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Originally Posted by tallguy
Can we re-sell ebooks? Would it be possible to transfer my license to a book that I've purchased to someone else? It seems like the lack of that ability is a fairly significant downside to the whole e-book idea. When I buy a book from amazon, I can read it and then sell it to the local used book store and get a couple bucks back.
I've been reading Freakonomics - the book talks about economic incentives for doing things, and it makes perfect sense. If there is no economic incentive to the whole ebook idea, the general public is not going to buy into it. There is obviously a good economic incentive to buying songs over itunes - rather than buying a whole album for $12-$18, you can buy the one good song for $1.
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I think there's a complex web of incentives that drive e-book usage, and it's often not always financial.
For me, I'm willing to pay a price that reflects a slight discount from paper copies in exchange for a) having a library that travels with me, b) getting instant delivery of a desired book, and c) the reduction of storage space as opposed to that required for paper books. I'm willing to trade off resellability and lendability in exchange for these. In fact, trading off lendability can actually be an asset - my friends are
excellent bookkeepers!
What I hate about ebook pricing, is ebook copies that are still priced at the hardcover level after paperbacks have been released. I understand why it is that way - the ebooks may have only a slight marginal cost (royalties, server fees, retailer margin), but they do have non-trivial fixed costs which, depending on how few copies are sold, can equate to a very large per title cost.
Just the same, I think if they could bring the prices down a tad, they would have a chance of making it up on volume. Maybe. It's hard to say because the active ebook purchasing community isn't that large a market comparitively speaking.