One of the boldest parts of JK Rowling's strategy to self-publish her Harry Potter e-books is the associated lack of DRM and how it has forced e-book retailers to fulfil sales of her book for no commission.

Although Rowling is selling her e-books via her own ecommerce site, she wants to ensure that people can enjoy them on whatever device they have -- be it a Kindle, an

iPad, a Sony Reader or a Nook. As such she is opting to digitally watermark her e-books as opposed to encrypting them with strict DRM.


Currently, both Amazon and Apple have restricted their e-book files so that they can only be read on the Kindle and the iPad respectively. But in order for Kindle and Apple to be able to offer their owners access to the e-books of the biggest selling author of the decade, they will have to create an exception to this rule, and forgo the 30 percent commission that they usually charge authors or publishers. This is a big precedent and perhaps indicates the start of a sea change. Will there be a sliding commission scale for authors depending on their stature? Will they finally scrap their proprietary DRM?

Many e-book retailers (including Sony, Kobo and Nook) sell ePub files that have been encrypted with Adobe's DRM, which allows files to be shared across any devices that have the same encyrption system, but restricts readers to a limited number of downloads and devices. This is more flexible than Apple's FairPlay and Kindle DRM, which only work if you have an Apple or Kindle device respectively.

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Google has tried a more open approach with Google Editions with "Books in the Cloud". By storing e-books online, Google will let readers access their books on any device wherever they are, provided it connects to the web.

Rowling's approach -- where she eschews strict DRM in favour of digital watermarking -- is even more flexible. While strict DRM ensures that you are the rights holder before you can access the content, digital watermarking (sometimes known as social DRM) simply associates the file to the purchaser. This means that e-books can be used across any platform, but if they are uploaded to file-sharing websites, the copyright holder should be able to tell which purchaser was responsible (although any file-sharer worth their salt would know how to remove such a watermark).


The issue that all of this raises is the complete lack of standardisation of digital rights management techniques across the industry -- with many more competitors than we saw in past format battles such as VHS versus Betamax or Blu-Ray versus HD DVD.

As it currently stands, cooperation sounds unlikely. At least two out of the three major platform providers (Apple and Amazon) have no history of cooperating with others. Meanwhile Apple and Adobe's long-running feud (which saw Apple banish Flash content from its iOS platform) is unlikely to be resolved over e-books.

Rowling's moves suggests an even bigger shake-up. If Rowling has openly come out against strict DRM and gone it alone, what about Dan Brown? What about Catherine Cookson? What about the other cash cows for both publishers and e-book retailers?

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If mega-authors know that iBooks and Kindle will continue to allow readers to fulfil purchases of their books without having to pay them 30 percent commission, what's stopping them from following suit? This could mean that the Apples and the Amazons of this world reconsider their commission structure in order to retain at least some commission from big players. Perhaps offering more favourable deals depending on an author's literary stature? This may even be enough to force them to adopt standardised or at least looser DRM measures in the near future?


Many commentators believe that DRM will loosen up. Richard Mallet, CEO of the Publishing Association, says: "Something that the publishing industry can learn from the music industry is that less DRM is better -- it took a while for the music industry to realise that."

He added: "There is always a role for DRM in terms of helping to know how much royalties to pay so payments can be processed but as a protection measure you do need some rights management but we shouldn't rely on a technological solution to protect form infringement."

Rowling is not the first person to turn her back on strict DRM -- there are companies like Baen Books, which doesn't put any DRM restrictions on its content, but has been shown to be one of the least pirated publishers.

One of the major contributors to e-book piracy is the staggered nature of ebook releases around the world. If you are a huge fan of an author, but the e-books aren't going to be available in your country for at least a year after initial launch because a suitable publishing partner hasn't been found, then you are going to use any means necessary to get your hands on the new tome.

Some authors are using this to their advantage. Paulo Coelho mines piracy data to see if there's a burgeoning interest for his books in a particular market. In some cases he actually assisted people in pirating his own books, by uploading copies of them to file-sharing networks. Doing this with a Russian translation of


The Alchemist not only helped him increase sales of the title from around 10,000 copies a year to more than a million, but also helped him to drive awareness of his other titles in Russia.

If publishers aren't willing to take this sort of risk and still want to minimise piracy, then they will have to consider better synchronising their major releases -- just as movie and games publishers have had to do.

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