Responding to a tweet about DRM being ‘cracked’ on Amazon’s Kindle made me realise why DRM is not the answer we need to protect book revenues.
What we actually need to do is to make buying an ebook as easy and risk-free as illegally copying it. Think itunes store. Right now, there is no standard and portable format for ebooks. This means that potential buyers have to hope their chosen format will outlive the device they initially purchase it for.
The second problem publishers need to address is that of pricing. People who have bought ebook readers have laid out a substantial sum, and in doing so have all but eliminated publisher’s future distribution costs. Why then are they paying the same, or more than the price of a paperback? A more palatable price would quickly get people in the habit of buying (rather than copying) ebooks, just as happened with MP3s.
There are many other pricing models. What about a free ebook reader, supported by a monthly subscription? This would get the new format into people’s hands quickly, with less initial cost, but still commit them to buying ebooks regularly. This model makes even more sense for newspapers.
How long will it take publishers to catch on? Editorial technology becomes obsolete every decade or so, but the basic product hasn’t changed. Let’s get on with it!
things that might have been otherwise 
i agree with almost all you write there, but for the statement that there is no standard & portable format for ebooks – on the contrary, there’s the original portable format: the .pdf, which even used the term ‘ebook’ as one of its default file saving presets long before anybody started making a monofunctional device on which to read them !
whereas i’ve come to embrace the ebook concept quite dramatically – i now do all my book reading with .pdfs on a nokia n810 (with a full colour touchscreen bigger even than the iphone), i don’t understand the enthusiasm for paying a lot of money for a black & white device which only does one thing – which if you get the decent versions of look nice on the train, but are a bit bulky for reading in bed; i think the real ebook device breakthrough will come when people realise they can read them on mobile devices they already have, & when the big screen touchscreen smartphone becomes the standard rather than the preserve of phone geeks. much as i tend to harrumph at apple, i’ve got to hand it to them for making smartphones mainstream.
but you’re completely correct in the way the book industry is set to make all the same mistakes the music industry made – & continues to mistake – in fearing digital & trying to control it rather than embracing it & capitalising on openness.
just as what initially fed ‘illegal’ downloading of music was the way record companies refused to release content in the format people wanted it, relying on 20th century economics of scarcity, so the book industry is being far too slow to release content in open, portable formats – most of my growing ebook collection has been sourced via bittorrent for free precisely because there isn’t a mechanism for me to pay for it & download it in my preferred format.
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