I have also made a few donations to authors via this site, not many but a few.

So why do I do this. I do it becasue even though I love free content, I also recognize that helping the author’s pay the bills will facilitate keeping that free content coming. I do not think I am alone on this. True, many people pirate and will not pay for anything, but those people are going to pirate regardless of what the prublishers try to do to stop them.

When I think about music, I realize that in my life time I have bought every Jethro Tull album 3 or four times – first in vinal, then casset, then CD, then iTunes. I have paid the artist four times, I think I have the moral right to store and copy that music to the next generation of playback technology.

So what about that $30 I spent for the Audio book Tale of Two Cities . Heck, I could have checked out the CD at the library and ripped it, but I didn’t. I paid for it becasue I understand the need to support the industries that produce this content. – Haven’t I paid my dues? Why is my $30 ToTC DRM? Guess what – I am not going to buy it again. Next time I will ripp it – and I won’t feel guilty.

OK, I’m done venting.

However, as we here know the publishing companies do not have the power anyway. Too many of them have blundered by turning down the JK Rowlings and Siglers out there. Online self-publishing and podcasting has busted their domination wide-open. Scott Sigler and many others after him have shown the power of new media by going directly to the people. When we like it we actually do buy it either directly through donation or it enables that author to sell by physical means now that a fanbase has been built. Are they all stellar? Of course not, but that’s the fun of it. I can tell you right now that I’d have never ever purchased Karen Moning’s “Darkfever”, in a bookstore it would likely be shoved in the section with the teeny-bopper love stories disguised as vamp. books where I wouldn’t be caught dead. But because it was here I tried it out – and then I couldn’t quit listening but went on an all weekend listening spree. I’m going to buy all of the fever series now.

So we’re more or less on the same page, I’m just willing to accept DRM where I perceive enough of a value and want.

Rob

And I don’t think we disagree about the value of paying for books of any kind — digital download, print copies, Kindle editions… whatever. I buy lots of books. I’d buy audiobooks if they weren’t a) of terrible file quality and b) defective by design by pointless DRM. They have two big problems to solve. Oh, and it’s 2009. Both problems were solved in the last five years. They just need to wake up to that fact.

So in short; audible has its value and for the price I spend less on books and actually get more read this way than I would had been buying them physically. Most non-fiction though I still buy physically for its reference ability. Nothing beats the flip-through convenience of finding references.

The other being that the books I want to listen to aren’t there!