Quote:
Originally Posted by doreenjoy
I guess I don't see the big issue because I very rarely keep books. I read one, it's entertaining, then I get rid of it. If I was a stockpiler, or a re-reader, I guess I could understand.
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But do you destroy the book after you've read it, by throwing it in a trash bin or burning it, or hand it to someone else?
For a lot of people, the issue with ebooks isn't "I want to keep this forever and re-read it several times," but "if I'm the only person who's ever allowed to read this book, it's not worth it."
It's selling books like they're movies-in-theaters, instead of DVDs. 1 purchase, 1 user, rather than 1 purchase shared among as many people as the user cares to invite to share.
It's not a nonviable model (we have no problems with 1 movie ticket getting you 1 viewing, at a pre-set time & place, for about the price of a paperback book), but it's not how "books" have been sold in the past. And it's counter-intuitive to have a drastically different set of rights for products sold on the same webpage ("click here to buy the hardcover; click here to buy paperback; click here to buy a used copy... click here to buy the ebook").
It doesn't say "click here to buy this content in a sharable form that you're free to highlight, bookmark & annotate at will; click over here for this content in a limited-user form with limited annotation ability that you can't share."
We expect that different *types* of products to be marketed separately.