I'm pretty sure most (maybe a vast majority) of authors don't like DRM and don't want it. DRM is a publisher's thing, not an author's. It's the same with libraries; authors love them, publisher's hate them.
The author chose to publish with DRM. They could choose not to, as others have done. They could choose a publisher that doesn't add DRM. They could argue with their publisher that DRM is hurting their sales because so many people are pirating their books instead of buying them because of the DRM.
To be fair, any book a publisher wants sold DRM-free, Amazon sells DRM-free. Many publishers insist on DRM as a condition of sale. Your beef is with them, not Amazon.
And by the way, DRM is at the heart of this ebook conspiracy. One of the publishers' fears was that too many readers would be trapped in Amazon's ecosystem by DRM, giving Amazon too much leverage. The correct response to that problem is to drop the pointless, self-inflicted DRM (as some have started doing in response to the antitrust cases). Instead, the publishers chose to work with Apple to try and limit Amazon's power...
DRM on books is about the rights holder, not the person selling it. I can assure you that Amazon doesn’t actually give a shit what you do with your books outside of having an obligation to the rights holders.
Feels like a non-sequitur? What are you trying to say? My specific point is that I would wager money that Amazon being required to have DRM on their devices is required by publishers for them to be able to have that publisher's offerings. If Amazon drops the DRM, they lose the ability to offer that content.
I'm not as confident that they have the agreement include that they will not offer authors a way to have DRM free content on the platform, but I would not be surprised by it.
I understand that but I think the inferred point was "drop DRM and people will buy from multiple sources" which I don't think is true. My point is people don't want to use multiple services. If Amazon makes it easy to purchase books people will stay with Amazon regardless of DRM.
I'll give you an example. I was tempted to buy books from Apress today (they have a all e-books are $15 special). But I weighed the pros and cons and decided to buy them from Amazon instead for an average of $7 more per book because I like having books in my Kindle library that are automatically accessible.
So DRM is irrelevant but it isn't the main deterrent.
You're right that people care about convenience rather than caring about DRM - but the DRM affects the convenience. Publishers have handed Amazon a monopsony on a platter, because it's just too inconvenient to buy books somewhere else and put them on a Kindle. And that's all down to DRM.
If Amazon refused to enter that agreement, would the publisher simply refuse to sell ebooks on Amazon? I sincerely doubt that.
If Amazon was actually motivated to refuse DRM, then we would be in an entirely different situation. The reality is that the opposite is true, and that Amazon itself is one of the publishers requiring DRM!
I'd rather not pay to support retailers like Amazon that sell DRM-crippled books, just to (illegally) circumvent it. I'll demonstrate that I don't support this by only buying DRM-free books.
> I buy all my books directly from the publisher, drm-free
Most publishers don't do that. Why do you think Amazon has DRM? It's not because they enjoy running DRM schemes, they were among the first to sell straight MP3s even. It's because most publishers love DRM. See also the lawsuit against Internet Archive at the first whiff of creaks in the DRM dam.
It's not clear cut. You have to decide if you want to support the author or avoid DRM. In this case, it's hard to do both.
I dislike DRM as well, but as long as I could easily remove it I was okay with it.
I've bought a lot of ebooks from Amazon for my Kindle. Now that their most recent DRM scheme (KFX) has been uncracked for a long time, I'm having second thoughts about ebooks.
It's philosophical for me. Yes, I could buy a DRM book and then strip the DRM but that is self-defeating in the long run, in my opinion.
By refusing to buy DRM books from Amazon and choosing to buy from non-DRM providers instead, I'm sending a message as a consumer about my DRM preferences. I'm also trying to support the non-DRM providers by keeping them in business.
Buying DRM books from Amazon, then stripping it away quietly only signals that you don't mind DRM and discourages other people from directly providing non-DRM options.
Are you really arguing that the majority of authors don’t want DRM but they can’t stand up as a majority group against Amazon? I don’t buy it.
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