Print books vs. eBooks

I had an interesting discussion over the weekend with a major author who is also a Professor at Columbia University. Our discussion was about print versus digital publishing and covered just about every aspect of the two mediums. We agreed on most things but I was surprised, at first, when he told me his feelings about why he preferred digital publishing with DRM.

DRM is wonderful to our author friend because it restricts how many people can read one copy of a publication that they have purchased. The "problem" with print books is that one person buys a book and then allows other people to read the book. That takes money out of his pocket. It's an aspect I guess I never thought about and I can see his point.

Our discussion ended in a book store in MKE airport that specializes in old books. We agreed that all of the DRM eBooks that people buy today will be unreadable in 50 years, unlike every single book in the store we were in.

As a sidebar, he was kind enough to sign all the copies of his books that were in the store for the owner.