Quote:
Originally Posted by twowheels
It seems that the publishers should see the 'writing on the wall' and act in their own self interest to head off these types of legal challenges.
If they used their existing power given by DRM and worked with the major sellers to create a "resell this book" feature where people could submit the book for sell as used (which would remove your capability to access it on your devices, like lending the book does). If your copy sells (used copies sold in a first-in-first-out order) Amazon [or other vendor] keeps a cut, the publisher keeps a cut, and the seller gets 70% of the sell price, and everybody's happy.
If you decide, before the book sells, you could retract it from the for-sale stack and get it back.
I suspect that many people who don't re-read (myself included) would sell some of their books back when they're done reading them and everybody'd be legit and benefit for all. I'd probably buy more books new and for a higher price if I knew that I could resell them.
I think that used books would sell for more than used books do currently (due to the lack of degradation of digital files that everybody keeps mentioning) and yet the publisher gets a cut of used sales, which they currently don't with paper books.
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I suspect that with bestsellers sold through Amazon it would be like the current system for paper books. Trade your book in for $1.22 credit and they sell it for 11.77+
A year ago there were thousands of bestsellers sold by individuals on Amazon, but the prices were often under a dime. Now I can't fid them? links anyone.
If 10,000 people pre ordered a bestseller, then at least 3,000 would be on sale the next day. And I am thinking that publishers would not allow, and Amazon would not promote selling second hand copies till the sales fell of for new copies. By then their might be 100,000 people queued up to sell their 'used' ebooks, and if they wanted 1/2 price for instance, very good chance the book has already been discounted by that much or more. The publishers have unlimited copies they can sell, and I am sure some fee would be applied to a license transfer. No way they couldn't under cut anyone actually trying to get more then 50 cents for a used book, and for that amount it seems economically unviable. Too much trouble to go to.
Helen