publishing

What Is DRM And Should You Use It?

What is DRM?

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DRM stands for Digital Rights Management. That is tech-speak, but in layman’s terms, it means your electronic content is protected from it being shared or ‘pirated’ over the internet without your consent or knowledge. Having DRM on your content restricts access to copying, editing, and printing.

This can give digital content creators (musicians, authors, publishers) a bit of security and keep a tighter rein and more control on their works. As with anything else, there are varied opinions about how it works, the real security of it, and whether it’s a good thing or bad thing.

But, let’s step back and take a quick look at some of its history.

History

The idea of having digital content protected at the source has been around since the old ‘floppy disks’ (I hope I didn’t date myself there). From the floppy disks, the process extended to music CDs. This is where most of the controversy was thrust into the public spotlight, and where the music sharing company, Napster, was brought under heavy scrutiny. Many musical artists protested and sued Napster over the music being shared to listeners for free through mp3 files. This was a matter of the bottom line, money, and well totally justified, but more importantly, it was about the overall violation and disregard of copyright and ownership of the content.

The music industry was the first to take the hit from peer-to-peer file sharing, and from their experience and mistakes, the movie industry learned a lot and began to lace their DVDs with the code to prevent movies from being copied and shared endlessly. An owner of a DVD can legally make a copy for his or her own use, but this ability is limited by the digital management code in the disk. Music CDs were soon equipped with a similar protection to help cut the piracy and in an attempt to preserve copyright and keep the musicians from losing money.

The new player on the market is now the booming business of ebooks, and with that, it brings about the same issues that the above mentioned industries faced. Authors and publishers, the creators of ebooks, are now in the position of protecting their craft and hard work – leading back to the biggest protector, DRM.

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Should you use DRM?

Here, I will be speaking about eBooks. First, in uploading your content to a retailer (Amazon, Apple, Kobo, BnN) you may or may not be given the option to apply DRM to your content. Once you are at that point in uploading your book you have to make a decision about protecting it.

To me, it’s a matter of personal preference and what your expectations may be. Piracy runs rampant on the inter-webs, and realistically there is no good way to stop it. ‘If it can be taken for free, it will be.’ That’s the unfortunate truth.

With that said, let’s say you are releasing a free ebook. In that case, DRM might be a mute point. I say that because in a strange way, if you are putting something up for free, your content will more than likely be downloaded many times online, creating pub and exposure for you, your writing style, and your book. If putting it up for free, with the notion that word will spread about your product, then DRM-free might be the way to go. The only problem with that is, as piracy goes, there are some websites taking free works and then selling them on their site with no pay out to the author. Here is a very interesting post about this issue written by Y. Correa.

Another thing to consider is that is some circles, there have been reports of consumers having trouble using DRM content. I don’t know how true this is or what the percentages are, but if you are on the fence, you may want to look into these potential problems before you decide.

Not having DRM on a bestseller might not have a significant effect on sales if it is already at that level, and in the case of J.K. Rowling, she moved into the ebook market being DRM free. Piracy was always something Rowling has had to deal with, especially early on. Her thought in going DRM free was that she might build an audience of pirate readers and convert them into paying customers. But, very few have J.K. Rowling’s clout to pull that off.

For my ebooks, I do not use DRM when going through the retailers, unless they require it on their end. If there is a chance that a consumer might have a technical issue that may reflect negatively on my product, then I try to avoid it if possible. I want my reader’s experience to be the best it can be.

This all can seem very confusing, so I tried to give a little background on this ongoing topic of discussion in the internet community. There is no right or wrong way, and honestly, if a consumer really wants to buy your content, I don’t think DRM will sway them one way or the other.

The good news is that if you are asking this particular question, then it must mean you have completed your hard work and are ready to send it out to the masses. To that I say…Congrats!!

Why Should An Author Self-Publish?

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That is a question that can have many answers, and I’m willing to bet that if you took a poll with authors, you would get varied opinions, ideas, and reasons why. And to me, that is the beauty of the question – each author, with their own creative minds and with their own creative ideas will have their own reasons why.

But before we get to that, the first question we have to ask ourselves is why do we write in the first place? If you ask me that question my answer will always be, because I Iove to write. Our love for writing propels us to use our creativeness, refine it, and release it to the world. We spend hours, days, months, and sometimes even years getting that story out of our head and ready for readers to enjoy. To do that, you have to get published – either electronically or in print. This leads back to the title of this post.

The answer lies within the prospects of you getting published by a one of the ‘Big 6’ publishing houses. (It may be the Big 5 by now, based on mergers and buy-outs.) If you are one of the few to get that big deal, then most of the things that involve the process of self-publishing will not concern you. The publisher will take care of all the behind-the-scene details. If you are not one of those few then the answer is . . . YES! But this post isn’t about traditional vs self-publishing.

Now that we got all of that out of the way, let’s focus on what most of us will face – then ins-and-outs of self-publishing.

ALL DONE
Now that we are done with our novel, novella, or short-story, we need to refine it, edit it, and make it ready for the masses. The process of editing and having a second, third, and even a fourth draft is something for another post, but the editing process must be addressed seriously before moving on to the next step. Now once we have that done and we have our cover art done, we can start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. There are other things that are involved in the self-publishing process, and again, that is something for another article.

I want to go back to something I wrote earlier – We write because we love to do it. For me, that is the biggest truth in all of this. Believe me, I will take all the profits that my work produces, icing on the cake, if you will. But the feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction of setting a goal and completing it is the number one reason. Writing something that is yours gives you total control, and that control is one of the great advantages of going indie.

CONTROL
The times have changed and the best part of self-publishing is having control of everything about your work from start to finish. Most of the authors I know, and have corresponded with, prefer having a grasp on their projects and their future. While having control comes with its own financial costs, in the end, a self-published author will always receive more of a profit because of substantially lower commission rates. And yes, while we do write because we love to do it, once we put our product out into the public and it is up for sale, then there has to be some business-minded thinking involved.

Having complete control that comes with self-publishing, is the biggest difference in being traditionally-published. You get to decide which way you want your story to go. You get to decide what cover art works best for you. Only the author of the story they tell, or book they write, can know what concept they want their book cover to reveal. In my own case, I have done cover art prior to writing and I have done them after the story was finished. Both have their advantages and both can guide you in your writing based on what your cover reveals. Another part of that control Is for you to decide on doing your cover art yourself or hiring a cover designer to get it just the way you want it. Sometimes it’s good to get someone else’s perspective and ideas. But again, you have the control!

Since there are so many distributors to make your book available, deciding on where, when, and setting the pricing points, is entirely up to you. Publishing ebooks does not cost a thing, if you take the time and learn how to do it yourself. If not, with all the resources available, you can get your work formatted at a relatively low cost.

If you decide to sale your book in print, once the file is in the proper format, usually PDF, you can have your book up for sale at no cost. This is possible because of POD, or print-on-demand. Basically, your book is a file sitting on a company’s server and when someone places an order to buy your book, it prints it, cover and all, and it is sent out to the reader. The companies involved in this, (Createspace, Lulu, Lightning Source) take their cost for printing, paper, etc, then you get the residual. The best part of publishing your books these two ways is CONTROL. You choose the sale price, thus determining your profit percentage. Being able to have your book in paperback and it not cost a thing is almost too hard to believe, but it is very real and being done daily.

ACCOMPLISHMENT
Doing it yourself, from start to finish, gives you an overwhelming sense of accomplishment – more so than being traditionally-published, in my opinion. I say that because it is a long road from the time you type or write your first word of your masterpiece to the fine-polished and finished product. At that point, only YOU truly know how much hard work you have put into it. The blood, sweat, and tears are only experienced by you. And no matter the sales or the reviews, good or bad, you will have done something many people have said they would do . . . finish writing a book! The sense of accomplishment in that can never be taken away from you. You gave birth to your idea and saw it to the end.

TAKING RESPONSIBILITY
Remember when you were a kid and you did something that would get you in trouble? Back then most of us would not take responsibility for our bad actions, and it was only until our parents ‘persuaded’ us into telling the truth. But taking responsibility for something as exciting as writing a book is easy because it should fill you with a sense of pride . The difference here is that the words you have ‘penned’ are solely yours – your ideas, thoughts, and hard work. You are responsible for the finished product, and if you did it the self-published route, then it’s all your baby to claim and be proud of.

THE JOURNEY
Speaking for myself and my travels down this self-publishing road, I am very happy with what I have accomplished. Make no mistake, writing is hard work, and if you add in the rest of what goes along with self-publishing, the work is even harder, but in the end, knowing you did it right and did it yourself will propel you to your next big project. The self-confidence that self-publishing brings is priceless. We can’t forget we have to do all of the little things to put out a good product and make it just as professional as a ‘Big 6’ production.

So get out there and gather as much information as possible and use that to make your dream come true . . . and Self-Publish!

ALJ