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I fear you are correct the price of ebooks will go up. Like the music industry book publishers are very short sighted. More often the not DRM hurts the honest who pay, and does nothing to those who do not. 80% of the time someone gives me a copy of a CD, or a book they have read, I purchase music from that artist or a book from that author. Their net gain is huge. I would venture to say that 90% of pirated material would have never been purchased to begin with, so there is no real loss to the publisher. By sharing I am giving my stamp of approval,and word of mouth advertising is worth gold. They should be making it cheaper and easier for me to purchase and share materials. I think they should offer a tiered approach. For $5 give me the first one hundred pages. If I want the rest of the book I will pay an additional $5. If I really like the book I can pay an additional $2 to share the book with one other person. If they like the book they can pass it along for $2. I would think that kind of advertising and cost of obtaining a new customer is worth a good bit more than $2 a book. I am willing to bet that most people would end up purchasing another book at full price for another book by that author.
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