O'Reilly drops ebook DRM, sees 104% increase in sales | Hacker News Reader

O'Reilly drops ebook DRM, sees 104% increase in sales

boingboing.net

46 pointsalrex02116 comments

Note that the post is from boingboing, not O'Reilly, whose post says nothing about DRM. I've no doubt that the main reason for the sales increase is that more people are buying ebooks, not the dropping of DRM.

I think any reader of boingboing should first consider if they are reading a specious argument designed to further the author's agenda. One should not use the comments at boingboing for reference material in this effort, unfavorable facts are sometimes removed from those.

Edit: I don't mean to rag on boingboing. They are what they choose to be and it works for them, but sometimes people mistake {headline,paragraphs} for journalism.

Offtopic for the linked article, but the original O'Reilly article says that digital sales will take over physical book sales sooner than people thought.

I think that's true, judging by my own purchase behavior. I haven't bought any O'Reilly digital books yet, but I have bought a few from Pragmatic.

I now prefer buying technical books in a digital format to overcome the high shipping charges(international customer). And although I can pirate most books, I don't. As long as they provide me with an easy way to give them my money and very few restrictions on how or where I can read the content that I bought, I'll be happy to fork over my hard earned dollars. Music downloads on the other hand, don't provide that and so....

What remains is the feeling you get when you grab a physical book and a cup of tea to enjoy on your couch. You get used to reading on your ebook reader and your phone, but it won't be the same. Things are getting better with different reader designs and I think newer generations will find this less of a problem.

Music downloads on the other hand, don't provide that and so....

Amazon MP3s have no DRM, and pretty much everything in the iTunes Music Store is also DRM free these days.

Amazon doesn't allow me to purchase mp3s from the store since its US only. I don't know if iTunes does that, but I am not a fan.

I believe iTunes sells DRM-free 256kb AAC files, except in Japan.

They sound great, and play on pretty much everything.

I'm not quite sure why they still have county lockouts (except for the potential marketing release dates, but still).

Its fascinating though to see such consistently strong numbers for increase in downloads due to the removal of DRM. We'll see if dollars incent publishers to ease their usage of DRM in the future.

What would the percentage gain have been during that timeframe anyway? Print -> online sales are making huge gains each month, not necessarily because of DRM or not.

That being said, removing DRM is fantastic, and everyone should buy or contact publishers and let them know how much you appreciate the lack of DRM.

correlation/causation

You're absolutely right. Your two word snark has really added value to this discussion by clarifying that there is really no reason we should believe that these two things might have anything to do with each other whatsoever. I mean, variables routinely fly up and down by over 100% for no reason.

As xkcd had it: "Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing 'look over there'."

Um, okay, so what? Re-read the article. Where, exactly, does it claim that dropping DRM is responsible for the increase in sales? The only thing I see is blurb pointing out that dropping DRM didn't result in everyone copying instead of buying.

O'Reilly's original post does not say anything about DRM.

Apparently DRM was dropped 18 months ago, and mentioned in a previous O'Reilly announcement. This current post linking to the announcement of sales going up is simply inferring that one lead to the other.

I'm aware of what is being said. I'm pointing to the fact that it's Cory Doctorow saying it, not O'Reilly.

I don't think that point was to infer one led to the other, but rather that DRM didn't lead to rampant piracy that demolished sales (as many predicted would happen).

O'Reilly has never used any DRM on their own (oreilly.com) downloadable stuff ever. The first 12 titles they put into the Amazon Kindle Store had (were forced to have) DRM for a while, then they got Amazon to drop the DRM.

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