Say No to DRM for Hassle-free Ebook Distribution

For an author who has spent months or years painstakingly crafting their novel, finally putting it out there in the world can be a scary thing. Will people like it? What if it doesn't sell very well? Or at all? What if no one even notices its' existence? We want to protect ourselves and our work any way that we can, like the proud (nervous, frightened) parents that we are.

One way that you can protect your ebook is by including Digital Rights Management (DRM) with the book. DRM prevents people from stealing from you by copying and downloading your book illegally. Use it, you are told, and you can rest assured that the people reading your book will have actually paid for it, which is only fair – after all, you should be compensated for all that hard work you put into writing the book! It just makes sense.

Unfortunately, the truth about DRM isn't so rosy. Many readers hate DRM because it reduces their rights and limits the features of their ebooks, such as preventing them from printing the book they purchased. Or if you and your wife use competing ereaders, purchasing a book with DRM for one device will make it unreadable on the competing device. DRM has even been known to harm readers' computers and ereaders! It also tends to increase the price of books that have it, making your work less attractive to the consumer. Perhaps the worst sin, though, is that it doesn't really work. If someone really wants to "steal" your book, they're only a quick Google search away from learning a variety of methods to remove the DRM protection, and that's if they even want to go the high tech route – if they wanted to, readers could copy your novel by capturing screenshots or simply photographing it with a cheap digital camera! The only thing it really does succeed at doing is annoying your readers.

So the solution is letting people steal your work? Actually, yes… sort of. Authors and publishers that have removed DRM protection from their books say that they think it actually helps their success. Much like the recording companies' use of cheap music on iTunes, O'Reilly Media has discovered that DRM-free ebooks at low prices discourage piracy. And that removing the DRM has allowed them to sell their books in more formats, which has made their customer base happy and increased their sales. Writers like Cory Doctorow and Paulo Coelho have even found that giving their ebooks away for free, and without DRM so that people can share them, has increased the sales of all their other books, earning them more money!

"Obscurity," Tim O'Reilly says, "is a bigger threat than piracy." So true – especially for self-published authors who have to work hard to get their name out there and get people interested. Forget about people stealing your book – let them! Your goal is to get as many people as possible to know your name and your books. The number of people who "steal" from you will always be a small percentage, and it's well worth it to make sure you're being read in as many ways as possible and making new loyal fans who will pay for your next book… and the next one after that!