I really don't think history bears this out. The lesson of Apple seems to be people will accept DRM if you make it easy for them to buy. There were plenty of places to buy DRM-free music (including Amazon) yet people still went to iTunes because of its ease of use.
Of course Apple later proved DRM doesn't matter and people will pay for a DRM-free product if it's easy to purchase. But that's an entirely different point. As far as I can see the historical precedent is that DRM isn't enough of a deterrent for most people.
The author's point was not that DRM deters people from buying; rather, that it deters them from using multiple competing services.
I think iTunes actually supports the author's point - how many people were there using iTunes and Rhapsody? DRM seems to have kept the iTunes customer well and truly locked in, at least for long enough for Apple to make a pile of money off their monopoly before Spotify et al. started moving in.
I understand that but I think the inferred point was "drop DRM and people will buy from multiple sources" which I don't think is true. My point is people don't want to use multiple services. If Amazon makes it easy to purchase books people will stay with Amazon regardless of DRM.
I'll give you an example. I was tempted to buy books from Apress today (they have a all e-books are $15 special). But I weighed the pros and cons and decided to buy them from Amazon instead for an average of $7 more per book because I like having books in my Kindle library that are automatically accessible.
So DRM is irrelevant but it isn't the main deterrent.
I have a kindle, and I very much like the convenience of being able to manage my library by easily moving books on and off of the kindle wherever I am. However, any time I buy a book from Amazon I first check if a DRM-free alternative is available elsewhere. I don't do this because of principled opposition to DRM (I am opposed to DRM on principle, but it's not why I do this); I do it because I want my books to be as portable as possible, not locked in to any one merchant, platform, or device. Unfortunately, in most cases the only option is a file with some other form of DRM that won't work on my kindle. If the big publishers stopped using DRM, I would stop buying ebooks from Amazon and buy all of them directly from the publishers.
If such were to happen, I'm sure that other people would offer cloud services that would allow you to upload your eBooks from wherever you buy them and then access them from your device over your choice of wireless carrier. If they lost enough market share, I'm sure that even Amazon would start offering such a service.
I think Barnes and Noble has the potential to mount a decent challenge with the Nook - I've been seeing more and more of them around. I can see the ease or difficulty of moving books between the two affecting its performance.
If it's easy to buy from B&N and put it on the Kindle, and buy from Amazon and put it on the Nook, I can see people purchasing from both stores.
> My point is people don't want to use multiple services.
And the OP's point hinges on the idea that while a given person will want to use only one service, there's less likely to be a single service that everybody uses, with each consumer buying from the service of their choice, knowing that their book can be read on any device.
I thought the success of iTunes was only because of the success of the iPod. The iPod was one of the most popular music playing devices. I'd say that iTunes Music Store only did well because of the popularity of the iPod and how it was built into the software you use to manage your iPod.
Of course Apple later proved DRM doesn't matter and people will pay for a DRM-free product if it's easy to purchase. But that's an entirely different point. As far as I can see the historical precedent is that DRM isn't enough of a deterrent for most people.