Originally Posted by atanner
There are no competitors, nobody will ever challenge this product, and the group of people that will buy it is very limited. Like I said, these authors are targeting maybe 200 - 500 potential customers tops.
In which case, distributing the book to thousands of people on the torrent networks is irrelevant to its profits, because those readers won't be the actual market for the book.
Does the author really believe that those 200-500 people, out of the whole country (world?) are so well in-touch with each other that they'll be exchanging ebooks? Novels spread like fire because they can be recommended to anyone; specialized technical books are not handed around to spouses and cousins and "that guy with the green shirt I met at the Halloween party" because they have no interest. If those people*do* have a passing interest, but would never have bought the book in the first place, what harm does "piracy" do to the author?
So according to you, which are these "effective" DRMs?
DRMs that require an internet connection for use of the book are much harder to break. DRMs that require a specific device and aren't usable on a general computer are much harder to break--the ibookstore's DRM wasn't cracked until the ibooks program could be installed on a PC. (And then it was a matter of days.)
Social DRM, as mentioned, doesn't prevent filesharing at all, but *does* encourage customers to buy their own copy. And with highly specialized books for a technical market, price is likely less of a concern than convenience.
Make them easy to use, and reward the customer for good treatment of ebooks (rather than attempting to punish in advance for potential bad treatment), and you'll make more sales. PUBLICIZE that you're treating customers well, and people who don't give a damn about your topics will sometimes buy one of the books, just to see if you live up to the hype.
Nobody makes a profit by "stopping pirates" except for the sharks who sell DRM. Authors make a profit by *selling books*, for which "stopping piracy" is an incidental goal at best. Figure out how to reach your maximum market; don't fret over how much of not-your-market also winds up with reading material.
If you sold a print book to a doctor, and she hands it around to her whole staff to read, you make one sale. Ebooks can increase that to multiple sales--if they're convenient, and people don't believe the price is gouging them.