Scott_Rouse said:
Show me an example of any other major book publishers that is making this big of a leap of faith with their customers by providing e-books with every physical book they sell.
Now that one I can show you an example of. Baen books
gives away a CD with a LOT of ebooks in many first-printing hardbacks. The CD contains rather more than just the one ebook (it typically contains the entire series that the book is part of, is free to distribute,
and they also sell the ebooks online (for roughly $5/ebook). So they eat the cost of inserting the CD, allow people to redistribute the ebooks legally for free (and people do), and still manage to make a profit on selling the ebooks.
Seriously, take a look at Baen's Webscriptions and Free Library. I know the markets aren't totally analogous; but they are making quite a bit of money now on it. No DRM, no watermarks. Giving away selected parts of their back catalog. And making money at it. (
www.baen.com,
www.webscription.net and
www.baen.com/library). In particular, read Eric Flint's letters posted at the library.
I know you've said the Magic Online team is experienced with this kind of thing; but the physical tokens that you can redeem online are hidden in the Magic starter packs, and no-one expects to be able to open them up and thumb through them.
I would say just drop the one-activation-per-code thing. You're essentially going to be doing that anyway for legitimate customers, only with more hassle and time wasted (interaction with customer service and assumption of innocence on the part of the customer). You're still requiring personally identifiable information. Keep the watermarks. Keep the fee with credit card and address. Just allow multiple activations. It'll get you $2 per copy that you would otherwise lose to P2P/Bittorrent; and save you the cost of the customer service interaction.
Alos, please allow people to buy a standalone ebook for a significant fraction of the price of the hardcopy; no more than $10. Same privileges and file as the copy that comes with the hardcover. Again, you get $$ that you would otherwise lose to the underground distribution.