[Nick_1964]

There is another disadvantage, paper books are at the low tax rate of 6% and e-books are at the normal tax rate of 21% here in the Netherlands.
They (the government) make a difference between paper books and electronical books, so they (the bookseller) have more income from the paper books then from the e-books.
Allso, you pay a small amount of money with every device you buy that go's to the "thuiskopieheffing" every phone,cd, dvd,every player and reader you pay a small fine,that go's to the industry that makes the content like music company's.
It is a copy tax,that in theory has to compensate the industry of the illegal copy's there are.
(like mp3's you can play them on your phone,so included in the price is that fee for illegal use,even when you don't play them on it,like me) But now there is a new problem,there is a ebookshop that sells "secondhand ebooks" and the anti piracy "police" called Brein has tried to end this,but they lost the case at court.
A Dutch judge says: if you remove your ebook from every device you have,you can sell it to that site (tomkabinet) once legally !
So you upload it there, all drm and watermark protection is removed and you give it a price, the site protects it again when it is sold to a new owner,with a new watermark,and when it is sold,the seller will get his money minus a fee for the site, it then will be removed from the site.
But the new owner can again,when he is finished reading,sell it at the same site.
They keep a history of buying and selling so you can never sell a copy of the book twice. (uploading it again) but a copy you buy from that site can be sold once by you,but can be sold 100 times or more because every new owner (buyer) has that right to sell it once.
And by Dutch law, it is legal.
So if I buy a ebook at Bol.com, of Google books at 5 euro, I can sell it after reading legally at that site for lets say 4,50 and they build a rather big library already.
At the end, when they keep doing it,the amount of e-books that comes out,will be less and less because when you sell it as second hand e-book,the author doesn't get his money anymore and Bol of Google will not get it too, as long as there is no copy present on your devices or computer anymore,it is legal,but who is controlling that ? And there is always a copy of the original ebook at the shop that sold it to you so even when you remove it,the copy is always there,even when you sold it on tomkabinet.
All this laws will kill the ebooks here,the differrence of the tax between 21% for an ebook and 6 % for a paper book, an extra fine for making a copy that in principle is not legal but you do pay for it,and the fact that it is now legal to sell your e-book back will get the ebook and the e-readers out of the market ! (because more sites will be copy the business model of tomkabinet,who earns now € 1.30 per sold ebook.)