5 comments
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February 4, 2010 at 11:11 pm
afinetheorem
And no doubt piracy of the books has increased as well. From a welfare standpoint, clearly a win-win.
February 5, 2010 at 5:02 am
pauloabx
I am skeptical about these results. Last year was also the year when Kindle was released, and when sales of smart phones increased a lot. I’m not sure how you disentangle the results. I’m not saying that DRM is good. Just that these results would need a counter-factual.
February 5, 2010 at 8:53 am
Michael Nielsen
The linked O’Reilly post which BoinbBoing bases theirs on says nothing about the increase in ebook sales being _because_ the DRM was dropped. Why not? Because ebook sales have increased enormously across the board, regardless of whether DRM has been dropped or not. That BoingBoing post is remarkably intellectually dishonest.
I don’t favour DRM. But if this is the kind of garbage argument one needs to rely on…
February 6, 2010 at 3:18 pm
FCarrasco
The best website to get ebooks is http://www.ebooksforcents.com… I have been using for more than six months and it is amazing!!!
February 8, 2010 at 12:47 pm
ebookfree
Share free ebooks, tutorials, games, software download, themes, scripts, etc…