DRM

Modified on Tue, 19 Mar, 2024 at 4:29 PM

Digital rights management (DRM) is a class of technology that attempts to control and manage a buyer's access to digital files they have pruchased. This is one of many ways to try to prevent content from unauthorized distribution and modification. Having DRM enabled on your book means a buyer cannot purchase the book on their iPad, and then try to open and read it on their iPhone. The book is locked to the device that purchased it, in an effort to prevent piracy.

You can select DRM protection on your Draft2Digital account. Please note, however, that only three of our vendors support sales DRM:

Apple
Barnes & Noble
Vivlio

OverDrive, Hoopla, Baker & Taylor, and bibliotheca also always DRM encrypt their books due to their distribution model (library lending).

Our subscription services, Everand, and Kobo Plus encrypt their book files. So, while not technically "DRM," the files are protected in a way similar to the way DRM protection works.

Unfortunately, the Smashwords Store, Kobo, Amazon, and Tolino do not support DRM (at least when the books are submitted through us).

DRM Pros and Cons:

The major pro of DRM is that it helps avoid pirating of your work.

The major con is that DRM limits accessibility and portability and can annoy readers and users.

Draft2Digital has been told time and time again by buyers that they often won't bother purchasing books with DRM restrictions set.

Your primary consideration when deciding if you want to enable DRM should be: "Is pirating going to cost me so much, that I'm better off limiting and annoying my readers?"

For most independent, self-published authors, the discovery of your work is your biggest concern. If you're popular enough that pirated copies are really costing you, that probably means you're doing astoundingly well. Whereas if finding readers is tough; you don't want to turn anyone away because of incompatible reader hardware or annoying registration processes - they may skip your book entirely.

Our default recommendation is to go DRM free. DRM free does not mean that your books are wholly unprotected.

Additional considerations:

Are you a Publisher or Small Press?
DRM probably makes a lot more sense for you than it does for a single author. If your own personal titles are being pirated, you might not be losing a lot; but if you've got hundreds of titles being pirated, that might affect your (and your author's) bottom line.
Do you feel very strongly about copyright or pirating?
You may have certain ideological preferences which you'd like to reflect by your choice of whether or not to use DRM.

Ultimately, we leave that decision up to you.

You can turn DRM on or off on your account when logged into your account, click Account ---> Advanced User Options ---> click the box next to Enable DRM at supported channels (a green check mark will populate in the box) ---> Save (at the bottom of the page).

You will need to republish any books you wish to apply this to.

DRM will not be sent to the stores that support this until you have republished those books to the stores you had previously selected. Future books added to your account will automatically have DRM applied at the stores where this is supported once published.

If you do not want your book to be published anywhere without DRM protection, you will not want to select Smashwords Store, Kobo, Amazon, or Tolino as vendors during the upload process (or Everand, or Kobo Plus, if you are uncomfortable with the fact that their protection is not technically DRM).

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