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Originally Posted by GreenMonkey
Secondhand sales benefit primary sales to some degree. There's been studies on this for used videogames. People buy new games, then trade in and sell their video games and use the money to buy more new games. There's a beneficial effect to the industry. I personally think PC game sales are struggling to some extent because you can no pretty much no longer sell games.
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Same thing with books--people traded and resold books, and either used that money to buy new books, or used borrowed/gift books to decide what to buy next.
No used market = no easy recommendation list among friends. No more, "hey, you like stories with funny-looking aliens; here, have this book I read last week. I didn't care for the space station politics, but maybe you'll like the author enough to buy more from him."
Instead, there's "I didn't care for the political focus, so I'm not buying more from that author, and I'm not going to bother telling my friend who likes aliens, because maybe he won't like the politics either, and I'm not going to suggest that he waste $8 finding out."
I'll hand a pbook I didn't care for to someone with similar tastes on the off-chance that she'll like it; I won't suggest that she buy a whole book I didn't care for unless I'm absolutely certain it fits her tastes very well.
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In the same, but perhaps different way, copyright infringement, like torrent downloads, of media may lead to increased sales - there is some data to suggest this - but it's certainly a more tenuous connection.
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Publishers of books, games & music all fight very hard to avoid collecting, or at least releasing, data that would prove this one way or the other.
All we've got to go by is the fact that the books, songs, & games most heavily pirated are the ones that sell best, which doesn't support the claim that piracy is damaging profits.