The corporate drive for DRM is motivated by the fear of ebook piracy. But aside from piracy, the biggest ebook-related threat to the Big Six is called Amazon.com. Until 2008, ebooks were a tiny market segment, under 1% and easily overlooked; but in 2009 ebook sales began to rise exponentially, and ebooks now account for over 20% of all fiction sales. In some areas ebooks are up to 40% of the market and rising rapidly. (I am not making that last figure up: I’m speaking from my own sales figures.) And Amazon have got 80% of the ebook retail market.
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Cutting their own throats - Charlie’s Diary
Publishers insistence on DRM encourages Amazon’s monopoly on ebook reading/sales, which is not in publishers’ (or readers’) long term interests.
Similar thing happened with Apple/iPod/iTunes, which led to less DRM on music eventually.
