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Publishers/Authors Angry at Amazon Selling Used Books
tytso writes:
In my opinion there are plenty of subjects for which Bezos deserves to be berated, including overly agressive accounting tactics, and their one-click patent. But selling used books?
The Authors Guild's argument is that authors don't get any compensation if someone purchases a used book; only the seller and Amazon.com make out on the transaction. So when amazon.com makes it easier for consumers to buy and sell used books which could also be purchased new --- at a more expensive price, of course --- it hurts the authors. The Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers would prefer that Amazon.com only allow their users to sell used books if they are out-of-print books.
Well, excuuuuuuuse me! I can understand that authors need to eat, and send their kids off to college, and all those good things. But if a book wasn't good enough for me to want to keep it, why shouldn't I be able to sell it? Using the same logic, the Authors Guild should logically be against public libraries. After all, people who use libraries can (oh horrors!) read a new book without having to pay for it!
This really goes to show the fundamental tension between content providers and consumers. If you take the Authors Guild position to its extreme, you'd think that they would much prefer that bookreaders purchase books from bookstores, and if they didn't like it, that they throw it into a landfill rather than resell it or give it away, or lend it to a friend. After all, all of these activities compete with new book sales. Fortunately for us, the doctrine that the owner of a book is allowed to do all of these things is fairly strongly encoded into law --- which is why all the President of the Authors Guild can do to write a whiny letter to Bezos asking him to please don't do this.
And thus we see the danger of the positions espoused by the Software Publisher's Association, and UCITA. Not only do they wish to take away our rights about what we can and can't do with software --- including rights which common sense would dictate are perfectly permissible in the case of the physical world, such as selling or loaning a book to a friend --- but their actions have emboldened folks such as the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers to try to take away rights which we always have had in the physical world. After all, if the software vendors can restrict what you can do their software, why shouldn't a book publisher be able to restrict what you can do with their books?
Fortunately, most book publishers don't have as much money to throw around as Disney, so they probably won't be able to purchase enough Senators to change copyright law to suit their purposes. But when thought patterns of the SPA have started infecting traditional book authors --- who really should know better --- it's obvious that we're living in dangerous times."
I hate Amazon and will not shop there. That bias notwithstanding,I AS A CONSUMER DEMAND the right to get rid of any CRAP I bought to someone else who may benefit from it. Even if it's NOT CRAP, I demand the right to relieve myself of it. Personally I keep the books I buy. BUT I would be almost willing to take up arms on this (and many other) matter. No, people. If you're going to make me purchase it, then by god I have the right to get rid of it when I'm done. It's not like I've xerox'ed the whole damn thing (which though possible would cost much more than buying it). I say let them try to ban this. Soon nothing in this world will be "returnable". What they are saying is that once you've purchased an item it is YOURS (though not really... .look at their licenses) and you can't do squat about it. WRONG. I support authors. Sometimes I go out on a limb and buy a book just because I want to take a chance. They just got paid. Now if I don't like it I'm going to sell it. Guess what? TOUGH SHIT. Your bood didn't please me. Get over it. Nothing is guaranteed in this world and I will NOT STAND STILL and put up with being stuck with your book. Would you prefer that I hunt you down and burn the shit in your front yard? I will, ya know.... I'm just that crazy. Get real, get a life, and get a clue. The free market will buy/sell what it can. It's a fact of life.
But, typical of most people today, these idiots only care about how much they can get right now. Who cares about the market they can build for the future?
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Actually, I doubt it. Scratch a writer and you'll find a reader. Ask most writers where they spent their time as kids and "the library" will be high on the list. Ask them if they could have purchased all the books they read, all the books that taught them their craft, and you won't get too many positive responses.
Taking that away might benefit this generation of writers, but they might be the last.
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
Bottom line is that they want a piece of every sale they see as likely. Hell, I'm surprised they didn't just as nicely demand^h^h^h^h^h^hrequest statistics on sales of out-of-print used books so that they could easily identify books to put back into print and make more $$ off of! Not that I'm opposed to making money. Not at all. I just don't take kindly to doing an end run around the rights of property owners. And buying a book makes that copy of it mine, to do with as I see fit.
--
If your map and the terrain differ,
trust the terrain.
Similarly, most of the larger flea markets I've been to have had signs posted that the vendors are required to collect sales tax, and probably half the stuff is used at those places.
HTH
Brett
Strange, I get 4 for my $19.95
I'm all for selling used books, CDs, movies and just about anything else you can come up with. Why? Because it encourages the creation of longer-lasting works... instead of much of the throw-away pop-culture stuff that permeates our culture today. If you create a cheesy pop tune or fluff book... you'll still get paid for people buying it. But, as people tire of it and start selling their shiny new copies as used, you make less. On the other hand, if you create a truly interesting novel or ground-breaking CD, people will buy it and hold on to it... and, even better, tell their friends.
Also, let's not forget that these are the SAME people who didn't like Amazon allowing people to post online reviews of books. Seems they thought that if people found out a book sucked, they might not buy it, and that isn't fair to the author now is it.
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
Of course, the letter is a statement of advocacy, and it has a point of view. I don't necessarily agree with everything said, but isn't this a great example of how the industry should handle this topic, especially when compared to the relatively fascist tactics used by the music industry?
I think this is very refreshing. And even if you don't agree with what they say, this type of enlightened discussion is so much better than the legal tripe that has been in the press lately. It should be used as an example to others.
Your recent proposal to Amazon.com worries me greatly as a consumer.
The Author's Guild is requesting to Amazon that they limit my right to buy and sell used books on Amazon's marketplace. This would therefore hurt competition in a free market and therefore hurt consumers.
The Argument that the author/publisher doesn't get any of the profits from the sale is correct--only because such profits have already been paid.
To take your stance on this issue to the extreme, as a consumer I could potentially use the rights to sell all kinds of published personal property such as CDs, movies, and video games. Is the Author's Guild also proposing that Amazon discontinue secondary market sales on these items?
Amazon doesn't need to make precautions regarding 'review/promotional' copies. Correct me if I'm wrong, but these copies are the same as pirated ones, and will be treated accordingly by law enforcement.
There are a few solutions I can come up, beyond the 'simple compromise'. The first is that perhaps the Author's Guild should perhaps adopt digital methods of distributing books, and make it cost effective enough for a consumer to purchase a book first-hand, essentially eliminating the secondary market. The second solution is even more obvious: compete. This is a free market economy. If new book sales are losing market share to used books, then it means competition is healthy and that publishers and authors need to compete even with themselves. Lowering new prices and adding value (increasing quality of paper, etc.) are valid ways to compete with the secondary market.
Sincerely,
Kris Dahl
If I see a $6 paperback which I'm not sure I'll enjoy, I'm more likely to buy it if I know I can re-sell it for $1, effectively making it cost $5 to read. If I couldn't re-sell the book, the publisher would have to charge less (maybe $5) to convince me to buy it. You can bet that most of that difference comes from the author's royalties.
In addition, if I'm really unsure about an author, I can buy a used copy; if I like it, I'm very likely to buy new versions of their stuff in the future.
Thus, the existence of a used market helps to increase the number and value of books an author/publisher sells.
Now, the Author's guild is doing something three orders of magnitude MORE imbecile. So, should we start a campaign refusing to buy books by authors in the guild?
--
Death to Vermin.
"Trust me - I know what I'm doing."
- Sledge Hammer
Buzz ... wrong. It depends upon where you shop. Sales taxes are transactional taxes, and what is taxable in the transaction depends upon the jurisdiction (typically state, but ocassionally county or city). In Virginia, used books are taxable. In New York, x% goes to the state, and y% goes to the county -- and what's taxable depends upon the county.
For myself, I prefer to buy books that are in good condition ... and if I have time to go to a used book store and search for good condition books, I can buy more books for a constant amount of money. If I don't have lots of time, and don't mind spending more, I can go to Borders and get a new book. If I don't have *any* time, then I'll shop Amazon. What I wish is that my favorite used book store had a decent (onlioe?) catalog, so I could go in and find what I want quickly, instead of having to visually-grep every single shelf in SF/Fantasy.
Are you moderating this down because you disagree with it,
We call it art because we have names for the things we understand.
Who said anything about a legal case or copyright infringement? They are simply asking Amazon to stop.
I can see where these guys are coming from, and there is a big difference in the fact that Amazon is a market leader (and a seller of new books at all - which a library isn't)...
The guy rooting around in a used book store or borrowing a book from a library has already made the decision not to buy new, and is often not even looking for a specific title - just browsing.
If a major seller of new books such as Amazon (particularly an internet retailer - as if Barnes and Noble had instantly this up in their brick and mortar stores nationwide, rather than doing a local trial) make it so easy to buy a used book as providing the option every time you want to buy a new one, then they really are changing the marketplace very fundamentally.
Say you're the author of a high priced low volume technical book (priced high because you know it's going to be low volume) - how would you feel if every purchaser was offered the choice of buy it new for $60 (you get your cut), or buy it used for $20 (you get zip)?
It's one thing if people on a budget search for something in a used book store or on e-bay, but it really alters the balance if everyone buying the book new automatically gets offered the "or buy it cheaper used" option. No laws being broken, for sure, but it's easy to see how this could have a huge impact on book sales, and ultimately reduce choice or increase prices for us all as book writing becomes finacially less attractive (not that it's very attractive to start with).
I think the tiered pricing/outlet system works well (books, cars, airline tickets). Full price for those with the money and who want instant gratification, and used/lower price for those on a budget who prefer to spend time searching out a bargain.
So here is one of the people with blinders that the original poster was talking about. The issue of property rights was not brought up by either the poster or the guild. No is denying your right to buy or sell books. No one is threatening or coercing Amazon to stop selling used books.
What is being done is that the guild and publishers have send Amazon a letter saying that they would greatly appreciate it if Amazon would promote the new books a little more prominently than used books. Just as I'm sure that you've done similar things all the time. Maybe you told the person sitting behind you in the theatre that you would appreciate if they made less noise chewing their food, or told someone you would appreciate if they moved their car that is parked in front of your house. It is a simple request, it does imply that someone is in the wrong or that you wish to violate their rights.
I would hope that most of us subscribe to the ideal that one should be paid for the work that one does. Since you claim that an author is generating content, why should he or she be paid more than once? After all the book is only written once, why should an author be paid for multiple copies of the media, when only one copy of the content was generated?
Not ridiculous enough for you? If we reject that and follow your argument, we should just licence books, distribute them with electronic locks, and charge a new fee every time the book is opened! Of course, our speech would have to be monitored so we could be billed for reading or quoting out loud, because that would create a new copy of the content.
[sigh]
Ignorance is the root of all evil.
Ah-hah!
And we shouldn't let people give their books to other people, either! Cuts into writer's pocketses, oh yes- it does!
But, wait- What about if I bought a CD before, but I lost it 10 years ago. I have to buy it again? WHAT?!
I'm one person. But I had to pay twice. What's with that? It now seems that we have one person with knowledge of the content, but the author has been paid twice..!
I wouldn't think Amazon to be desperate. I am sure they have done their research and decided that the cut in new book sales will be minimal compared to the continued revenues from reselling the same book that someone INITIALLY bought from them new. I believe it is like the car industry: Dealers make much more (on a per car basis) from used cars than they do from new cars, because their investment is a smaller percentage of the selling price.
Well, I think I will respond, not as the spokes person for Amazon.com, but as an employee who thinks it is the coolest company.
They have a lousy record on privacy (1, 2).
We don't sell our records to anyone. Period. I know it might come as a suprise to all the Anti-Amazon.com Slashdot.org trolls, but it's true. The selling of records if we go out of business is a standard clause in getting funds to raise cash. If things don't work out, investors are going to want to recover what money they can get back and saying we reserve the right to sell records is one of those ways. If you look at any company, you will find the same thing. I even bet Andover.net will sell your Slashdot.org account information to the highest bidder if they go under.
However, Amazon.com is not going out of business and it might come as a shock, but we are going to stay around for a long time.
They have a union-busting campaign, complete with instructions on their internal web pages explaining how managers can thwart union organizers.
Absolute bullshit. I searched the interal webpage for this and found nothing. The only infomation I have recieved is to ask unathorized person to leave Amazon.com property if they are caught. This again is standard; would you want people who are not bound by a NDA wondering around your property?
If you know the URL of this "Union Busting" webpage, let me know, I would like to see it.
Did you know that when you write a review on their site, it becomes their property? All submitted comments become the licensed property of Amazon.com as set forth in our Legal Notices.
Well, Duh! Of course we own it because we want to control the content. We are not going to post anti-Amazon.com infomation on our own site, and we are going to post reviews that are off topic or incorrect. We want reviews that are good, so unless we can set up a slashdot.org style posting area, Amazon.com is going to tightly control the information on its site.
Linux O Muerte!
I think the argument that used book sales hurt new book sales is perfectly valid. And I think it raises an interesting dilemma for Amazon and Bezos. Do I think they should stop prominentl displaying used books? Hell no! Why? Cause I'd rather buy the used book at half the price!
But that's not really the question. The question is does Amazon think they should stop? Well, I don't know. Depends on what their profit margin from used vs. new sales are. And what % of people that look at the new book listing go on to buy it, vs. what % look at the new book listing go on to the used book listing and buy it.
Amazon should be a bit careful here, however, because if, in fact, used book sales are significantly cutting into the new book sales, and other book sellers take note, there could be a problem. We could end up with a lot less books on the market. Of course, that might not be such a bad thing, considering all the crap that gets published.
Certainly, and as usual there will be winners and losers. Seems to me that Amazon is doing the book purchasing community a great service (for once).
When I buy a good technical book I'm not likely to want to sell it all that quickly; it's a good reference to turn to when I need it. If it's not a useful reference, and it's not well written in the first place, I'm going to want to dump it and get at least a few pennies on the dollar for it. So what's so bad about that?
In which case a new equilibrium will (at least temporarily) be reached which may or may not result in more books being written. It might result in the distribution of books becoming more efficient.
Breaking News Update!
The RIAA has just announced that it in fact holds the patent on billing each and every person that has, or may in the future, come in contact with the product of one of it's members.
Authors' Guild representatives were unavailable for comment, but rumor exists that a winner take all Pay-Per-View Ro-Sham-Bo contest is in the works to be promoted by Don King Productions for the price of $59.95 with no multiple viewers allowed.
-ct
Greed and stupidity knows no bounds, if it is a used book you would think they already got their profit This isn't a video game arcade machine, they shouldn't be trying get money that is was sold over and over again and besides I think they should be happy because more people are see their material which would cause them possibly to buy their newer stuff. All this fuss is stupidity
In legal cases involving copyright/trademark infringement, it's generally understood that a company can't credibly raise a fuss over one case of infringement if they've knowingly overlooked it repeatedly in the past.
No, it is not "generally understood" it is just plain WRONG
When you have a TRADEMARK then you must enforce it consistently. when you have a COPYRIGHT, you can go after whoever you want, whenever you want. Regardless of anything else.
TRADEMARKS and COPYRIGHTS are different things!
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Acctualy, if I'm not completely wrong (which I rarely am ;) ), I think many libraries have to pay authors for every single person lending a copy of their book(s). This is (or was) the case in Sweden, doubtfully a local idea at that.
This is not as strange as it might sound though, instead much like the way radiostations operate. One does not have to agree with the exact implementations of these ideas but the fact is - many people want money for their work, no matter if we want to give it to them or not.
Karma: 2.71828182846 (Mostly due to small, fun pills)
You can rent a movie to see if you like it. If you do, and want to see it again, you can choose to buy it.
And if I decide at a later date that I no longer want it for whatever reason (somehow, it was a lot more enjoyable when I was 10, moving sale, never watch it anyway, whatever), I am free to sell it to someone else.
For that matter, if I choose to rent the movie, I am free to loan it to a friend so long as it is returned on time. One reason DivX died was that it prevented loaning to a friend (or even watching at a friend's house)
It's a simple principle, when something (such as a license) can be sold, it can be re-sold. That is part of the thing we call capitolism. What the SPA and apparently the Author's Guild propose is called corporate socialism. It's just like state socialism except that nobody even pretends that it's for the common good and you don't even get to participate in a sham of an election.
The best solution is for the Author's Guild, MPAA and others to quit whining about the fact that they must provide products and services in exchange for money rather than just collecting tribute for nothing.
If the Authors' Guild is having such a tizzy about this, maybe they should also go after Half-Price Books, and every ripoff college textbook chain that sells their used books at a 100% markup over what they bought them back for.
ah, but will it ensure the future of e-books, or ebooks? (i'm sure a profoundly literate and anal-retentive person such as your anonocowardly, spell-flaming self will catch that reference)
-k. ^-^ ^D
i would definitely, if i were amazon, feel obligated to hold off on selling used copies of a book for at least the first six months after i had been selling it. while you will say, "well it's their right! why shouldn't they sell what is theirs?"-and that arguments has some warrant-you must remember a few points. there is a difference between someone selling a few used books, and the top booksellers from whom the authors get nearly all of their income from, selling new books, buying them back the day after, and reselling them in order to get out of having to give recompense to the creator. that is quite wholly amoral, and if universalized, would screw the whole thing up. while the freedom to sell what is your is fundamental, for amazon to be doing this while the new books are still selling, is a *very* bad idea. then again, the system in place is already fairly screwed up, maybe this would in a roundabout way be for the best. but in conclusion-i do not know if the guild should be able to force them to stop selling the used books (which, if you actually read the thing, is not the compromise they are trying to reach), but amazon should stop. justafewthoughts
what hump?
Brett
Using the same logic, the Authors Guild should logically be against public libraries.
what makes you think they aren't?
just like the record and movie industry, authors would like books to be pay-per-view.
this desire, by the way, is the one thing that is likely to insure the future of e-books.
The difference between Theory and Practice is greater in Practice than in Theory.
> but software is only licensed.
That's right. You don't own your software, because it is licensed.
You don't own your car, because it is licensed.
If you own your land, then why do you pay taxes to someone else!? Because it is licensed.
In legal cases involving copyright/trademark infringement, it's generally understood that a company can't credibly raise a fuss over one case of infringement if they've knowingly overlooked it repeatedly in the past. I think the same principle should apply here. They've allowed public libraries to loan out books for decades, and small used book stores to sell titles for almost as long.
First of all, IANAL but I believe that trademark and copyright law are two completely different animals.
Secondly, the author's aren't making a legal argument, so much as a ethical and tactical argument. The problem is that it's really hard to make a living as an author if you aren't in the following list (more or less): Carol Higgins Clark, Danielle Steele, Robert Ludlum, Tom Clancy, Ann Rice, Michael Crighton, John Grisham, J.K. Rowling. These authors probably account for 99% of all book sales.
An outfit like Amazon is a godsend for the 99.99% of the authors who live off the remaining 1% of sales. Likewise Amazon depends upon these people; if everything boiled down to the ten or so top selling authors then all booksales could be taken care of at the airport news counter. The relationship between minor authors and Amazon is symbiotic. If Amazon perturbs relationship to its own short term benefit, then over the long term the vitality of the non-best seller market suffers and (so the argument goes) does Amazon. Thus tactically it is bad, and it is generally considered morally questionable to benefit from an institution and to undermine it at the same time.
Taking the argument further, used bookstores of various stripes don't affect new book sales. Most of their stock would be destroyed if it was at a new bookstore.
Personally, I think its all just a tempest in a teacup. There can't be significant sales of used copies until there are significant sales of the new book. While prominently displayed used copies on the face of it cut into new sales, they may also in the long run increase sales by allowing obscure works to generate word of mouth, the way library and privately lended copies do. Probably most copies of Titus Groan (plug plug) were bought by people who have read or borrowed a used copy.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
This strikes me as just the same propaganda that came out several years back about stores selling used cds... "It will hurt the artists, it must be stopped". Really, come on. If it's a book I think I'll like, I'm going to buy a nice new copy and I think most people feel the same. The ones that don't probably wouldn't buy a new copy anyway, so who does it hurt?
Josh Sisk
Although the Authors Guild is signatory to this letter, I suspect that the whole scenario is similar to the current conflict between musicians and the RIAA on one side and consumers, MP3.com and Napster on the other. In that case, a few, very high profile, musicians have sided with the RIAA to try to eliminate fair use (e.g. My MP3.com) as well as unfair distribution (e.g., Napster) in one fell swoop. The less-well-known authors, or those who are not beholden to a single publishing company (e.g., Stephen King and Orson Scott Card) may very well have no objections to Amazon.com's completely legal and ethical desire to facilitate the transfer of physical copies of copyrighted works from person to person.
MacOS, Windows, BeOS, GNOME, KDE: they're all just Xerox copies
Hear, hear! One of my favorite web sites lately is The Blockhead Journal, whose banner sports a wonderfully incorrect quote:
From their "What We Are About" page, they speak of the journalist's dream: "buying a weekly paper in a small market, where they could be editor, publisher, reporter, ad salesman, accountant, layout man and janitor. There was a hope of getting back to the work of being a newspaper man, putting out a paper, with no thought of getting rich or being famous. They looked forward to something that is often hard to find in the big city: the joy of journalism. . . In this modern age, the journalist's oldest dream is within reach, thanks to the World Wide Web." (emphasis added)
Courtney Love tells us that singers/songwriters write/perform music because they love the music, the editors of the Blockhead Journal tell us they write news because they love telling stories. May I hazzard a guess that this is the case for all aspiring artists, regardless of their medium? IMHO, the perfect world would be one where artists who deserve to be paid can be, and those who demand to be paid can be ignored. Maybe someday...
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
Kinda... The music industry didn't care about me making cassette copies and giving them away to friends because I couldn't make a very large dent in their profits. They did/do care about organized copying of music though. Napster/Gnutilla/whatever is an example of such organization and has the power to make a real difference in their bottom line....
Same thing here.... Amazon and co. could really make a dent in the publisher/writer's bottom line. I imagine eventually they could re-sell enough books to cut the demand for new books by 50%. If the demand for new books gets cut in half the law of supply and demand will eventually catch up and the price of new books will double. If this price doubles the re-selling of books will be more rampant since we stand to get more cash for selling our used titles and the demand for new books will drop yet again. Pretty soon only 1000 copies of the best seller will be produced and they will cost a couple grand each. Only the wealthy will be able to afford to buy current books and the rest will have to wait for them to be resold 4 or 5 times or until some hacker (yes I mean a hacker, the good kind) will scan/OCR these books in and publish them on the web. Then a constant battle will develop for the book printers to come up with new ways to subvert OCR software and our OCR software will finally start getting good.
Pretty soon only authors who truly love to write will write for free and publish their work on the net and writing popular fiction will no longer be a paid profession. Maybe the quality will go up and
The net is making many jobs obsolete. I understand why they're worried but it looks like fiction authors will end up writing installation manuals to assemble toys etc. or will be forced to get into another line of work. Or more likely we'll pay $5 bucks for a book and it will be full of ads like magazines. Times really are changing like they always have. I bet ranchers and horse buggy builders were pissed when Ford started making cars too.
The music asshole and the author's guild are fighting a loosing battle... I don't blame them for trying, but if the governments step in to help them and slow down our society's advancement then that is a bad thing.
I install networks... no one is hearing me bitch about wireless networks and dhcp and Microsoft and Linux making is so, so simple, compared to the old days when Lantastic was Lantastic, and men were men. Almost any idiot can get a network up and running these days. My time in this profession is finite and if I don't evolve then I'm going to be asking if "you'd like fries with that" too. It just life.
Additionally, what you're written is a sort of manual reference book, something that's always handy to have around, as opposed to something like a nonfiction or fiction book, where you might read it once and then toss it on the shelf.
O'Reilly probably doesn't have much to fear, but someone like Tom Clancy probably does.
Poor Poor Tom Clancy, he'll starve!
--Fellow Slackware User.
Publishers of books have absolutely no legal right to impose any sort of "license" on you that would restrict your right to resell a book.
If publishers of books were allowed to impose licensing agreements on books, that would be an elimination of your legal right to resell your books.
Either your right to resell your books comes from copyright law (which it does), or it comes at the whim of publishers (which it doesn't). If you transfer the right to control resale of books from the owners of those books to the copyright holder, then you have eliminated the legal right of owners to resell used books.
I don't understand your argument.
I would venture that the best way to solve this would be for Amazon not to offer to buy/resell new books for a period of time (say 3-6 months) after the book comes out. It is my understanding, based on friends who work in bookstores, that anything that is selling decently, sells the majority of its copies during that period. After that, it is usually spur of the moment buys.
I think this is a good idea. It all depends on how Amazon wants to position itself. If one looks at Powells Books in Portland OR, one of my favorite independent stores, their main store mixes new and used books on the shelves, and their web site reflects this (last I looked). I think it's great, because it provides seamless searching for titles. However, Powells doesn't seem to go out of its way to short-circuit new-book sales.
Books have become expensive. Textbooks are typically in the $70-$150 range now, and trade paper fiction is typically over $20/volume, sometimes much more. Given that fact, and given the durability of books, I think it's going to be hard for the book publishers to restrict offerings of used books. It would also be wrong to try to restrict a wonderful way to recycle. On the other hand, there does need to be a strong market for new books, or opportunities for authors to publish in a traditional mode will dry up. So I think the compromise proposed by Eric is a sensible one.
Dave
Help me out here: was it Wilde who was urged to read something or other and replied, "If I wanted to read a good book I would write one!"?
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
Maybe you told the person sitting behind you in the theatre that you would appreciate if they made less noise chewing their food,...
Except I'm not an usher. The Authors' Guild is using its status as an indrect source of Amazon.com's revenue (i.e., books) to try and intimidate them. If I wrote to Amazon.com and asked them to reduce the prominence of used books, then your theater analogy might hold.
Like it or not. People OWN music, movies, and books they buy. Fenegal with "licensing" all you want, but books, movies, and music don't require signatures to buy, nor do they have "i agree" buttons to click, so not even the DMCA protects them. And if I own it, I can sell it. Just get over yourselves, m'kay?
For example, I was going to get my dad a copy of Witold Rybczynski's One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw for Christmas. My dad is into the history of technology, so I thought he'd like it.
However, the hardcover edition is $22 US for a slim 176 pages! Are they mad? I ended up going to the bargain bins (or the "remaindered" books) and buying him three books for the price of that book alone! And the authors don't get royalties for remaindered books either, if I remember correctly.
So perhaps the publishers and the authors should significantly reduce prices on new books. Then maybe they'll have some moral and ethical ground to stand on.
--
"Deep in the ocean are treasures beyond compare,
Deep in the ocean are treasures beyond compare; but if you seek safety, it is on the shore.
And my father buys books (used) and sells them on e-bay for more than he bought them for.
Just cause you don't know how to make a profit doesn't invalidate his point.
authors guild,do u ban me from lending your authors' shit from my library?
if i think that shit is useful,i would buy one,why u guys think of such a ridiculous rule ?
i am poor,can't i buy used books?
stop throwing out shit,pls!
xcyber """"""Complexity for the sake of complexity is not a solution, neither is simplicity for the sake of simplicity
Er, there are people with photographic memories. My maternal grandfather had one, for instance. It's not awfully common, and it won't get you far in life all by itself, but they are real.
And even so - I can remember a number of books and movies and such well enough to recreate them enough for it to be deemed copyright infringement if I tried to sell a copy I made. Thankfully no one has jurisdiction over thought, though I'm sure that publishers are short-sighted enough to wish that they did.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
You say [emphasis in original]:
That is, at best, a misrepresentation of the AG's intent. The second to last paragraph of their letter reads [emphasis mine]:
You even contradict yourself in the very next sentance [emphasis mine]:
And as for your comments about Open Source (or Free Software for that matter), this has nothing to do with "open source principles". This has to do with property rights
--
If your map and the terrain differ,
trust the terrain.
ObHumor: One of the books offered by the Guild as an example of a new book already being sold as used -- has already been remaindered! You can buy it off the web at a discount as a remaindered book! Whoops, reckon they need a fact-checker at the Guild.
mp
"The secret to strong security: less reliance on secrets." -- Whitfield Diffie
Authors Guild: Hey, you can't do that! How will authors make a profit?
Amazon: First, we CAN do that and we WILL. Second, If you didn't charge so damn much for new books, people wouldn't buy used books.
Authors Guild: We have to charge so much for new books, because author revenue is lost with the sale of used books.
Amazon: Do the authors you represent actually own the copyright on their works?
Authors Guild: Ummm. SOME of them MIGHT, I'd have to check.
Amazon: I didn't think so. Do the authors you represent get more than 50% of the profits from the sales AFTER they pay their publishers for promotional costs.
Authors Guild: Umm...err...
Amazon: I didn't think so. Maybe if publishers actually let the author keep their copyright, keep a majority of the profit, AND sold your books at a reasonable price, then people wouldn't NEED to buy used books. The fact that a used market exists and thrives merely demonstrates the fact that publishers are gouging customers for a new books.
Authors Guild: Well, we wouldn't have to charge so much if there wasn't a used...
Amazon: Shaddup!
Burn Hollywood Burn
Pricing, Program Size and Renewal
You are currently being charged $19.95 per period.
Your current program allows you to have up to 3 movies out at a time.
I do know that there are other membership options...but I didn't see one for 4 movies out at a time...I don't mind being wrong however. More power to you.
---- Sigs are bad for your health ----
Give a hand, not a hand-out.
This would, after all, simply be taking a cue from the industry that has made Amazon so, umh, sucessful.
Ideas are property.
Ownership is control.
(the extension of these axioms provided by the content industries is left as an exercise for the reader)
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
Nobody said it was illegal. Just not in everyone's best interests. CTFA. (comprehend the fucking article)
Keillor is worse than a fat smug Homer Simpson lookalike.
He's a mean-spirited cynical man. His whole gig is to make fun in a mean way of small town folks and their culture. It's snide yuppie cynicism at it's worst, and all wrapped up in a down-home seeming package.
A friend of mine who grew up in a small town in Minnesota once wrote a letter-to-the-editor denouncing Keillor as a hateful loser who gets his revenge on the community that rejected him (the small town that he came from) by his mean spirited antics. The response my friend got was a threatening letter from one of Keillor's attorneys.
Garrison Keillor is a creep; his down-home attitude on the air is a fraud. I listened to him going back to the time when he had the morning show on public radio, so I should know.
Hay thar.
It seems to me that industries which formerly tolerated used sales of anything are now realizing they stand to lose more sales because the distribution of used materials has gotten so much better. Amazon is one example of a larger fundamental shift in the way things can be bought. In addition to all the usual channels, we now have national retailers whose sole purpose is to make it easier for anyone to buy anything used from anywhere. The web is the perfect order mechanism because we can see or read enough about a used item to consider buying it. This wasn't as easy even ten years ago and in many cases it was not possible.
I am also an author, and I have to say I resent the generalisation there. Or perhaps I should say this: you don't even know what you're doing to yourself with your mental categories there.
I suspect it's a thing like 'REAL musicians', 'REAL authors' want everything to be pay-per-view, kaching, next! There is some validity to this but it breaks down pretty rapidly- where do you fit, say, Emily Dickinson into that scheme? There's someone who stood the test of time as a great writer but never pursued any sort of recognition, much less reward, for her work during her life. There are more people like that than you'd think: you haven't heard of them for the obvious reason that they're not hawking their wares brazenly on the open market.
In this day and age, you're cheating yourself if you assume the only real artists are the ones under contract to some industry conglomerate. There isn't even that much of a correlation- there's an awful lot of commercial tripe out there, and an awful lot of sincere if unpolished art. You simply cannot make the assumption that artists primarily want to be paid. Most would like that, but what they primarily want is ATTENTION. Applause! Recognition. And, as every major avenue to mass market art is increasingly controlled by corporations with a $$$$$$$$ bottom line, more and more artists are turning away from the prospect of money so they can at least have a shot at that ATTENTION.
If you define artist (author, musician, whatever) as "that which wants to be paid and is willing to hit the mass market, be published, get signed etc", then you are stripping the 'indie' folks of even the dignity of being considered artists themselves. You're calling them hobbyists, or amateurs, which denies them the respect and attention they might otherwise be able to achieve on the merits of their work.
Please don't do that. Learn to tell the difference between a pretty face and $30,000 of makeup and photographic lighting. No matter what the field of art, it's possible to go mass media and throw resources at it to make it seem way cooler than the output of individual artists with nothing but a vision and minimal resources. It is your responsibility to be able to recognise the real stuff when you see it, and learn to value it for what it is. Otherwise the word 'artist' will end up meaning nothing more than 'merchant'- or possibly 'lawyer'. o_O
I'm mentally visualizing myself in a Disney movie, with a Coca-Cola in one hand while stripping down Snow White with the other. I'm imagining hearing Metallica in the background while using Microsoft windows and Real video to stream video of the whole thing publically to the net without paying. Whatcha gonna lawyer boyz?
On top of that, even if they were suing, where would the danger of a lawsuit to themselves come from? And Anti-Trust? Do you have a clue what you're talking about?
Amazon again puts the customer first. Why? Because if they don't, someone else will. This is a fast-moving marketplace on the Internet -- why encourage someone to move into a legitimate competitive position? Personally, I think the customer should choose whether he sees the used price first or the new price first. It's his shopping experience and money. That's the Amazon way, and they get a premium price because of how they extend themselves to make life easy/good for me. Yay capitalism.
Apparently this "victim" oriented society continues to grow. Being a victim is now considered a great way to get more of someone elses money, hence every damn group jumps in.
Whats next? RIAA stepping in and telling people who resell records/cds that they have to pay a royalty to do so? How long before records/cds/tapes come with stickers stating that resale is illegal?
This situation exists mainly because of the left-wing through their years of government control have finally made it part of society. Its now "evil" to make money, because its always at someone else's expense.
Making new classes of "victims" is easy because no one has to attach a face to them. If faces were attached the impact would be lessened considerably. Its much easier to say that a group is a victim than to actually present people of the class. For if they presented these "victims" they themselves would be obligated to correct the problem.
Hence, this Author's guild is nothing more than an extension of a liberal system of victimhood. They present themselves as suffering from a slight that doesn't logically exist. It can however be portrayed in a method by which an aggressor is identified - namely a big money grubbing rights stealing corporation... those always make the best oppressors... why??? because they to are faceless.
Oh well, let them rot. I don't need a new victim class to suck up my money.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Richard M. Stallman, founder of Free Software Foundation Inc., wrote a dystopian piece about pay-per-view eBooks called The Right to Read.
Tetris on drugs, NES music, and GNOME vs. KDE Bingo.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Wait until books come with licence agreements. "By opening this book, you agree that you will like it, never sell it to others and never throw it away. You also sell your soul to the author apon finishing the book ... etc"
What if you disagree to the licence? Does the book snap closed, never to be opened again, or just poof out of existance in a fit of greed?
-------------------------
-------------------------
That's no ordinary rabbit!
Yeah, but it wouldn't do much for books that are more inherently read-once (novels, humor, and Hilary Clinton's "Monica sucks").
Perhaps it is a good thing though, since it would mean that read-many books would naturally be more valuable that read-once books, which is the way it should be.
Yeah but JD Salinger isn't fighting to extend to copyright rules.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
When the RIAA attacked Napster, I heard most people saying this: "I already paid for it once, so why should I pay for it again?" In this case, it seems that the "it" is implied as being the content. Therefore, once you have paid the publisher for the content, you should be able to have as many copies of it in as many different media types as you want, as long as you're the only one using them. (This is, of course, within reason. I should be able to let an SO listen to them, etc.)
On the other hand, here we cry out that the person should be paying for the physical book itself, and paying the publisher for the content doesn't really matter.
Huh?
--
That being said, if books weren't so damn expensive, we wouldn't be having this discussion. A novel is a disposable item. Price it as such, and it won't be worth the hassle to sell/buy it used.
If you doubt that, write a brilliant book and try to get a publication deal while saying, "I don't think I'm going to write any more books. Isn't this one enough?"
Didn't J.D. Salinger do just that with The Catcher in the Rye?
MacOS, Windows, BeOS, GNOME, KDE: they're all just Xerox copies
If copyright limitations were lowered to say 20 years (instead of, what, life+70 years), there would be a lot less of a fuss about all this crap from copyright holders.
If we knew that a work would be in the public domain within our lifetimes, it would not be such a problem if the copyright holders extracted some fees from the public for their labors. Then after the time passed the information would become part of our shared knowledge, like it's supposed to!
When the framers wrote ``exclusive rights for a limited time'' in the consititution, they meant from the point of view of a normal human, not some immortal being who lived 150 years or more!
*sigh* If only I had the money to buy some laws of my own.
I just went and bought almost $100 in used books. I probably would have spent three times that if I had bought them new!
seriouslyexcited.net
Actually, if Amazon does good with this, they'll suck all the revenue out of local stores like the one you bemoan the loss of. Then if Amazon fails, they won't just take their own hide down, they'll take down the Used Book market, too.
I'm not particularly afraid of the above happening, but I'm not the one acting like it's a big wonderful thing that Amazon is muscling into the Used Book market, either.
Hay thar.
Their argument in the letter basically says, "Hey, you're cutting us out!" The threat that their authors might not write as much is ludicrous; everyone knows that writers do most of their work out of passion (except for the godawful author of the "Chicken Soup for the..." series) They have absolutely no legal basis for this, and if they think they do, they should go look at the precedence set by used-CD vendors who successfully defended themselves in court in the 90's.
** http://www.stinkingloser.com **
It's not Bezos' job to make sure that they get everything they want. It's Bezos' job to placate shareholders by making as much money as possible. Selling both new and used books ensures that you will have, one hopes, a larger quantity of sales.
Sure, Amazon is a very large seller of books. However, the biggest bookstore in my town sells used books; In fact, that's almost all I buy there, besides used CDs. And all the music stores are beginning to deal in used CDs as well (even Wherehouse or whatever it's called these days.) So I think before too long there will be no such thing as a bookstore or music store which does not deal with used merchandise. After all, people who wouldn't pay full price for a book or CD will frequently pay the used price, or if you're known to have a good selection of used media, and someone comes in and doesn't find it, they might just buy it new rather than looking elsewhere for a used copy.
Also, Amazon claims they help you find difficult-to-locate books. They haven't found me jack that I've been looking for that I couldn't have ordered from anyone else, but I digress. In any case, carrying used books makes it easier to provide that service. Are they supposed to only sell used books which fall into the "rare" or "out of print" categories? Can you imagine how much homework they'd have to do to keep that policy?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm not saying it's a good or bad idea -- just that there is no legal argument being made to support it, in contrast to what many people here seem to think.
People have been buying and sell used books in the real world for a long, long time. If it is considered legal and ethical in meatspace, I fail to see why you would look at the web differently.
Don't forget, they have been beating us over the head with meatspace anolgies about piracy of video and music, let's not start using a double standard now.
love is just extroverted narcissism
moderate that up! ... no wait, it's
already at 5. never mind.
First Sale Doctrine ... under attack by Scarey BigMediaConglomerates (dot.com soontobes) as we know. I suspect that a right wing supreme court majority, with major cross-investment in BigMediaConglomerate (their families have deeply invested in that social class, for example) could be constructed (will it?) by the time the supreme court needs to revisit this issue in the electronic media.
Don't you believe that the media can control political debate to establish results as they want them -- already? Why do they want so much more power to control information?
We have that now, it's called the library. But people apparently don't want to use them anymore?
Minor little quibble here. Public Libraries can't get EVERY book EVERY user might want.
And, more importantly, while I might want a copy of J.Generic Author's magnum opus "Everything you wanted to know about $foo, but were afraid to ask", I may not want it badly enough to pay full price for it: buying it used might be the ONLY way I buy something.
I know where I live used items aren't taxable, never have been. But like I said below, America when it comes to issues like these is more like 50 countries than one.
Say you're the author of a high priced low volume technical book (priced high because you know it's going to be low volume) - how would you feel if every purchaser was offered the choice of buy it new for $60 (you get your cut), or buy it used for $20 (you get zip)?
You seem to misunderstand the concept of "used". A book can only be sold used if it was previously sold new. It's impossible to offer "every purchaser" a used copy of the book. You've already received your cut the first time a given copy was sold.
Like Alan Sherman's "Rape of the A.P.E." a book published in the 1970s. I can't find a new copy of the book.
Books have limited runs. Being able to share that among people who wouldn't otherwise be able to read it is a good thing. If a book sells 200,000 copies, the author makes money. Their contracts are renewed, and they're happy. But if the publisher doesn't reprint the books, what about the other people who want to read it? That's where used books come in.
This cash grab is rather transparent -- if there's a demand, they can certainly print more books. The problem is they don't want to go through the expense of actually printing them. Instead they want to tax used book sales.
--
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Jesus fucking Christ on a popsicle stick
Let's analyze this. Jesus is commonly called Christ. Fscking oneself is another term for masturbation. Why would Jesus be shoving a Popsicle® stick up his ass?
Now, with that out of the way:
Besides, ink on dead tree isn't going anywhere. For long format fiction it's still a far better experience that etext
Especially because etext refers to books in public domain, especially those published by Project Gutenberg. eBook is the term for those proprietary, copy-controlled, encrypted-out-the-ass electronic texts of works still under copyright. And don't count on any more literature expiring into the public domain, as Disney buys 20 more years of copyright for everything every 20 years, effectively putting everything written on or after January 1, 1923, under perpetual copyright.
Now to address the other side of that: I know CRTs suck cock. That's why I do most of my reading on an LCD. Subpixel text rendering using individual color channels for finer anti-aliasing can make a good LCD look almost as good as paper.
Tetris on drugs, NES music, and GNOME vs. KDE Bingo.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Where I lose all respect for the Guild's position is when they imply that authors will quit writing books because of Amazon.com and its decision to prominently promote the used book market. Oh, come on! Of all the reasons I could see stopping my own writing, or that I would consider reasonable for any author to stop writing, the actions of one (albeit large) bookseller in terms of used books would be incredibly low on the list!
Ah, well, I fired off a message to that effect to the Guild already. Not that they'll probably care, if they even notice...
No Laughing Allowed!
There will probably be a day when every move we make has some kind of license agreement.
--
You don't become a failure until you are content with being one.
And ABE's search server is dogbert.abebooks.com. Sounds geek-friendly to me.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
There is absolutely nothing illegal about selling a stripped book.
It is illegal for a bookstore to strip a book, report the book to the publisher as "unsold", then turn around and sell the book. That would be fraud.
But if a bookstore strips a book, reports the book as unsold and destroyed to the publisher, and throws the stripped book in the trash, and you find the book in the trash and retrieve it, you are completely within your rights to turn around and sell it if you like. It's a legally made copy, and copyright law is very clear on this point. The owner of a legally made copy has the full right to resell that copy. If you salvage a stripped book from the trash, you become the rightful owner of a legally made copy.
You'll notice that the text you quoted does NOT say that such sales are forbidden by law. This is because they are not forbidden by law. If they were forbidden by law, you can bet your lawyers they would say so.
Here's an alternative text of the "notice", this time from Ballantine:
Sale of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as "unsold or destroyed" and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it.
Once again, they are asking you nicely not to buy stripped books, and making a good moral case for not doing so, but there is absolutely no legal prohibition against the sale of a salvaged stripped book, much as the publishers would like you to believe.
in modern culture. A writer lives to be read, not profitable. These ninnys don't know how to write decent prose anymore, but they damn well want that extra penny for the &$*@ they actually get published. Amazon is finding a way to reach a wider and decidedly cheaper segment of the reading world. If I was a novelist, and 500 additional people read my book cause they got a cheap, used copy, I'd be thrilled!
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
Let's see... Franny and Zooey (1961), Nine Stories (1953), Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: an Introduction (1963), Hapworth 16, 1924 (2002 -- not yet published). So. He's written ONE book since 1963, and it's not even available yet?
MacOS, Windows, BeOS, GNOME, KDE: they're all just Xerox copies
I'm not accepting any elimination of my legal rights. Did you read my post? I strongly disagree with any limitations on the right to resell any existing book. All I said was that publishers had the right to sell books with a license eliminating the right to resell. But then I would have the choice of whether or not I want to pay $35.00 for a book that I _cannot_ resell.
Mmmm.. Donuts
The guild is a bunch of money hungry fartheads! NOW along with NEVER BUYING A CD again, it looks as if I WILL NEVER BUY A NEW BOOK AGAIN!
Right now I can buy a copy of Hannibal by Thomas Harris from Half.com for $2.98, which normally retails for $27.95. Now if I go to Amazon, it retails for $22.36, with the used version going for $6.99. They should be writing letters to Half.com! Amazon is not doing anything new. It's using the Internet to provide a marketplace for buyers and sellers (Hello, Ebay here), with a small handling fee. I'm sorry if the dead tree model gets slapped around a bit, but the Internet allows information to spread more efficiently and that's all it's doing here. Instead of looking how this will hurt them in the next 6 months, authors should be looking 6 YEARS ahead. The Internet is not going away, and trying to put artificial mechinisms in place are futile (make them scroll down for the link?!). Authors should find ways to use the Internet to connect with their readers, hype their dead tree versions, release sample chapters, something besides whining. Adapt people, things are just starting to get good.
Hmmm... sorta like quantum mechanics... a photon is both a wave and particle, a book is both medium and content. It seems like the publishing industry is interfering with itself on this one.
...when you're writing a game...tweak the difficulty of "Easy" to something [your mother] can cope with. -- onion2k
Sure. That's why I make everybody leave the room when I play a CD I bought. After all, if they listened to it then they'd have the knowledge of it without having paid for it! They'd probably even go home humming the tune, the bastards. No way buddy - no thieves in my house. Get out, get out.
I'm curious, has anyone compared the cost of paperback books over the past few years to the inflation rate? $8-9 (US) for paperback books seems rather steep compared to just a few years ago. Maybe this will compensate for the billions lost to yard sales and church fundraisers.
Another issue: these are the same folks who got upset when Amazon started (gasp!) allowing regular folks like you and me to post reviews. It seems they had so little confidence in the quality of what they were publishing that they thought sale would be hurt if potetial customers knew what people thought of the books.
Ignorance is the root of all evil.
nice rant actually.
in response to your question about what i think we can do to "curtail these idiot attempts to control and charge for our media consumption" i think we can simply ignore their media. 99% of it is worthless anyway.
Since there is a growing concensus that most of the content sucks anyway, we are making our own. wether its software, music, movies or other artistic pursuits, the tools to create in our little digital world are cheap or free for the most part. making your own content is a form of entertainment in and of itself.
The goal of all content companies (whether they create books, music, entertainment, information, or whatever) is to maximize their value. this is not bad or good. it is just create a market where no secondary markets exists.
This can be accomplished through licensing. This can be reinforced and enforced through litigation or legislation. and this is nothing new.
So what do we do? We can't stop them and we're much too apathetic and disaffected to actually influence the system, could we at least flood the primary market ourselves? Roll our own stuff?
If you take all the current marketing crap to its logical conclusion past the current fad of superersonalized "customerization" what you are essentially creating is your own content. And as content companies create more and more stuff you have to pay for, people will naturally create their own and give it away. There is already so much virtually free stuff to choose from, i never have to see a major release movie again. if i want to read a book i can go to the library. if there is content i actually want to purchase i can often get it from somewhere closer to the source.
the only obstacle to overcome is the perception that free widgets or code have less inherent value than the stuff you pay big money for.
hmmm.
"Tension is the great integrity" -- R. Buckminster Fuller
Seems reasonable to pay for a book once because that is the only feasible way to structure things.
Otherwise what are we to consider? Burn books when you are done with them or face legal entanglements?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~ the real world is much simpler ~~
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
Catcher in the Rye is not JD Salinger's only book, it's only his most famous. Do a bibliographic search of his works and you'll see he has plenty of other books to his credit.
In fact, the price of some books actually goes up on the secondary market. I have both editions (hardback and paperback) of Piers Anthony's 'blue' novel Pornucopia . They're worth more than I paid for them because until very recently they hadn't been reprinted.
I also have one of the few copies of Stephenson's book 'The Big U' which I understand is worth a considerable amount to the more avid fans of his work. If I sell it on eBay for a lot more than the cover price, Stephenson doesn't get a dime. In fact, from what I have heard, he'd rather nobody read the book (I personally find it one of his better works- he doesn't take himself so fricking serious in it).
Hay thar.
Simple. Because charging money based on brain obsorbtion is rediculous. The invention of the video tape was originally thought to render the movie theater obsolete. Well more people go to movies now than ever before... why? Because of the medium.
I can't bring bring friends into a movie theater without paying for them, but I can invite them to my home to watch it on tape (or now DVD). If you notice it's illegal for me to buy a movie and charge others to watch it, only theaters are permitted based on copyrights, but I have every right to by a DVD and then sell it to a friend. I remember the movie, but I don't owe anyone anything. I paid for it.
Don't forget that when we first pay for a new book, we're already paying for the author's content. His one copy of content is sold. After that, I own that copy of his content, which he/she willingly sold to me. I can then do whatever I like with it.
Let's not remove the rights that capitalism gives us. Once you start charging for brain input it'll turn into "1984".
Developers: We can use your help.
Actually, it's only 3 (not 4) DVD's for the $19.99/month membership.
---- Sigs are bad for your health ----
Give a hand, not a hand-out.
check out www.half.com, a ebay company for more used books
> take it on the street and your ass goes in a sling.
Not true.
Read The Right to Travel
I don't have a driver's license, and my car hasn't been registered for the past few years - I haven't had any problems with so called "pull-overs" (Not that I go out of my way to flaunt my freedom. I "obey" the speed limit, etc.)
Cheers
While i'm not directly familiar with your book, i'd say it sounds less like a narrative and more like a reference book. You have to admit that there's a big difference there. A reference book, you come back to again and again when you need some information on the topic, but a narrative, such as a fictional novel, you read through, and frequently never return to. If you give somebody your copy of "UNIX Network Programming" they can then use it for reference. But if i were to lend somebody my copy of "Fight Club" (which i have done with several people. everyone should read that book) they read it through and have gotten the experience of reading the book.
I'm not arguing against re-reading a book. If i permanently gave away my copy of "Fight Club" I would then be unable to re-read it. But the point is that I have already read it. With a lot of books, there is little point in re-reading. But there are books that are worth returning to again and again (I'm not even sure how many times i've read "Farenheit 451" and "The Catcher in the Rye") and that's why I won't give those books away. But there have been many, many books that i've given away to friends that are interested in reading them. With reference books, the point is to return to the book in times of need. I don't think i have a single reference book i've read all the way through, even. I just look in the index and find out where the information i need is, and skip to that section. But if i gave away those books, I would lose that privelage.
You really can't draw a comparison.
#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}
F(#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}%cF(%s))
There is a piece here that remains missing that needs to be kept in mind if we're going to claim this kind of approach, that authors are selling the content of their writing -- if that's the case, much of what they are selling isn't theirs.
When was the last time someone writing an Oedipal story sent off a royalty to Sophocles? Someone retelling the story of Romeo and Juliet sending one to Shakespeare (or Ovid or ...)? Heck, Heinlein invented the idea of waterbeds and never got a dime of royalty -- never even slept in one. The words authors use are things they didn't create. The literary conventions they use to express their stories with are not of their own creation either, and many of the stories they tell were old long before they were born, just to be reworked and rehandled later.
Storytelling is a fine art, regardless of the medium used, and there are some who are very gifted at it, and some of us are willing to spend some of our surplus money to buy copies of their stories for a value they have to us. Some stories I'm interested in, but not to the point that I would pay cover price even for a paperback copy. However, I've found stories in books that I've picked up for free that I've liked enough to buy others by the same author, and have recommended the authors to friends who have also bought books by them also. The authors and their publishers continue to benefit from the transaction even though they received nothing directly from it.
I think this concept of intellectual property needs some refining. Unless we are willing to acknowledge our intellectual debt to those who have gone before us (whether still living or not) with the same level and kind of compensation we are expecting others to provide us, we have created a very one-sided situation which will ultimately prove untenable. Far too much of our intellectual property is -- in effect, stolen merchandise.
You know, if Jeff Bezos bought a $1 lottery ticket, won $30 million, and gave the entire thing as one lump-sum check to UNICEF, we'd have angry letters from Feed the Children and the Salvation Army saying he'd picked the wrong charity, and posts on Slashdot saying that he'd cheated some poor person out of that money would get moderated "insightful".
Gimme a fuckin' break, Author's Guild and everybody else; selling used books is LEGAL. Amazon is conducting LEGAL BUSINESS. Get over it.
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Hi all -
Around 1993 there was a brief attempt to limit used CD sales, but since that was before the web really took off I suppose it is largely forgotten online. It is probably best remembered for the prominent role Garth Brooks took in the public debate. So this recent attack on amazon.com and used books should come as no big surprise.
To summarize, in late 1992 Wherehouse became one of the few major music chains to sell used CD's. The NARAS and some recording artists spoke out against this, and perhaps the climax came on Aug 5, 1993 when it was announced in writing that the new Garth Brooks album "In Pieces" would not be sold to stores selling used CD's. There was an uproar of protest including events where Garth Brooks recordings were publicly burned, and within a few days this policy was retracted by distributor CEMA and/or Thorn-EMI.
I was able to find one link to a L.A. Times story from Aug 8, 1993 about the end of this:
http://www.planetgarth.com/gbnews/garth049.shtml
It seems obvious to me that we can expect to "license" rather than buy music from the major labels in the future, and such licenses will explicitly prohibit the transfer of your license without prior consent, or several hundred words of similar legal babble.
TWR, Torrance, CA
The Guild cannot dictate business practices to Amazon.com any more than I can. If Amazon.com chooses to continue to sell used books in this way, so be it. If Amazon.com chooses to restrict the sale of used books as they have been requested to, so be it.
However, if Amazon.com (or any other such company) can be intimidated into a course of action that infringes upon my rights (and the rights of others) under Title 17, then the Sherman Act comes into play.
It's the appearance of impropriety that I am objecting to. So long as they do not cross the line between "asking" and "intimidating", they are fine.
Now, what are the chances that anyone can actually intimidate Amazon.com? I'd say zero.
Chivalry is not dead, it's just frequently misspelt. - M. Langley
How many used bookstores are there in the US? I'm sure other countries have their fair share as well. If that's a perfectly legal practice, then what's the problem with expanding that business out to the world on the internet?
oh sorry... that made some kind of logial sense...
Silly slashdot, sigs are for kids!
IIRC , RIAA already was upset about CDs being resold and tried to sue to stop it. They lost.
Yeah, but Dell is taking those parts and building something from them. Amazon simply re-routes the finished product to you. Very efficient if they can constantly receive products quickly at a time. After all, it costs money for warehouse space. It costs money to hire people to manage the warehouses.
I thought the guys write up was good. I really didn't understand how Amazon worked. I don't buy from them anymore since they patented "One-Click" Bullshit. However, I think this begs the question, why don't distributors, retailers, and manufacturers sell themselves? Why sell to Amazon if you aren't getting good money from it? Probably because if you don't, someone else will. I look forward to the day that manufacturers start selling more directly to the public at lower prices. May not happen, but I'll hope.
For those who fight for it, life has a flavor the sheltered will never know.
I am at four-at-a-time too and have been at that rate for about a year. They recently changed the membership plan to 3-at-a-time but kept existing members at their original rates.
Are you as stupid as you seem? What the hell is this noise about copyright or UCITA or legislation or 'dracon control'? The guild or publishers never mentioned any of these items so why are you? All they did was make a simple request, in much the same way that you ask people at the table to pass the salt.
The compromise was actually pretty fair. Simply list all used books after all new books. It just means that a consumer will have to do a little diggin to get to the bargains^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H used books (ie scroll down the page). Not terrible burden for Amazon, not a Terrible burden for the Consumer, and the writers/publishers will get a few more dollars from the terribly lazy. Fairly decent deal all around.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Personally, I think that this is only a minor variation on the beef RIAA has/had with Napster; They would rather that books be "original purchaser license only". Should used record stores be similarly "discouraged"? I'm certain the RIAA would love to do just that.
Dog is my co-pilot.
I'm always the one to side with the MPAA and RIAA having the right to price and sell their products exactly the way they want to because I believe that is their right as creators.
However, in this particular instance I have to disagree with what the authors are saying. It is legal to resell books/movies/CDs and has always been so. It is factored into the price of the product. If I know I'm going to be able to resell a book if I didn't really like it then that enters into my calculations of whether or not I want to pay that price for the book/movie/CD. I don't see what they are whining about here. If they want to sell new books under a license agreement making it illegal to resell them then I'm willing to accept that too - but not an imposition of a license agreement after the sale has been made.
Mmmm.. Donuts
I can understand the authors (and their representatives) not wanting the resale of used books on Amazon. After all, they do not get any money off of those sales. Amazon, however, is in the business of selling books. Selling used books is a fairly common practice, from the garage sale to the book store on the corner. Now, I haven't seen many chain book stores offer much of a used book section before, but that could change.
I would venture that the best way to solve this would be for Amazon not to offer to buy/resell new books for a period of time (say 3-6 months) after the book comes out. It is my understanding, based on friends who work in bookstores, that anything that is selling decently, sells the majority of its copies during that period. After that, it is usually spur of the moment buys.
Just my $0.02 worth,
Eric Gearman
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Atomic batteries to power! Turbines to speed!
It's actually a different store. Portland name: Powell's Books. Chicago name: Powell's Book Store. Semantics, I know, but Portland-Powell's website (powells.com) lists only stores in the Portland, OR area.
-SymphonicMan
It seems to me that the content companies would like to see books,music,movies as both a medium and content, depending on what suits them best. When I buy a book/cd, and I want to sell it to my friend, then it should be content, and I'd be cutting into the creator's pockets. However, when they release I movie I own on VHS on DVD, then it is a medium, and though I own the content, I should pay again for the medium. B$ i say.
It would be easy for book publishers to offer their wares as licensed content, just as software is currently distributed.
Perhaps book publishers could go further and follow software publishers by prohibiting the lending of books by libraries or follow the publishers of academic journals by setting up a multi-tiered pricing structure with higher prices for lending institutions)
There are many ways of addressing the problem that the publisher and author are only paid once when many people read a book, but the publishers should not blame Amazon for the publishers' inability to retroactively alter the contracts under which they have sold books.
So; TOTALLY legal to sell a used book. Just not legal to sell a used book that has been defaced or re-bound.
No, illegal to sell an unused book that's been defaced or rebound.
Western Digital, for example, will ship them a carton of hard drives. That carton is placed on a yellow square painted on the warehouse floor. As long as its on that yellow square, it's still WD's, and Dell does not pay for it. Only when they receive orders for computer with WD hard drives will they come over and get the box. And, of course, another box takes it's place. Seemed like a pretty slick way of doing business to me. Kind of ethically questionable, IMHO, but what do I know...Michael Dell is worth billions, I'm lucky if I'm worth hundreds.
Consider the Metallica/Napster fiasco, a group of people got together and found an innovative way to make music more available to the masses. Once the authors of the music got whiff of the idea that this could possibly divert money from them, they decide to make a huge case over it. The ironic thing is that with the growing usage of Napster, more cds and cassettes were sold. Parallel to that, online shopping has mad it easier for people to find and buy what they are looking for. Yet in both cases, groups are fighting a war, which in the long run will hurt them more than the consumers.
Project: To Take Over The World
Project: To Take Over The World
Plan: To Rule The World
The Author's guild can bite me.
Amazon's used book service let me pick up two books that have been out of print for more than 10 years, and havn't been able to find in used book stores or at cons.
I like buying new books, but when a book goes out of print, what else are you going to do?
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Is this only different because it's on the Internet? Or because it's Amazon. I refuse to even visit Amazon, but if the idea of selling used books without compensation continues, lots of ma' n pa' book stores will fold. Not to mention Powell's book store would probably no longer be a city block in size.
The last time I read the Berne convention, copyright was supposed to protect the "expression" of an idea, not the idea itself. So, if someone remembers your work, that is not and should not be, a copyright infringment, unless the whole of the expression of your work is being reproduced. Nor should it require some sort of compensation.
Let us remember that copyright was created not as a way to generate an endless stream of revenue to the holders of "intelectual property", but as a way to adequately compensate the authors of intelectual works, by granting them a time-limited monopoly on the selling of their works. Moreover, several restrictions were placed on this monopoly (the most blatant of which the right of "fair-quote" or "fair-use").
Most of the copyright legislation that is being approved on these days is heavily influenced by the "copyright owners" (an expression that wasn't even on the first drafts of the convention - the idea was that the authors would be the owners of the copyright, as in the french expression "droit's d'auteur" - author rights). It has sucessfully removed some limitations that were placed on copyright and extended the monopoly duration (the several copyright duration expansion acts). All this, needless to say, at the expenses of the users of the works, and frequently without any real benefit to the authors (would you prefer that only the grandchildren of your editors benefit from your works, or should their grand-grandchildren also benefit? - thats the amount of benefit that copyright extension gives to the authors)...
Now, another attack is being waged on another limitation on the monopoly - the right to resale. Just business as usual, and if the public stays indiferent as usual, more money will end up lining the producers pockets... again with negligible effect on the real authors of the works.
Perhaps you should visit their web site and see what they are advocating before you make this kind of uninformed statement. Then you might want to see what the IFRRO (of which the Authors Guild is an associate member) is up to, copyright legislations and enforcement wise, on a world wide basis. Last but not least, you may wish to seek help regarding your faciniation with the size of my penis. Time to increase my default viewing threshold...
I thought that was what Napster was for.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
Can somebody explain me for which region these second hand books are coded? I'd like to buy one, but I'm affraid they will be useless for me here in Europe.
I heard something about region-free glasses and glasses where I can change the settings a few times. which one should I buy?
Please, 17 year old Danish boy, can you send me your program. I got a new book from Rusia but can't read it. Than you for your help.
No its not good example -- it would have been a good example of good will only and only if they HAD a STRONG legal case but INSTEAD of suing they send this letter. In this case they have NO CHANCE WHATSOEVER TO SUE AND WIN, thus, their "good will letter" can not be considered as a good example.
It makes you wonder why the RIAA has never gone after used CD places like Disc-Go-Round and Cheap-O.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
What Amazon is doing here is making it very convenient for a person to go looking for a new book, and buy a used one instead. Easier than finding a new copy on the shelf at Borders and checking the used book rack to see if they have a used copy. Much easier than finding the book at Barnes & Noble, then driving over to a used book store to look for it. In this convenience lies all the difference.
As a reader, I appreciate this convenience. However, since writers are second only to recording artists in getting screwed by the big publishers, I have some sympathy for them as well. I think the best course of action would be for Amazon to follow the second suggestion, and move the blue box to the end of the page, so as to encourage the sale of new books.
I assure there are no living faggots in Kansas. Lord don't like that ya know.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
I work across the street from Powell's.
Everyone, please stop buying used books online from Powell's (including Amazon, if that part's true)!
You're depleting the stock of books for me to browse in person!!!
Um selling a copy and selling a copy you paid for are completely different animals. All attempts to crossbreed will either end in failure or the Second Coming.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
The book publishers are just mad about losing money from new book sales and having a little hissy fit about it. In the article, they don't threaten any legal action or claim that Amazon doesn't have the right to do business in this way -- they just are complaining and trying to spread FUD that the book industry will shrivel up if more than one person gets to own a book in its lifetime. The article seems pretty clear that the book publishers have no recourse but to whine and hope it works. Don't worry, it won't.
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If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, forget 'em, because man, they're gone. -- Jack
Since they are up in arms over Amazon i can't wait till they hear about Powells. Powells began as a new&used bookstore in portland OR and now they are one of the most successfull online bookstores. They continue to sell used books and i for one am glad. It is my understanding that the majority of used books Amazon sells actually come from Powells, which is the largest bookstore in the world.
will the least greedy publisher to leave the library please switch ebays website off? thank you.
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I just have one question: do schizophrenics need to buy every book and cd twice?
hey wait, I got a great idea, lets extend this concept. lets make sure no one can re-sell a used computer because everyone who makes computers has to eat to, And we should make it illegal to even UPGRADE a computer... hmm lets see.. you buy a machine with 64mb ram and now you have to buy a whole new machine!!! a 400mhz processor came with it? wanna upgrade to 600mhz? too bad you gotta buy a new machine.. in fact lets get rid of any used item.. why don't we outlaw ebay and other auction sites. How DARE THE PUBLIC buy somthing that is not brand spanking new. Infact this could totally revitalize our economy, boost the stock market, cure world hunger(50% chance) and what would you with all the stuff thats used and you can't re-sell? Well recycle it of course!!! this would provide countless new jobs and building new business for the sole purpose of taking perfectly good usable items(but now illegal) and breaking them down into parts to be re-used!!(this has a 60% chance of curing world hunger).. this is truly amazing, we're talking about a total cultural revolution here ppl!! we can create so many jobs because everything has to be new!!!! and just think.. it all started because amazon wants to offer used copies of books and the authors guild complains.. lets call our senators right away!
Amazon and Barnes & Noble don't have that used book in stock! They just buy it from real used book dealer and add a hefty fee on top. This markeup can be as much as (I've seen it happen) 500%!
Here's how it works. Take a look at:
www.abebooks.com.
ABE Books is where I (and something like 6,000 other dealers) have our stock online. (There are a few others like it, by abebooks.com seems to be the biggest and (IMHO) best.) Those used books are scattered in bookstores and peoples homes across the world, not in any central location. Now, www.abebooks.com has "affiliate" programs with barnesandnoble.com and amazon.com. If a dealer signs up for this program, them their stock shows up on searchs Amazon and B&N do for used or out-of-print books. Then the end user (who generally doesn't know that www.abebooks.com exists) pays amazon.com $50 for a book that Joe Blow, Bookseller has listed on abebooks for $25. Amazon and barnesandnoble.com have virtual NONE of the used stock they list in any central location. I'm not signed up for any affiliate programs (there are others for Japan, Library Sales, etc.), but several dealers are.
Now, why don't you see this in any of the articles? Because neither Amazon nor the publishers want you to find out where you can get used books cheaper than you can now. The bottom line is, if you're looking for a used, rare, or out-of-print work, www.abebooks.com is almost always going to be cheaper than Amazon or B&N. Plus the money goes directly to independent booksellers.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
As a member of the Author's Guild, I was worry to see them take this position. It's absurd to suggest that used books shouldn't be sold. Is the AG suggesting that they be destroyed? Books are like other cultural content in this period -- once they are out there they enter the public realm.
But the fact is that whole genres of writing are disappearing. For writers, advances are getting smaller, royalties fewer as publishing moves quickly towards publishing only the "big book". Writers aren't entitled to any more protection than anybody else, but the AG is trying to stick it's finger in the dike.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
The issue is not that the authors say Amazon cannot and should not allow users to sell their used books. The issue is the PROMINENCE of these listings, and the fact that no controls are in place to prevent the sale of review or other preview copies of books (that is, copies sent out to publications before actual release so that reviews can be made). The authors want the link to be less prominent, or not there at all, for in-print books, so that the first thing a user sees is the actual new book, not the fact that they can get it for much less used.
/. readers to comprehend anything that isn't free, as everyone here has their open source blinders on, preventing any and all comprehension of surviving by selling something, but just TRY for once to realize that you CANNOT apply your almight open source principles to everything. EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD IS NOT THE SAME AS LINUX. GET A CLUE.
I know I, personally, wouldn't want to buy a used copy. The marketplace links have never affected my purchasing decisions at amazon. But I can see where the authors are coming from. Would you like it if you wrote a piece of commercial software, and the site it was sold on listed used licenses that you could buy to transfer at the same level or above the new copies that you make royalties on?
I know it's hard for
---
Tim Wilde
Gimme 42 daemons!
Never knock on Death's door:
The Anti-Blog
I see. It's okay for people to buy and sell used books, as long as they're not market leaders.
In legal cases involving copyright/trademark infringement, it's generally understood that a company can't credibly raise a fuss over one case of infringement if they've knowingly overlooked it repeatedly in the past. I think the same principle should apply here. They've allowed public libraries to loan out books for decades, and small used book stores to sell titles for almost as long.
Raising a fuss now just because a market leader wants to sell both new *and* used books side-by-side is likely to fall on deaf ears.
Anyone remember the bitching and moaning when used CD stores were starting up? Garth Brooks and others made this same tired argument. Publishers of everything from books to software aren't going to be happy until they can charge you every single time you access their material. And what's the difference whether Amazon is selling used books, or it's happening via another site like Bibliofind.com?
Unlike the music industry, the book industry leaves the copyright in the hands of the authors. As far as I know, all book's IP stays with the author.
That's why you're dealing with the authors guild, and not the publisher guild
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
We have that now, it's called the library. But people apparently don't want to use them anymore? People's complaint really seems to be "I demanded that you make it as easy as possible for me to buy things (hence the One-Click idea), now I'm demanding that you make it equally easier for me to fix it when I make a mistake by buying something that I didn't really want." The only thing that's really wrong with the library these days is that people don't want to get up and go get things, they want them delivered to their door. Yet when Circuit City came up with DivX, which supposedly was going to make it easy for you to "return" a video (i.e. by just throwing it away), it got stomped mercilessly.
So we've got authors who want to get paid for their work. And we've got readers who don't want to get stuck with paying for a book they didn't like. Perhaps the best solution would be for Amazon to invent (and patent, of course :)) some sort of library mechanism where you could rent a book? What would people think of that?
d
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Here is a hypothetical situation... let's say that for some wierd reason, legislation passes to protect Idea Property -- a sort of extension to intellectual property laws.
With this in place, you'll have to pay for Content (the ideas), Media (the book, CD, or whatever) and any applicable taxes. By your reasoning, when you finished receiving the ideas from that Content, you must promptly destroy the Media on which that Content was stored. If you wish to read/view/hear the Content again, you must purchase another copy.
With that plan, you'll redundantly repay for Media and taxes. So instead of making you destroy the media, the law will state that you can keep the media, but:
Is that how you want to live?
I think it was Benjamin Franklin (but I may be wrong) who wrote a paper about the flow of ideas. I think it was in connection with the spirit of U.S. patent law. Whoever wrote what I'm talking about explained very elegantly that while tangible products are tangible, the ideas behind them flow (copy) from one person to the next and combine with other ideas to advance humankind as a whole. The author stated that patent laws are there in order to encourage people to share their ideas by allowing them a monopoly under certain conditions. The basic idea was to allow the country -- the people -- to advance as a whole, which money being the reward for sharing.
On that note, intellectual property laws are very important. They make it possible to share ideas while giving the author / inventor / musician / artist / programmer credit (and financial reward) for their work. Just like everything else, these laws are abused by greedy industry, most notably (to us) by the computer and software industry. This abuse is caused by unrealistic greedy people who would like the government to pass whatever laws are convenient for their own wallet. This, as others like to say, "stifles innovation" and "hurts consumers."
If I was the author of a book and people shared my work / put it in a library / discussed it, I would be overjoyed because that would mean that my ideas have made an influence in the world. This influence will be larger than my financial gain. As an author of content, I would have to expect and accept that I won't get paid for every instance of use. In my opinion, if you want to be paid for every instance of something, you need to stop making content and, instead, produce tangible products or perform services.
If writing is your career, than you must write and generate new material all the time, just as an employee of a company must work all the time or cease to get paid. Honestly, if you were an employee of a company, and you do some work and then quit, would you expect to continue receiving pay for every instance that your work benefits someone?
Example: let's say you're an electrician and you wired a light switch. Would you expect to get paid for each time that switch is used? No way! because that's unrealistic. If you want to make a lot of money, you will have to wire a lot of switches. Why should any "intellectual" property be any different? Your intellectual ideas are no different from an electrician's knowledge of how to wire a switch. You get paid for the tangible stuff (the media of the book or the act of wiring the switch). Ideas, unlike anything tangible, never move from one person to another -- they copy so that you never lose the information by giving it away. Any intellectual law which assumes that ideas are tangible is flawed from the foundation itself.
I'm sure that if you're a greedy author, you're thinking only of your particular situation and would like to make a lot of money, but what you fail to understand is that if everybody begins to operate this way, soon you won't be able to do anything without paying someone for the priviledge. And what I find interesting about this whole concept is this: currently, content can be easily copied and the author doesn't get paid. The situation described above is unrealistic and unenforceable in a physical world. When information becomes digital, however, it is possible to charge for each instance of use. However, the money paid to the author won't mean anything in the overall scheme of things because the amount of money earned by the author will not increase -- only the amount of cash flow will increase. This is because the author will similarly have to pay others every time he uses their content, which in this situation covers pretty much all information. It will become nothing more than a major accounting pain. Ideas are not physical, tangible things, and no law or theory of so-called intellectual property can ever change that.
When I read a copy of The Republic or Soon To Be Another Sean Connery Movie, it doesn't go away the second I put the book down. You remember things about it. You make jokes with your friends about it later, or you reference the material. That's why a book is content. Now, when I buy a book from you, do you cease to do those things? Do you forget the book? Of course not! It now seems that we have two people with knowledge of the content, but the author has only been paid once.
It's not easy to make a living off of writing, but if you do you view yourself not as a paper-manufacturer but as a story-writer or an idea-creator. The ideas and the stories are what you sell; the physical medium is immaterial to you. Why should an author only be paid once when two people gain the ideas or learn the stories?
We don't need them getting any mroe stupid ideas. They get enough on their own. I can just see a pencil pushing editor at a publisher submitting and idea he discovered for pay-per-view books after digital books have become the normal.
Although you did forget a few things yard sales, rumage sales, and flea markets. Don't forget the authors "hard work" is being sold for virtually nothing at these. I doubt they'd want you to even sell used book that are out of print. I bet they'd prefer you to find a "modern" alternative that is close to what you are looking ofr.
Content providers better wake up. The more they b*tch and complain--oops, I mean defend the rights of the hard working authors of the content--the more they will piss off the consumers. The past holiday season is supposed to be the best season for retailers, but this year the entertainment retailers (suchs as music and video) didn't have a good season. Consumers bought less than last year. I bet some of this is due to all of the lawsuits that have been filed be the entertainment industry against consumer rights, and their attempts to take away our rights. I will admit that not all of it was due to those reason, but I think a decent amount was.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
My Fellow Americans,
I am writing on behalf of the 800,000 individuals employed by the automobile industry in the United States to express my grave concern that car dealers' habit of selling "used" or "previously owned" vehicles will significantly harm sales of new vehicles.
At the moment, when customers walk into a dealership, a salesman tells them that they may, in addition to buying a new vehicle, buy or sell used vehicles. In fact, to encourage them to buy used vehicles, dealerships offer the used vehicles at lower prices than new ones, and conversely they may offer trade-in incentives that encourage them to sell their previous vehicle. This means that another buyer may then purchase that vehicle instead of a new vehicle.
Some of the used cars available in dealerships nationwide are very recent models. A quick review of newspaper classified ads from dealerships reveals that the following vehicles (among what appear to be thousands of others) are available: 2001 911 Carrera 4 by Porsche, the 2001 328is by BMW, and the 2001 Explorer by Ford. And it's not even 2001 yet!
As you know, these used-car sales earn no payment for the manufacturers of the vehicles in question. Only the seller and the dealer are paid. In addition, the dealers do not appear to have taken any precautions to prevent sales of stolen vehicles or other cars not intended for resale.
I understand that dealers wish to provide customers with all manner of service, including the ability to buy and sell used vehicles. However, these practices can have a significantly deleterious effect on new car sales. If dealers' aggressive promotion of used car sales becomes popular among U.S. consumers, this service will cut directly into sales of new cars, harming manufacturers, the people who work for them, and the many millions of Americans who hold stock in them either directly or through mutual funds.
We're all in this business together. Without automobile manufacturers producing a large number of new vehicles every year, dealers' sales will certainly suffer. If automobile manufacturers and their employees aren't sufficiently compensated for their work, however, then more and more companies will fail and their employees will be forced to find new jobs or draw government assistance if widespread economic depression ensues. For the sake of manufacturers, auto-company employees, dealers, automobile drivers, and the good citizens of this country, a compromise must be found that will not discourage automobile manufacturers from building new cars or consumers from buying them.
We believe the compromise is simple and straightforward: restrict the sales of used cars to collectible models. We have no objection to dealerships that buy or sell Model Ts from consumers, for example, but we cannot condone the exchange of nearly-new vehicles or vehicles that are still being manufactured. Consumers must understand that a vehicle is not simply steel and aluminum and leather, but is an expression of the long research and development process, the intensely creative and competitive design cycle -- the intellectual property, if you will -- of hard-working Americans just like themselves. But as long as a consumer can buy a used 1998 Suburban for a lower price than a new 2001 Suburban, America's manufacturing economy will be deeply threatened.
Sincerely,
Jacques Nasser, CEO, Ford Motor Company
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
The only solution is to burn used books!
Think about it...
If you or your company chooses not to adapt correctly then parish like the ones before.
Why should I pay more or go out of my way to put money in your pocket. I work just as hard as other people and I deserve the best deal.
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
Yes, and the publishers aren't arguing that! There's no legal argument involved here; they're not at all questioning the legality of used book sales. In fact, they're not even questioning used book sales for older/out-of-print books.
All they're doing is making the argument that for the market leader in online new-book sales to heavily promote used books hurts the book market as a whole, by discouraging the purchase of new books (and therefore author royalties) and by encouraging people to sell their books as soon as they've finished reading them. Whether you agree with this is up to you, but don't shout "it's legal! it's legal!" because nobody's questioning that fact.
Van Gogh, for instance, though not an author certainly a "content creator," created more than 800 paintings, yet managed to sell only one during his life.
I hope they never find out about the large caches of books held around the world where people can "borrow" books to read, they would flip! :-)
I think they are called libraries or something
no sig.
But the feature has come under fire from writers and publishers groups, which say it is an "aggressive" tactic that threatens to eat into sales of new books and take royalty money out of the pockets of their members.
HA! I can end this debate in just a few paragraphs. You know who else stated these exact words about 10 years ago? The music industry. Remember that? They wanted to make it illegal to sell used CD's, for the EXACT same reasons. They pulled out people like Garth Brooks to speak out against such terrible evils.
Lets see. Last I checked:
- Used CD stores all over the landscape
- MP3's "ruining" the world
- Record industry still recording record profits last year.
Boy, that sure destroyed their industry. I'll add a bit of commentary here as well. Publishers are shell shocked from the impending demise of their business model, even if it might be 10 years or more away. When anything remotely threatening comes their way, their itchy trigger fingers unloads a asalvo in the general direction of the percieved threat.
I'm shocked that nobody else has mentioned this, so I'm giving up my right to moderate to say it. (Btw: Mod up that guy who did the Amazon: / Guild: conversation. ;)
Amazon has been blowing venture capital money out the window for quite a while now. They are NOT raking in profits the way EBay is. They're selling actual products CHEAP, running a megagigantic database-backed site, and paying God-knows how many staff in marketing / corporate whatevertheheck. All they've got going for them is a really strong BRAND (I know that's where I go to find a book I'm looking for, then I take the ISBN off to Pricescan or Bookpool).
Used book sales actually increase Bezos' chance of his company moving "into the black", because he wants a chunk of what eBay's got: Taking (real, profit) money for bringing together used book exchanges.
Wanna know Bezos' worst nightmare? I'll tell ya -- eBay buying out a database of Books in Print or something, then adding it to eBay so you can right away go there and post that you want new or used books or bid on them or sell them.
Time will tell if Amazon survives -- I don't think they're profitable yet.
(disclaimer: I'm not some investor who knows a lot about 'em, this is all hearsay.)
o/~ Join us now and share the software
This is a great idea, but it reminds me of the children's story about the mice and the cat. I don't remember who wrote it, but to sum up: the mice wanted to go out and get food but there was a dangerous cat. They held a meeting and some mouse finally came up with the solution: "Why not tie a bell around the cat's neck, and when the cat comes near, we'll hear him and run away!" All the mice cheered for this wonderful idea. Then, an old, wise mouse came up and said, "And who will tie the bell around his neck?"
Sure, it'd be great if authors were paid for the service of writing a book, rather than for the book itself, but who will do the paying? Publishers? And who will pay them? Readers? So there you have it. If the author doesn't get greedy for intellectual property payment, the publisher will, and we're back to square one.
Don't take this wrong (I have always been an avid reader) however -- after I read a book from cover to cover -- it becomes much like an empty soup can...Next time I want soup, I am going to go for another can that is full...The old can would just take up space if I did not throw it out...(Hell - every time I move, there are more boxes of books than anything). Dealing in buying/selling used books is a good way to pass on something that is "old" to you and give/sale it to someone who can experience it as "new". Much the same way people have garage sales to get rid of things that have value but are of no use to the original owner.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
I on several occasions have gotten a used book read it, loved it and went out and bought it new because the used one was torn or tattered. I was turned on to reading thanks to book clubs that send out used books to members.
I can only think that people wouldn't buy used books if the new ones weren't so over priced. I mean how many times have you paid 50+ dollars for an O'Reilly animal book? I spent 2k this year on books alone. Thats astonishing considering I can buy a DVD for 20 bucks and chances are the DVD will have more repeat value. DVD's and CD's are over priced in my opinion as well, but they don't hold a candle to the prices of books these days.
If I was an author I would want to be read, period. The money will come if you deserve it, used books were bought at some point.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?c ourt=US&vol=210&invol=339
Buckets,
pompomtom
Buckets,
pompomtom
"There's an exception to every rule. Except for some rules"
Remember Garth Brooks did this a few years back? His beef was with pawn shops and "second-hand" CD stores buying his CDs from people and then reselling them for a profit. This is nothing new, just more examples of people making sure that they profit from the sale of their work. Brooks was widely ridiculed because of this stance, and I can't remember exactly what happened to it.
:-)
Really, this is not that big of a deal IMHO. Slashdot readers always lash out at the RIAA (rightfully so, I think) because they take most of the profit from the sale of music. Most Slashdot readers agree that the money should go to the artist, not some figurehead middleman corporate entity. So why is it so bad when the artist stakes claim on their own work? I mean come on, Slashdot, is the artist entitled to make any money or aren't they? There seems to be a fair amount of hypocrisy here. On the one hand the RIAA is bad because they take money from the artists, but for this story the artists are bad because they want compensation!
Personally I think that books should depreciate just like cars do. When you buy a book and take it out of the store, boom! There goes a big chunk of its value. There should probably be a sliding scale, based on time. The older a book is, the less it is worth. When you sell the book, you are responsible for sending that amount to the author, but are allowed to keep the rest. This could actually be put together in a pretty easy-to-use system.
Hell, this could be a great use for those Cue:Cat scanners! If you want to sell a used book to a friend, all you have to do is fire up some BookSeller software, scan the bar code on the book with your Cue:Cat, and the used market value gets debited to your credit card. Whatever you decide to charge your friend is yours to keep, and every penny about market value is direct profit in your pocket. Seems like a fair and equitable solution to me. Any Perl/CGI/e-commerce coders wanna give it a go?
Anyway, wouldn't the book authors/publishers/etc. have been compensated on the sale of the original book?
Maybe the book sucked and the original owner wanted to distribute the suckness at a lower average cost to hardworking people?
Whatever... I just spent about 90 minutes reading the story about CPRM standards for hard drives. This IP control is really pissing me off!
What happens, after several years - decades? - of this crap, when laws applied to intellectual property made real (physical media) are eventually applied to real property? You thought pissing away $25 for a different region DVD or $180 for a replacement OS is bad? How long until cars or houses are licensed?
First music, then movies, then books, then what? A cerebral implant to prevent us from having unlicensed thoughts?
*BEEP* Mind:GTRacer caused an exception error x00000005 - Access Violation - You have not licensed that thought of Natalie Portman
GTRacer
-- 49 Days until racing perfection!
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
Indeed, this restrictive thought pattern on these online companies is really starting to be apparent. People are trying to get whole sections of the world and/or whole sections of merchandise(ie, french against nazi) from online stores, and now this restriction on where a link to buy used books could be placed.
Hey, why doesn't amazon.com just buy a new domain and market that as part of their network.. amazon-used.com or something.
Also, why do we only hear about this stuff with online companies...do people think just because they are "seen" more to the world that they should be more restrictive? Many video store companies and others have "bargain pre-viewed" sections and everything, but we don't hear any complaints about that stuff do we?
-Corey
Too bad I didn't get the original owner's name before the signs went down off the doors. I now wish I had; I'd like to write a scathing, but polite, letter for selling out like that. (Literally: the shop vanished overnight.)
I finally found a new store that I hope to visit this weekend. It seems to me that new-book stores are everywhere while the "used but still good" stores are vanishing. Amazon deserves applause for trying to fix this -- and now some bunch of idiots is trying to take away what I grew up with and now may have irretrievably lost.
i am a soviet space shuttle
Why Amazon instead of the myriad small used book dealers who do the same thing? Probably because small book sellers - especially of the bricks and mortar variety - are often fixtures of their communities, and any attack on them would be seen as unAmerican. Ditto for public libraries. But Amazon is seen by many as a big threatening behemoth of commerce. And it exists on that den of degradation and filth - the internet (shudder).
Or it could be just because Amazon has a lot of money.
Those who don't like this shouldn't sell books.
sulli
RTFJ.
Posted by polar_bear:
I'm a published author who has books on Amazon,
("Install, configure and Customize Slackware Linux") but I wouldn't dream of complaining about people buying my book used. If someone buys it and decides to pass it on, oh well. That's their right -- they paid for it and they can do with it what they will.
All of the authors mentioned in the letter are high-profile authors who are already making decent money for their writing. Just like the record companies, this is an example of greed, not protection of working-class individuals.
I never thought that I would be on Amazon's side, but in this case I have to say that I think that they should continue this practice.
Software licences often forbid their transfer to other parties. Perhaps the book people would need to come up with a licensing agreement that you were forced to read and agree to each time you opened the book. IMO, a book is just as good whether new or old. One of my favorites is a book of Asimov short stories, entitled "Nine Tomorrows". Published in the 50s, I bought it at a used bookstore on Cape Cod one summer for $0.25 and I think I've read it end to end a hundred times. Anything that Amazon does to give me opportunities like this to buy quality books for cheap, I am 100% in support of. BTW, from what I understand, the authors of the book really don't stand to lose a whole lot in these used book sales. It is the publishing houses that lose the bulk of the extra profits, since for 99.9% of all book titles, the authors won't see much more than the initial payout they receive.
More data, damnit!
DO NOT GIVE THEM IDEAS.
:)
Lawyer: hmmm... [cut] [paste] [edit?]
Publisher: Cool! [print]
I miss the Karma Whores.
I would have to ask if the letter written on behalf of the "Author's Guild" truly was written on behalf of the authors, or if it was written on behalf of the publishers in charge of authors profits. In other words, do the authors actually support this letter?
Personally, myself and two other members of Faulty Dreams (check my web site) are currently writing novels, and one of us is already a published author. We (all of us) do not feel that this letter is representative of our interests at all. As authors, who are usually far more interested in the artistic side of creating (of course, there are exceptions) probably don't care if someone buys a used book or a new book.
And, on the other side of the coin, if you write a good book, why would it be available so quickly in the "used" section anyways? Seriously, writing crap and expecting people to pay top dollar for it, what do you expect? Eventually someone's going to say, "Hey, I was dumb enough to buy this book. I'll bet someone out there is stupid enough to buy it from me for a little less. At least it won't be a total waste."
If I saw one of my books listed in a used book list just a few months after release, I would probably just go, "wow, I must've sucked a lot more than I thought." I mean, really. Why on earth would you expect that it is the responsibility of the person that bought the book to keep it if they didn't like it? Maybe they read it and thought it was worthless? Or maybe they read a little bit of it, realized what a hack you are and sold it.
I don't know, this whole think stinks like rotten eggs. I just don't understand why people think they have the right to dictate what the consumer does with any good that is produced. Like it or not, that's what these creations are. Whether you talke music, books, magazines, MP3s or whatever, it's a good, a product.
Now, here's the really important question. When did we, as consumers, lose all the rights that were supposedly part of any deal? There was the right of the producer to make money (yes, that sounds fair). And then there was the right as a consumer to do whatever we wanted with that good after we purchased it (short of copying it and reselling the copies, sounds fair enough). That is what "consumer rights" is all about. But today it seems that the emphasis is placed on the producer's rights and the consumer is considered to be a pirate, theif, thug, or criminal of whatever sort is the most vile and disgusting at the moment just because we were stupid enough to purchase the good in the first place. I'm sorry, but at what point did big business decide that all people are as criminally motivated as they are?
Sorry, just another stupid consumer that feels like he's had enough. And as someone that is also one of the producers (in this context) it seems ridiculous that other "producers" are trying so hard to limit the rights of the consumers. ARGHHHH!
------------
pudge: (President of the Authors Guild)
jamie: That sounds like an anagram.
pudge: anyway, i understand that authors are kinda pissed about what amazon is doing, but they need to get over it.
jamie: pudge, that name is an anagram for "bigot plenty contrite."
pudge: jamie, ha!
jamie: and "glint byte protection"
hemos: jamie: Ha!
hemos: Ooo! I like the first one.
hemos: Hmmmm...over two hours till my meeting. I think it might be time to play SC3U.
pudge: SETEC ASTRONOMY
jamie: and "gent protect nobility." geez, he's just Mr. Anagram.
jamie: and "Bony Title Protecting."
timothy: I think Bony Title Protecting is good.
timothy: We should (as a service to readers) provide anagrams for famous people whenever possible.
timothy: And / or when the anagrams are funny.
jamie: or "Protect Goblin Entity," or "Percent Booty Tilting," or "Boycott Letting Ripen."
jamie: My favorite anagram for someone disapproving of Amazon:
jamie: "Tripling teen boycott."
timothy: ok. I'll bite. anagram for what?
jamie: pudge: what kind of name is Letty Cottin Pogrebin?
jamie: pudge: (President of the Authors Guild)
timothy: Ah, ok.
Jamie McCarthy
Jamie McCarthy
jamie.mccarthy.vg
And here we have precisely that kind of situation. The authors--who may be well-known to readers but who really are, essentially, little guys at the mercy of the publishers and booksellers--are seeing a big corporation trying to profit by taking away their livelihood. So they write a simple letter, saying, "Please, Mr. Big Corporation, don't do that. It's hurting us, and by extension will hurt you." And who is everyone here suddenly rooting for? The big corporation.
Perhaps it's that there seem to be a lot of authors and only one corporation in question. But then, why is everybody so up for the EFF in their fight against the RIAA and DVDCCA? The EFF is composed of a lot more people than the author group--and a single author is precisely as powerful as a single EFF member in his ability to fight the system. So, by extension, the EFF should be hated and feared and reviled by all the Slashdot folks, taking this supposition to its logical conclusion, because they're just a big bully. Why, they're colluding to restrain the trade of the DVDCCA! How dare they?
Or perhaps folks here somehow seem to think of authors as great and mystically powerful people, who are greedily profiteering at the expense of Us Little Guys. Folks, that just isn't true. Authors are normal folks, just like the rest of us, and unless they're Stephen King, are not making nearly as much money as you might think they are. They're just doing the best they can to make ends meet.
How is it inappropriate to ask someone who is blocking the sunlight from your garden, or peeing upstream from your water supply, or leaving poison out where your pets or kids can find it, or otherwise acting in a way detrimental to your life or livelihood, to kindly stop it? Turning the other cheek might be the meek and Christian thing to do, but it is rather at odds with continuing to live.
Our rights, individually and collectively, end where others' rights begin. Amazon, the authors, the publishers, and so forth all have certain rights and freedoms. Rights are not exclusive--it is not right for Amazon to profit at the expense of the authors, just as it would not be right for the authors to profit at the expense of Amazon. There should be some sort of balance reached, some sort of compromise. Even the authors don't object to Amazon's right to continue selling used books--even used copies of new books. They just object to Amazon's aggressiveness in trying to push them instead of the new books.
I'm not sure why I'm even bothering, but it's a pity to see everyone suddenly rallying behind Amazon, who just a few months ago was considered another wicked big corporation just like the rest of them, for yet another instance of their profiteering at the expense of the little guy.
--
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
I think a lot of you all don't realize how little authors get paid for the effort they put into a book. (Let me say here that i'm not a published pro, just a well educated wannabe, maybe soon-to-be.) I write quickly, and my husband supports me -- writers as fast as Stephen King are not the norm. Even with me going full time (i don't have kids, and i'm obsessive compulsive) it takes me a year to both finish and edit a book to send out. Most writers, who swing work and writing, take longer.
Your typical first genre book gets you an advance of 5000 dollars. That's it. If you break it down into hours spent vs $ per hour, it's something pathetic, like around two bucks an hr.
Past the advance, you usually earn back a small portion (5%? less? barely more?) of the proceeds from book sales.
If your book doesn't sell well, obviously you won't make much $ from the percentage. But beyond that -- and this is the important bit -- bookstores use their sales levels to calculate what they'll buy of your next book.
Let's be honest. Nothing has a 100% sell thru rate. So say you're a fab new author, the publisher's going to market you heavily (you might get a whopping ten grand, if you're lucky, which means you've worked for a year for 4$ an hr) and bookstores order 100,000 copies of your books.
You have an amazing sell thru rate of 75%! You've made $! The publisher wants you to write a sequel!
So you do -- and guess what? Bookstores order 75,000. Exactly the # that they sold last time. And this time again, you have a 75% sell thru rate...so for the 3rd book in your trilogy, bookstores order 50,000 copies.
Soon, you and your name's image are heading down the drain. If you're lucky (note how a lot of these theoreticals depend on luck :( ) a publisher will take a chance on you again with a New Pen Name, and send you back out into the cold world. If not, you've blown your chance, sorry.
If Amazon sells used books in those first crucial six months -- the only chance the bookstores give you, and probably your publishers as well -- not only is the writer losing money, but he's losing a career. (A proto-career, rather. It's hard to make ends meet on a measly 10,000$ a year these days.)
After those six months? The books will be off the shelves, and the author can consider the sales of used books as advertisements for their next.
Yes, i don't have to write. No one is forcing me. But if you want your favorite authors to continue to write (especially if you like esoteric or niche writers) then you really need to support them.
If Amazon's tactics continue, the pool of new writers will shrivel, and the pool of currently famous writers will either become stale and repetative (don't tell me you haven't stopped reading at least one author because all their books are the same now) or age and die off, with no one to replace them.
I'm all for used books, but only in good time. No one is saying (well, i'm not saying ;)) that you can't pass around a book that you've bought. Instead of comparing books to cars or other objects, compare them to entertainment -- like movies. In fact, books are much better than movies (for other reasons, but i'm biased.) Your used movie ticket won't get your friends in after you. And if you want to rent it -- you wait until the theaters/production companies/etc have milked their due. And even then you have to wait to buy it.
Books are unique mobile entertainment. Authors don't get paid what actors make. Lend your bought books around, please, oftentimes that's the only advertisments that books get. But don't undercut the writers, especially when they are new ones, trying to get out of the gate in one piece.
Thanks for your time, Erin Cashier Denton
Erin Cashier Denton
http://www.worldcontrol.org/theri
It's no better to be safe than sorry.
Erin Cashier Denton
http://www.worldcontrol.org/theri
It's no better to be safe than sorry.
Now that I think of it, the used-books-over-the-net trade would probably has the potential to improve the quality of new books, by introducing the market requirement that new releases be keepers, lest they be destined for perpetual net-facilitated swapping.
It could certainly improve the quality of new books, but not for that reason exactly. New books that are keepers would make more money (indeed they already do, because of public libraries and bricks-and-mortar used book stores) but crappy new books would not be bought and sold endlessly. Sooner or later word gets out that a particular work is crap. Crap typically ends up in the trash heap. Why keep trying to sell something that no one will buy?
With UO/Everquest type games, your paying for someone to administer servers for you. Not really any different than paying your ISP to maintain your mail server.
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
All I can say is: "Good-bye and good riddance!" Just wait, by 2005, Amazon will drive themselves out of business (maybe even sooner!) ... just ask Jay Walker. And, if you want more proof, check this out:
Amazon Stock
Barnes & Noble Stock
All Amazon has done is to combine the new and the the used book stores. There is nothing wrong with that!
There is nothing sacred about a book. Indeed since it is less easy to copy and resell like a CD, authors really have little reason to complain.
See my journal, I write things there
All,
I read your letter http://www.authorsguild.org/pramazon1200.html. I disagree - authors and publishers should not get paid each time a book is re-sold. You get paid once, that's it, and that's the way it should stay.
It's certainly fair and right to be paid the first time.
There are any number of analogous situations, but I'll pick one. When I sell a car (which contains intellectual property as much as does a book) the original manufacturer receives no income.
By pursuing this, you will be perceived as greedy.
>>Probably most copies of Titus Groan (plug plug) were bought by people who have read or borrowed a used copy. It has been my repeated experience that people who read a used or borrowed copy of a book, and like it, are very likely to buy NEW another book by the same author - so making used books available is an excellent marketing strategy for new books.
"Anybody remotely interesting is mad, in some way or another" - Doctor Who
Hell there are a lot of things that I wish were true. It doesn't meen that it will happen.
Still I think the Authors guild mainly has made its self look silly.
The cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
I can understand most slashdot computer/IT professionals and hobbyists not being aware of it, but I really did think that the Authors' Guild of all groups would be familiar with that massive, evil cartel of socialist spinoffs also known as publicly funded libraries.
Every day, millions of people visit the libraries of the world, reading and borrowing books without even paying a cent for them. Just think how much compensation the authors would miss out on through this cruel and unjustified practice. Libraries don't resell books once, they loan them out FOR FREE, and HUNDREDS OF TIMES. That's hundreds of people reading a book that has only ever been paid for once!
It's as if people think authors would rather have their work read than have their publishers make money from them... as if people think that literacy is more important than a few more cents for the author.
Honestly, what is this world coming to?
===
Far from depriving good authors of their well-deserved compensation, a thriving, efficient market in used books finally restores some real economic feedback into the book market. Maybe this will finally serve to weed out the bad stuff from the good stuff and have publishers pay more attention to quality than to marketability again.
All this could be solved if the publishers institute a system of EULAs for books. Every book should be shrink-wrapped, with a notice on the wrapping saying "By opening this shrink-wrap you hereby agree to the following..." etc. Then, instead of owning the book, you would be buying limited rights to read the contents of a book still owned by the publisher. Wait! What am I doing? ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H oh dammit! I need to patent this idea *now*!
The letter merely requests that Amazon change its policy and makes moral arguments why Amazon ought to voluntarily change its policy. There is no threat nor invocation of lawyers or copyright law. Merely an appeal to Amazon's good will and community spirit.
This is an exemplary practice and should be encouraged at a time when most businesses call the lawyers and issue threats without making any attempt to speak with the other party human to human.
This attitude comes from thinking "all potential money is mine. If you affect my potential profit, it is the same as stealing from me." If the authors and publishers are upset about this, they would blow a gasket if they knew that friends and I sometimes swap books. Kinda the first, low tech version of Napster. I should have patented it. . .
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
If book authors and publishers aren't adequately compensated for their work, however, then more and more writers will be compelled to pursue other creative outlets and professions.
Do authors really write for the money? Throughout history, often times the greatest authors have died in poverty because their works were not appreciated. However they still continued to write. IMHO, for most writers, writing is a passion and not simply a money generator. (For a prime example of this, watch the movie/play Quills.)
In Portland, Oregon, where I live, we have a chain of local stores called "Powell's Books". This is an independent chain, doesn't operate outside the area, and is one of the largest independent booksellers left in the country. It's a great store, in part because of a shelving policy they have. Like many bookstores, Powell's sells used books.
There's more, though. They shelve the used books right alongside the new books. So if I walk into Powells and want to buy a copy of a book, more often than not I walk out with a used copy.
This is an almost exact realspace parallel with what Amazon is "guilty" of doing. Why does Amazon get this letter, then? Because it's a big target and it's in cyberspace, home of criminals and intellectual property pirates. Bah. My open note to Jeff Bezos: Tell the Author's Guild to go to hell.
-SymphonicMan
Now they hit these zShops for books as well. Great. What am I supposed to do otherwise?
--
+++ Out Of Cheese Error +++
+++ MELON MELON MELON +++
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Comment removed based on user account deletion
(Did I just make that word up? Oh well.)
It should be obvious, though, that the tactic won't really work too well, particularly with Amazon. A company that trademarks "one-click shopping" *has* no community spirit.
Chris Tembreull
Web Developer, NEC Systems, Inc.
Chris Tembreull
"My karma just ran over your dogma."
/*
When I read a copy of The Republic or Soon To Be Another Sean Connery Movie, it doesn't go away the second I put the book down. You remember things about it. You make jokes with your friends about it later, or you reference the material. That's why a book is content. Now, when I buy a book from you, do you cease to do those things? Do you forget the book? Of course not! It now seems that we have two people with knowledge of the content, but the author has only been paid once.
*/
isnt this true of most things? i can keep my job while i go to school because i have a car. if i had to take a bus it would be impossible. so the car is contributing to who i am, and my hopefully higher future income. should i not be able to sell my car? if i did, heaven forbid, someone else might be able to better herself but the poor car company would only get paid once!
the animal doesnt even have opposable thumbs, focker!
The pulishers and authors are angry at Amazon selling used books? Well boohoo, last time I checked selling used things was still legal.
These are the same people who were dead against Amazon letting users post book reviews. I know I sure wouldn't buy an expensive book in this day and time anymore without first reading a couple of reviews, if the book doesn't have a review, I'll just look at the next one instead. There's such and incredible amount of for example programming books, so why waste time and money on the bad ones?
There's a world of difference. The code submissions are copyleft licensed. They are free information. Even though the FSF owns the copyright, people can copy, modify, and sell the code without their permission. If the FSF becomes defunct, people will still be able to use copy, modify, and sell the code.
Amazon does not allow anyone to copy, modify, or sell the reviews without their permission.
Copylefted information can be effectively immortal if people find it useful enough to copy it and save it. Amazon.com reviews should be expected to disappear if and when Amazon goes out of business.
Find free books.
Readers. It hasn't taken off yet, but people are working on it. Street Performer Protocol is one attempt to work out a way of doing it. Buskware is another. Popular mainstream author Stephen King attempted a variation on this a few months ago, but it failed (although there is quite a bit of debate over the reason it didn't work.)
The point is, people are working on this problem and trying out ideas. It's still young. There are definately plans being drawn up for getting the bell onto the cat, and even a few abortive attempts. It'll get better with time.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
IMHO, they just did it because they couldn't sue...
Sure they can sue. Would the suit go anywhere is a different question. I can sue to stop the city from tearing up the sidewalk in front of my house. The city isn't breaking the law, but I can still sue.
And that amounts to trying to make an end-run around fair-use doctrines through collusion among participants in the market. I actually consider that immoral.
It is quite evident that Clancy lives by his word: he appears to produces book to make money, not out of literary or artistic motives.
Of the latter books [The Bear and the Dragon and Rainbow Six especially, but maybe also the Sum of All Fears-Debt of Honor-Executive Orders trilogy], I'd be inclined to agree with your sentiment. Earlier, Clancy's writing was more concise. There are many, many threads about the decline in the later books, mainly based around the fact that Jack Ryan is a tired character.
For example, I'm about 600 pages into TBatD, and only about 2/3 of it is really necessary--a lot of it is repetitive and fluffy. Some have joked that Clancy's getting paid by the page. I just think his editor is slacking...-shrug-
If you want a really good Clancy tome, though, Without Remorse is your book. Well-written, as it should be, since it was the first novel Clancy ever started writing. He finished and published it about ten or fifteen years later. It's a hell of a book and my fave.
[Moderators: Don't flag this as "Offtopic" because of thread drift, 'kay? I mean, it's not as if I don't have the karma to lose, but what's the point? It's relevant to this discussion.]--
-- Geof F. Morris
A large percentage of the type of books I like to buy are simply no longer in print and cannot be obtained except as used books (e.g. old Pogo comics and many other classic comic strip collections.) I'd be happy to buy such books as new, if they were available, but publishing companies generally have absolutely no interest in reprinting books, even ones that are still in fair demand, strangely enough. Probably they regard it as "high-risk" to reprint a book. So where should I obtain copies of older books, if the publishing companies don't want to sell me a new one, but don't want me to get my hands on an old one either?
This seems similar to me to the companies like Sega that aggressively continue to defend their rights to old arcade games available on emulators like mame, even though they have no interest whatsoever in making money from that IP.
For the Author's League, the Publisher's Association, and Amazon.com to get together to restrict the used book market is probably illegal collusion in restraint of trade, an antitrust violation. Publishing an open letter on the subject makes proving this really easy, too.
END-USER LICENSE AGREEMENT FOR
WORDS PRINTED ON DEAD TREES AS A COLLECTIVE WORK COMPRISING A "BOOK"
IMPORTANT-READ CAREFULLY: This End-User License Agreement ("EULA") is a legal agreement between you (either an individual or a single entity) and the ("Author") of the written work which you acquired as the printed material identified above ("Book" or "Written work"). If the BOOK PRODUCT is not accompanied by a new computer system or computer system component, you may not loan out or resell this BOOK PRODUCT. The BOOK PRODUCT includes the paper, cover, printed text, and may include associated media such as pictures and apendices. Any references provided along with the BOOK PRODUCT that is associated with a separate end-user license agreement is licensed to you under the terms of that license agreement. By buying, reading, accessing or otherwise using the BOOK PRODUCT, you agree to be bound by the terms of this EULA. If you do not agree to the terms of this EULA, The AUTHOR and PUBLISHER are unwilling to license the BOOK PRODUCT to you. In such event, you may not use or resell the BOOK PRODUCT, and you should promptly contact Manufacturer for instructions on return of the unused product(s) for a refund...
etc...
"Tension is the great integrity" -- R. Buckminster Fuller
the right to re-sell a used book has been enshrined in law almost as long as there has been copyright law.
it doesn't matter if the book is 1 minute or 1000 years old.
the prominence given to used listing is, and should be, entirely up to the vendor of said used book.
this is not an open source principle, it is a property rights issue.
tell you what, next time you go to sell your house, let's list yours at the bottom of the page, because the builders of new houses have a right to make money, while you are just abusing the rights of the guy who built your house by selling it again after he sold it to you.
The difference between Theory and Practice is greater in Practice than in Theory.
So whether used book sales undermine the publishing industry or not is irrelevant. Amazon does not owe the publishing industry the favor of not competing with its new book sales.
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
You misread that *totally*!!!
The intention of that clause is to prevent the sale of "strips". A strip is a book which has been defaced by a bookseller because it was unsold, and its cover returned to the publisher for credit. They strip off the covers to reduce shipping, and on the supposition that a book that couldn't be sold is probably not worth getting back, and moreover, would be shopworn.
So; TOTALLY legal to sell a used book. Just not legal to sell a used book that has been defaced or re-bound.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Yes, used book sales cut into new book sales. However, people have been selling their books for hundreds of years, and thats not going to change. Instead of persuading booksellers to stop selling used books(which will never work), they should do more things like booksignings that add value to the new book.
I watch the sea.
I saw it on TV.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
I could write a letter to Amazon, requesting that they give me 0.1% of all their sales and making the "moral" argument that I need the money to take care of homeless puppies. Their correct response would be to tell me to go away. The guild has no more right to profit from Amazon's sales than I do, so "go away" is also the correct response to them.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Stephen King... Come on -- he's a good 15% of all sales by himself...
So under the same logic its illegal for me to buy my house and (hopefully) sell it at a profit, just as it is illegal for me to buy a car and (hopefully) sell it.
They cannot be allowed to dictate terms to Amazon. I don't like Amazon and I won't buy from Amazon, but the Author's Guild is trying to do something very wrong here. The books are sold and then they are the property of the people who own them. This is the same thing Matel ran into with the people selling modified Barbies. Once you sell someone something it belongs to them. If Amazon wants to make it easier for people to buy and sell used books I say "Yay Amazon". If Amazon caves in to the Author's Guild on this what will they demand next? A kickback for every used book sold? This would set a bad prescident and encourage furthur dictates from the content providers.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
Here's the full quote, written in 1939 and increasingly applicable today:
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Sure, you can cloak it in the banner of "freedom of information" all you want. But what's really behind all this high-mindedness? I have to tell you, I see a lot of greed mixed in with those principles. People want free stuff. That's all there is to it. (And I have to confess, I'm just as guilty of that at times as anyone else.)
Believe it or not, there are times when it is good to pay for something new. I hang out with authors in discussion areas online; I sit in on their discussions about publishers and contract terms; I think I know at least a little bit about their situation. And frankly, if they're not one of the really big names, like Stephen King, odds are they're just barely scraping by. Even some of the more recognizeable names in SF have to live off spouses' incomes or even take part- or full-time jobs in worst cases, just to survive.
The authors are realistic; they know that a certain portion of people will read without buying new. It's the portion of people who normally don't that they count on to earn their living. Are they so wrong to object to a company trying to lure those new-buyers away to buy used instead?
In the worst case, if more and more people start buying used, authors won't have time to write as much (or any), just from having to spend time working to stay alive. And that'll be a shame.
As Heinlein so aptly put it, There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. Even if you didn't pay for it, someone else did--and that someone else might not be able to afford the loss. Buying used books is essentially freeloading on an author's creativity.
But fine. It's still perfectly legal to buy and sell used. In fact, the Author's Guild folks probably wouldn't dream of trying to outlaw it. So go right ahead, buy used, save a bundle. But have you ever thought of sending fifty cents or a buck or so per used book you buy to the author of those books? As a form of thankyou for writing, and payment for the enjoyment you received out of it, and insurance that they'll be able to keep writing the stuff you enjoy? Not only will it still be cheaper than buying the book new, but you'll likely be giving them more money than they would have gotten from the sale of it if it were new.
--
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Some people seem to be missing the forest for the trees. Amazon doesn't sell used books. The feature known as Marketplace allows Joe Q Public to sell at a discount used copies of the same material Amazon is selling New. For this placement Amazon will recieve 15% of the sale price when the item sells. Amazon doesn't inventory the merchandise. The seller is responsible for shipping etc. They have a simular feature called zShops which allowed crosslinking to Amazon's inventory so someone who looked a t a book would also see on a rotating basis links to three different offerings from independent sellers. I have been using both services and although the newer marketplace fees are higher they have generated good results. I have sold some books probably fewer than 20 or so. Most of what I sell are CD's (They have all been reduced to 0's and 1's so what do I need the hard copy for anymore? They have paid for my school this past year. Used book stores exist all over. On the web you have ebay and Half.com which both allow the selling of used product.
There is an interesting parallel here between the used book market and the used CD market. I learned about this in my studies a couple of years back.
Back in the day (early 80's?), when the music industries were looking for a suitable replacement for the audio tape, they came up with the Compact Disc format. Compact Discs were industry-friendly for a number of reasons, not the least of which was their cheap production cost. But there was one aspect of CDs that the recording industry hadn't counted on: their low degradation rate.
Although easily scratched, a CD that had been well-taken care of did not lose sound quality or otherwise physically break down over time, as tapes and LPs did. Thus CDs lent themselves to the used market in a way that previous media never had, and used CDs began to turn up in stores across the country.
In their characteristic profit-minded fashion, the recording industry responded to this by attempting to curb the used CD market. Nothing could be done legally to prevent stores from selling used CDs. But any store which chose to sell used CDs would not be sent the promotional materials that were given to stores which refused to sell used. Many chain stores do not sell used CDs for this very reason. Used-CD specialty stores thus appeared, which sold a few new CDs but for the most part catered to the used CD market. In recent years, however, I have noticed the trend to sell used CDs in the chains as well, so perhaps this has changed.
Needless to say, more consideration was given to ways to control USES of later media. This led directly to the current controls over how DVD media products are consumed. Could books be next on the media industry's agenda? Electronic books already have all sorts of guidelines restricting their use.
"First you gotta do the truffle shuffle."
While I understand the need for authors to get paid, they MIGHT want to recognize that one of the reason used book sales are climbing is that their damn cover prices are increasing for NO good reason.
Anyone notice that a paperback that used to commonly be 3.95 is now 7.95 (the price preprinted on the cover). That would be SOLELY so they can throw the book on the "50% discount" table and get the same pile of $$$ as if they'd (10 years ago) sold it for full retail. They're so clever.
Well sorry guys, but Adam Smith wins. You raise your prices, and the market goes elsewhere. Get over it, or stop being so greedy.
-Styopa
Well then we should all go down with torches in hand and destroy the public library. By your logic we should never be able look at a book with out purchasing it, and here the library is letting hundreds of people look at one book and only pay for it once. imagine that.
Even if I disagree *totally* with your reasoning...
The problem is that if Amazon does some sort of netflix type site with books, the author's guild will just charge that Amazon is taking away rightful copyright control and profit away from the authors, again.
With every book purchased, the author *already* gets paid, so there is nothing wrong with what Amazon is doing. Those books have already been paid for!
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
Nobody smart enough to put this argument as well as this could be stupid enough to believe it for a moment, so please cut it with the trolling.
--
Xenu loves you!
<rant mood="blind rage">
Exactly what is it with all the attempts to control content lately? There's this, there's the article on link charges, RIAA-vs-Napster, MPAA-vs-DeCSS, the CDA... The world seems to be full of lawyers, greedheads, and/or moralists who think that they should be able to control what media I consume and that I should pay to be controlled in that manner.
Though I have broad tastes in literature and consume thousands of dollars worth of books every year, in this case I can see only one reasonable response to the authors' gripe: Fuck them. But hard. If they can't write a book worth keeping, they shouldn't be rewarded with higher sales.
(Side note: Now that I think of it, the used-books-over-the-net trade would probably has the potential to improve the quality of new books, by introducing the market requirement that new releases be keepers, lest they be destined for perpetual net-facilitated swapping.)
Secondly, what right do they have to interfere in private transactions, no matter how they are facilitated? Used book stores have been around for some time - it seems to me that their objection really isn't the trade itself, but the efficiency of it. The more I think about it, the more it sounds like an attempt at anti-competetive trade restraint, pure and simple.
More generally, I'm interested in hearing what /.ers think about how we as citizens & private individuals can curtail these idiot attempts to control and charge for our media consumption. I don't think we can count on useful legislative relief - the legislature is too much a slave to the greedheads and moralists. What market forces can we bring to bear to make trade restraint groups like the RIAA, the MPAA, and the Author's Guild realize that they can't and shouldn't maintain their current parasitic mode of existence in the (pardon the phrase) Internet Age?
</rant>
OK,
- B
--
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
How many of us are attending college? I dont know about you, but my college shelves used books, with the new books. but something tells me that these authors wont send a nasty letter to the University of Idaho! I think we hav a term for this "weak sauce" fuck them
Yup I first read Hammer's Slammers as a used paperback and since then Mr. Drake has gotten quite a bit of my money, this is very true. Of course I don't shop at Amazon but my local used book store has some very cool stuff that you just can't find anywhere else. I just hope they don't ever try to make this legal.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
If you want to make more money, I'd suggest you write a better book.
Andamooka: Open support for open content.
Someone is gonna figure out how to charge me for viewing advertising. Or better yet, an EULA on ads that obligates me to buy the product. This sorta reminds me of the Heinlien story "Lif-line", where a scientist invents a machine that reports a person's time of death down to the second and the life insurance companies sue him. The judge in that story says something to the effect of "Just because you have been able to make money off of people in the past does not mean the legal system should gaurantee you ability to make it in the future". It's a shame you only see that kind of clear thinking in fiction from the 1930s.
Carpe Deez
But Amazon is sure making it easy for people to buy used copies. The icon for buying a used copy seems more inviting to my eyes than the icon for buying a new one. Amazon has an incredible position of power in the industry these days. People use it as a book review service, a books in print listing and a store. They can push the publishers around.
In the long run, I think Amazon will want to quit doing this. Amazon already gets a discount of 50% or more off the list price on new books. Getting the used books and shipping them out is harder to do with the same amount of efficiency as buying the new books. It just takes more work. That means it will be hard for Amazon to offer more than 10-25% of the cover price to people for their used books. Then they might be able to sell the book for 50% off. At this point, the cost of shipping and handling really starts becoming significant.
I think that in the long run Amazon's core business will be niche books that aren't best sellers. It's just so much cheaper to bulk ship the millions of copies of Tom Clancy or Danielle Steel to a local mall where people can pick them up while doing their errands.
These guys know darn well that their desire to control tertiary sales of books goes against the "first sale doctrine" as codified in the revision to the US Copyright Act of 1976. They seem to be seeking DMCA or UCITA type protection for published works. Scary concept at best, and if we don't activly elect representives that oppose this kind of draconian control of information, we will get what we deserve. I should also point out that once that pandora's box is opened, it will be the authors squeeling like stuck pigs when the publishers finish crafting the legislation in ways that allow then to nail the authors in ways similar to the ways the recording industry has been trying to nail the recording artists for the past several years...
Amazon is doing something that creates a better deal for the conumser, based on available goods, and is completely legal. That's just one more thing the net is changing. Authors don't like it? I have utmost respect for authors, but that's just how things are gonna be.
This isn't even illegal, there are no copyright issues. THere are absolutely no issues regarding selling used books; we aren't talking about copying books, we're talking about trading in an object: a book.
Authors don't like it? Too bad.
Amazon could change their policy so that used books can only be sold 1 year after their publish date, allowing the author and publisher to receive the majority of the proceeds they would anyway. After a year it should be fair game. But I don't agree that selling them right away as used is good practice.. sure it may be a free country.. but I think we owe it to the authors to let them make a decent living first..
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Esobofh - Currently drinking fresh mango juice.
next target:
Public Libraries.
be ready, the fight is coming.
OverLord
What is not clear is what kind of percentage of the proceeds from the sale of a second hand book would publishers/authors expect. Also, assuming for a minute that this argument had any credability, what would be the situaion with e-books. Given that they don't wear out, would authors and publishers be entitled to proceeds everytime the e-book was sold to someone else. The crux of their argument seems to be that another party, other than the one that initially paid for the book should not take ownership of the book from the original buyer, without then seeing some kind of compensation. This seems to suggest that Authors guild would also be against people swapping books/giving them away, once the original purchases has read them. This smacks of 'how much more money can we make if we come up with some half-baked idea and channel it through an official mouthpiece'
GiraffeSville, a place anyone can call home
Remember a few (4?5?) years back when Garth Brooks was raising a big stink about how used CDs were hurting musicians? It seems like every field of creativity has had these issues WRT reselling of used content at some point now. (I bet somebody pissed and moaned about used records decades ago.)
Just goes to show there really isn't anything new under the sun...
As far as the authors/musicians/whoever go my sympathy is limited. If their content was good enough to keep it wouldn't get resold.
--
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
De Beers had this same problem with resale of diamonds (de beers basically controls the worlds supply of gem quality diamonds), so they came up with the ad campaign "A diamond is forever". Of course publishers don't even have the decency to print their books on acid-free paper so that the books dont turn yellow and fall apart
Sneakemail is to spam filters what an ounce of prevention is to a pound of cure.
How about stopping the ridiculous practice of releasing only hardcover for a year or more before the title is available in paperback? Speaking only for myself, I would buy about thrice as many new books if they were available for 1/3rd the price. The way I see it, if I can get that price by buying used on amazon, that's great. If the publishers want my business, perhaps they should adjust their distribution practices in order to get it.
Ideology breeds Hypocrisy. Just how much is up to you.
In the case of Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus, 210 U.S. 339 (1908) [sorry, the web-links I know are fee-for-service: WestDoc or Lexis-Nexis], the Supreme Court held that the exclusive right to sell copyrighted works only applied to the first sale of a copyrighted work. 210 U.S. 339, 349-350.
More recently, on March 9, 1998, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the first sale doctrine applies to copyrighted goods produced in the United States and sold in foreign markets. In the case of Quality King Distributors, Inc. v. L'anza Research International, Inc., 1998 WL 96265 (U.S. Cal.), the court held that the first sale doctrine prevents copyright owners from controlling the importation of copyrighted goods sold outside the United States. The court found that section 602(a) of the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. 602(a), gives copyright owners the right to control the importation of copies into the United States, is an extension of the copyright owner's exclusive right to distribute copies under section 106 and not an additional right of the copyright owner.So the Authors Guild action is an attempt to do an end-run around the Supreme Court. As far as the "earn no payment for the authors and publishers of the book" goes, that is exactly the point -- the SC says that they have already earned their payment and are not due more!
This is an unconscionable power play and should be slapped down as such. Go, Jeff Bezos!
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
And Damn Their Eyes, they even provide that choice between used and new ONLINE (gasp!)
Powells.com for some of the best damn selection on the web.
Crafter
a maker of Fine MindCrafted answers
I just bought the K&R used from Barnes and Nobel online. I can't say I'm impressed with the shape of the book, it has been highlighted, writted in, and there is something all over the cover, but I saved $10, which is worth it to me. $40 for a book that isn't that long seems a bit much for me, although I would have been willing to pay it for the K&R, but the option to buy it used was quite welcome, even if I might not do it again unless a book is quite expensive.
So what if they sell used books, shaving cream, or nine-volt batteries?
If they start selling bomb-grade plutonium, then they should probably be stopped. Otherwise, why shouldn't they sell anything they damn well please?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
What is new here is that Amazon began allowing anyone to sell one specific book and lists it on the main page for the book. They made it easier to find and buy used books, and also rather than requiring you to be a bookstore anyone can do it. So there's a bit of eBay business being brought in also.
Many years ago, I was approached by a balding young man and another young man that was too trim and far too slim to be considered normal. I had just finished my Newbie's guide to D.O.S. which included source code and executables on a floppy, which was neatly tucked into a paper folder on the following flap of the book. These two people offered me a nice sum of 50k for both the rights to the book and the rights to the source code and assorted garbage that I included on the disk. You know, the rest is history. Do I regret my actions? Yes. Pretty much. Do I care? Damn well I do. What do I do now? I code compilers for MS. Weh heh heh heh heh heh heh. There's a bit of irony and a smidgeon of revenge in this. My last proffo stint was at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I loaned a disk full of neat-o stuff to a guy named Marc...Marc VanBeersendrinken? Mark von Pantyhosensplinken?...anyway...it was was some Marc or Mark Somesuch. Oh well, off to the nest failed project...
You can visit their website:
http://www.powells.com
The letter cites one book being sold "used" at Amazon just one month after publication. (It's one that I'm waiting for and I haven't seen it in the local bookstore yet!) Do you really think that in one month, someone bought it, read it, sold it, it got shipped to Amazon, sorted out of boxes full of other books, and put on the web site?
Or do you think maybe some of these are new books that somehow left the publisher by the back door and have never been sold, therefore the writer did not get his royalty? It happens. I don't know if this is still true, but in the '70's new paperbacks that didn't sell were not shipped back to the publisher. Instead the bookstores tore the front covers off and shipped only those back as proof that the book had been "destroyed." And there was a "used" book store that would indeed buy your well-thumbed paperbacks for a dime and sell them for a quarter -- but most of their stock were paperbacks with the front cover missing and no appearance of ever having been opened. In other words, their used books were just a cover for unrecorded (and therefore illegal!) sales of excess stock from new book stores. I don't know (and don't much care) if the publishers were getting ripped off, but certainly the authors were. And when a vendor as big as Amazon gets plenty of very recent "used" books, I wonder if the publisher isn't deliberately creating "excess stock" that can be discounted by eliminating the author's share, since officially that first sale never happened.
On the other hand, the Author's Guild demands are ridiculously excessive. They could legitimately aks that Amazon ensure its used books actually originated with individual readers (no boxes full of the same book coming in). Setting a 6 month minimum time between first publication and selling used books wouldn't hurt a legitimate used book business much, since collecting used books one at a time without blowing the budget would take nearly that long. But banning all resales until the books are out of print? That's as ridiculous as the !@#$%^ software licenses!
If you go look at what Amazon's doing, they're simply providing a place for people to sell their books. Amazon isn't selling the books themselves!
Amazon is basically taking care of all the money transfers, and so on. This is essentially one person selling to another. I'm sure Amazon gets some sort of commission or fee, but so what? Where does the Author's Guild seem to think evilness is being done? Above and beyond the fact it's a legal operation. Weird.
You obviously don't have a clue... If you want to make a comparison.. you aren't taking your car down to the toyota dealership and stopping prospective toyota owners before they purchase a new vehicle. That is what is happening here. Perhaps they should have a seperate auction site.. amazonused.com or something.
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Esobofh - Currently drinking fresh mango juice.
I bragged about my Karma at a job interview but I didn't get the job.
I only buy used books for myself. When it started costing 8.00 for a paperback, I decided that I can wait 6 months to get the book I want at 1/2 price.
Of course now I am in a conundrum. I haven't purchased anything from Amazon since the one click patent nonsense, but I want to support the re-sale of books.
Here's is something the authors should do, create an online money transfer account. I would love to send A.C.Clark a few bucks for 2001.(which I bought for 1.00)
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
What people (i.e. the Authors guild) seem to forget is that it is not at all clear that they will be losing money here.
Take for instance one of the books they cite "Me Talk Pretty Someday". Lets say it costs $20 new. I won't buy it. If it were $10 i might. At $5 I'll bite. Now lets say Hemos would pay $17 for it. Well at $20 the author gets sqwat with out the secondary market. But with it he makes another sale. Hemos buys the book for $20 reads it and sells it to me for $5. Everyone is happy!
"$5.00 a day, that's less than a mochachino double tall Starbucks(tm) latte supremo-delicioso, yet that same $5.00 can change the life of a starving author such as these. Your $5.00 can clothe and feed an author and pay for his pencils and laptop computers. You will recieve a picture of your author in the dustcover of the next book he writes, and your heart will be warmed by your generous gift."
"You are in no way excused from your obligation to support the starving CEO of Starbucks(tm), and should still continue your daily consumption of mochachino double tall Starbucks(tm) latte supremo-deliciosos, and heck, you really could drink more, the yacht needs a paint job. Author's picture requires purchase of book title of your choice, warm heart for free when you purchase Humanity(tm) and Compassion(tm) at your nearest Artist Enclave(tm). Starving Authors(tm) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Starving Artists(tm) an international corporation serving the needs of starving artists worldwide through whining and intimidation. Sometimes we resort to threats and legal action, so check your ass."
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
It seems to me that if you print a book on paper (or music/video on a CD) and then place that book in the hands of the consumer you have lost the ability to track or control it. That consumer can do just about anything he wants with it and you may have no idea what that might be. Copyright laws arouse because people wanted to exercise some degree of control, at least at points where they could track things, like sales. What really suprises me is that that the potential to expand that control by switching to electronic media has not been recognized by the companies who sell books, CDs, and movies. They certainly notice when it starts to cut into sale (or when they think it might start) but they don't seem to see the potential to increase existing sales by embracing it. Aside from increased sales there are a number of other advantages: A secure electronic media would prevent replication, it could 'phone home' every time it was used, access to it could be restricted to players sold only by the publisher, etc. The potential is limitless. If a company can get worked up over the sale of used books one would think that they would be racing to convert everyone from paper to electronics.
I'm not saying that they would be right to do this. It would be abominable actually, I'm just expressing my dismay that it hasn't already happened.
You pay the licensing fees but that's it. Homes are an exception thanks to governement imposed property tax which you pay every year, of course even that is subject to the state in which you reside.
I hate to side with the company that patented one click shopping, but in this case I think that they are the ones being bullied.
When you buy a book, you get one copy, and that copy, unlike the agreements for most software, is yours to own and sell. What Amazon wants to do is get in on a very lucrative business of hooking up buyers and sellers of used books, so they can charge a royalty, probably. This is something that's been going on online for a long time now. There are many campus bulletin boards that went online with used textbooks, for instance.
However, this is not about whether Amazon has the right to sell used books (they do have the right) but it's about the publishers trying to pressure Amazon into only selling new books. In this way, the publishers have banded together to create a kind of monopoly, and are now using that monopoly unfairly against the used book industry.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
What's more interesting is that, suprise!, many people walk out with a new copy. Powells has proven that their business model works, and that it continues to promote sales of new books.
It will be interesting, if Amazon eventually folds, to see what happens to book sales. I bet the Author's Guild would not be pleased.
-"I talked to God and here's the deal/ He said to floss between each meal" -- Uninvited
IMHO, they just did it because they couldn't sue...
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free the mallocs!
If a book is worth selling, it wasn't worth buying ... The authors guild has assumed an automatic response stance based on their wants ... ... Which is something that really bothers me about american society (of which I'm a part) ... when did it become acceptable for corporations and governments, and actors and musicians and anyone else to lie ? One of my favorite people in the world -- Bill Cosby -- after making "Lenoard part 6" (one of the worst films ever, probably only surpassed by battlefield earth) went on tv asking his fans not to see the movie because it was awfull and he was ashamed of it ... you just don't get honesty like that anymore
Second of all, lots of books are out of print, Try to get some early niven books (inferno comes to mind), or some diterlizzi art books -- you can't -- they've been out of print for 10 years ... so whats the diff if I buy them on ebay or amazon ?
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
Then explain why used book stores exist.
I can go down the street to Davis Square and there is a huge store that JUST sells old used books. Its all they do...buy em and sell em.
Sure, the text may be there, but that doesn't matter. It is a well established practice for people to sell old used books. It has been going on for years and years.
Lawsuits have been brought on similar grounds before, and they always lose. Just because its written doesn't make it true. Many MANY things written in copyright statments are just as much works of fiction as any story of the bible. (which is a really good analogy, IMHO, since its fiction that some people read and actually believe is truth)
I hearby forbid everyone from driving a car. Now can you figure out why thats a silly thing for me to do? I do it anyway. Does it stop you?
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I'm surprised nobody has yet pointed out that books are sold, but software is only licensed. That means that I'm not legally entitle to resell software I've used, since most software is sold as a non-transferable license (which, by the way, can be revoked at any time).
Are we going to start seeing media "licenses" down the road?
If you post it, they will read.
P.S. Sorry for this obscene, gramatically incorrect rant. Big groups who think they control an industry just piss me off.
Sleep: A completely inadequate substitute for caffeine.
Like other forms of IP (where there is large development cost and little or no material cost), it looks like the best solution is for creators to be paid for doing the work, instead of being paid for a product.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
> Amazon has done some foolish things in the past (wacky patents, charging different prices for each customer, etc) but this is nothing new.
True. Advanced Books Exchange ( http://www.abebooks.com/ ) has been in operation for years, & IMNSHO does a far better job of finding titles than Bezos ever could.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
In some sense they may just be starting a large for-profit lending library ..... of napstering the book industry they depend on (look Ma I made a new verb!)
Well lets see, the person buying the car is more then likely buying it because they can't afford the new one. However parts and stuff still puts money in the companies pocket.
actually, a lot of people who buy used cars get the their parts from wrecking yards, where they are indexed and made available for instant purchase (call up any junkyard and ask them if they have an alternator for an '87 accord; you'll get an immediate answer)
Now we go to an online bookstore, instead of buying a new book and giving my money to the author I am in fact giving it to Amazon.com
no, you are in fact giving it mostly to the bookseller who's selling the book, who has in turn spent money to acquire it from someone who bought it new from another bookseller, who bought it from a distributor, who bought it from the publisher, who gave the author a cut.
authors make money on that first transaction, even if it's from amazon.com; what's at issue here is whether or not they make money off the transactions that follow. they never have before, and I don't think the fact that those transactions have become easier for the consumer is reason enough for them to start doing so.
Now I know for a fact a few bookstores sell second hand books but they don't offer the instant indexing and offering of 2nd hand books.
before you had to call around to each individual store to ask if they had it, but each store tracks inventory and generally knows what they have. and there are a *lot* of used book stores out there, each selling a lot of the same bestsellers that the publishing companies (and authors) are worried about
-k. ^-^ ^D
You are simple minded morons with your misunderstanding of the AG position. The Authors Guild isn't upset that used books are bought sold and traded. The problem is this: If you try to buy a new book from Amazon, without a lonely thought of buying a used book, Amazon will pop up and say, "Wanna buy a used one?" That's legal, but it is not fair to the author or the consumer. It's a hair's breadth away from reselling used copies of books as "new." Don't think for a second that Amazon won't try to pull that stunt if it finds a legal way to fudge it. Another poster raised the question about whether or not the "used" books in question are in fact used, since they turn up sometimes during the first week of publication. Many of the books in question, that early in the publication calendar could very well be stolen. And finally, and this is the most important part. You all aren't going to like it, but there's a big difference between guys selling used books from card tables in the East Village, and Amazon putting its resources behind the marketing of used books. You all are carrying on as if the Authors Guild is picking on some poor little guy who's just trying to make a living. As if the guild is bullying poor little Jeffy Bezos. I'd wager that Jefferey Bezos is worth more on paper than the entire membership of the Authors Guild, even if you include authors like Michael Crighton. He's playing you all for suckers and bitches. Gettin' you coming and going.
Good thing this rule doesn't apply to buying and selling used cars!
tysto writes: "Using the same logic, the Authors Guild should logically be against public libraries. After all, people who use libraries can (oh horrors!) read a new book without having to pay for it!"
There are some writers who hate libraries. For example, Tom Clancy has vented some of his frustrations on alt.books.tom-clancy. [I recommend reading a.b.t-c--I'm a regular, and it's a keeper. Katz, here's a "VC" for ya, buddy.]
Clancy writes: Samuel Johnson once wrote that no one but a fool writes for any reason except money, and I will not dispute the words of Dr. Johnson. Libraries purchase books, sure, and lend them out, and they last, typically, 10 readings before falling apart. But, you see, a writer only gets paid for the purchase, not the use, and in the case of computer owners AND internet surfers, it does strike me as odd that such people cannot afford to buy a damned book.
However, I am wealthy, and the wealthy are not allowed to have any opinions at all, and are the one class in America whom it is okay to loathe. Why? I suppose class envy is the usual reason, though, my dad was a mailman, and I am, therefore, working class.
People hate us for having huge houses. Well, okay, I do have a very large house, but I paid workers to build it, and thus my AFTER-TAX money went to workers with wives, families, and pickup trucks. For this I am disliked?
I suppose justice is where one finds it, and one must take the bitter with the sweet. Sniff...
Please do not take this postseriously. I *AM* allowed to have a sense of humor, even if the Washington Post and New York Times hate me. Unlike them, I have no illusions of godhood.
I've been reading a.b.t-c for several years now, and I'm still not always sure how to take TC when he posts to the NG. I've gotten a couple nice emails from him, and, curse my metal body, I came in second [maybe third] in the guess who TC's alter ego is contest. I also know who won. But I ain't sayin'--because, as I've said before, I respect TC's privacy. But I had that particular account killfiled at one point...
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-- Geof F. Morris
Cornell has the legal text for the Fair Use Doctrine on-line here.
Of note is this text:
In other words, the Author's Guild does not have a leg to stand on, until the day someone sells a book that they did not own. If they try to enforce this, they could be eating a Sherman Anti-Trust Act lawsuit.
Chivalry is not dead, it's just frequently misspelt. - M. Langley
If you support Amazon in this effort, shouldn't you be buying from them?
It all comes down to what is more annoying - one-click patents (that I feel will die of natural causes, eventually) or the right to own content at all.
I personally think that the freedom to own and redistribute content is a lot more important battle in the long run, so I see no reason to boycott Amazon. Plus, it's a way to get DVD's without giving money to the MPAA (I'm assuming here Amazon will also eventually start selling used DVD's in the same manner).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
People continue to push our ideas and whatnot into this borg like idealogy. Sure, a writer should get paid... sure a musician should get paid. Something, but these people need to get real. The peolpe that make this "content" and all this other shit are spoiled. Get a real job, and use that as a way to make money on the side... if people find a way to spread your ideas or beliefs or whatnot, don't stop them. How did we get the bible, and all that other shit!!!! It spread through word of mouth. All these patent laws and shit are stupid!!!! People need to get on with thier lives, you invent something, and idea, an object, whatever... move on create more, but don't piss and moan about all this shit.
:)
I create music, I create content(books and websites), and I create many many other things. But I work to make money at what will make me money. If it quits providing money I will do something else... it is the same philosohpies others should take... anyway, enough ranting on something I think ppl should spend time thinking about... but hey, I'm at work with nothing better to do.
I'm not using one yet.
I loved my old car really. She was schweet. I didn't sell it. I went to college. But I have such fond memories I should probably still be paying insurance in case I dream about hitting someone. You know things like that happen. Especially gotta talk about that spot 3.5 meters from a spot that's .125 inches from the tip of the door handle. I dropped a bit of ice cream there. Heck I could sit in a canoe and completely convince myself I'm in the car.
The artist already got paid when the book was first purchased. Same with the car I no longer have. Why should I still be bound to it?
Unless you want to argue that people have photographic memory, please try harder next time.
And don't push it. People remember plots using mental cues that come from everyday life as well as what they read. Does the author own those as well? Goddamned prideless greedy... well nevermind.
When the trucker that delivered those books gets paid should the author get paid TWICE again considering HE/SHE/IT (author) got paid when the books were purchased from the publisher's warehouse.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
parts and stuff still puts money in the companies pocket
Sure, if the guy down the street is a total dumb ass, and takes his used Celica to the dealer for service. There's a good reason aftermarket and remanufactured parts are pretty much all you find in the DIY/indie garage market; OEM parts are way too fucking expensive, and offer little or no qualitative distinction. I might buy an OEM fender for my semi-classic and pay the extra markup over buying a aftermarket clone or hunting junkyards for weeks, but I'm sure not going to pay $42 for OEM asbestos brake shoes when I can go down the street to Pep Boys and get a set of nicer semi-metal for $18.
instead of buying a new book and giving my money to the author I am in fact giving it to Amazon.com
First off, you are giving most of that money to the publisher or the guy who sold Amazon the book. Authors get a pittance. Second, If the used book market is anything like the used CD market, Amazon isn't getting too much more money selling the used copy. It's consumer choice, really. Consumers wanted a lower-cost book, so Amazon decided to offer used books. W00p.
.sig: Now legally binding!
Oh Jeez. How long before we see books that are shrink wrapped? "By opening this book you agree to abide by the license terms within"
"You do not own this work. You own a license to the work, that we may revoke at any time. You may not transfer ownership of this work unless granted written permission by the author. You may not read this book out loud, or lend it to anyone else..."
How long? How long before those greedy authors take away the freedom to share literature? This scares me. This scares me BAD.
Case in point:
My company sells a series of books. One day, by accident, a mislabeled box was sent to Amazon. The box contained fifty copies of the first volume in the series. (Amazon never orders fifty copies at a time. They order only 5 copies of one book at a time despite a three year solid sales record which would indicate that holding fifty copies each title wouldn't be a risk. --It would certainly help me out by dramatically cutting back on the endless shipping charges of small packages.).
Anyway, those fifty rogue copies were not reported by their inventory system. This did not stop them, however, from selling those copies to customers.
Over the next few months, Amazon stopped ordering copies of the first volume, (presumably since they had 50 unreported copies to dip into). Orders for volumes 2 and 3, however, continued to come in as usual every other week, and after about 50 copies of each of those had moved through Amazon, orders for the first volume started up once again. (Do can see the pattern? A customer can't read volumes 2, or 3 until they read volume 1.)
My interpretation, (despite endless stone-walling whenever Amazon was contacted about the rogue 50 copies, which according to them they never received, despite UPS's insistence to the contrary.). . .
Amazon a secondary, off the books system, which somebody had to actually code and implement for the express purpose of capitalizing on mistakes made by publishers. Charming.
Caveat Emptor, and similar attitudes are fine and dandy, but I don't always think they are appropriate. My company doesn't play vulture waiting for my customers to screw up so that I might profit by their errors. I ALWAYS make an effort to solve problems in a fair and decent manner. But Amazon is apparently run by a bunch of capitalist Daleks.
Here's the other thing which cheeses me off. --Amazon's business model is sneaky as hell: They have a significantly reduced warehousing to inventory ratio cost, (as compared to other distributors, since they order only what they absolutely need to cover a half month period), and they have absolutely none of the actual distribution costs other companies must deal with, since their customers pay for ALL shipping. (A MASSIVE savings, and a fact which begs the question, "Is Amazon really a distributor?" They certainly don't run a fleet of trucks. They sit on their asses and let FedEx and UPS do all their distribution for them at the customer's expense. Compared to other distributors, Amazon has virtually no overhead.
And yet, Amazon STILL takes the same cut from a book's cover price as any normal distributor does when by any moral standard, they should bloody well pass at least a portion of those savings to the consumer.
Amazon is run by a bunch of greasy, greedy opportunists. Fuck 'em. The day they fully automate is the day I start shipping pipe bombs.
-Fantastic Lad
well i guess it's official, everyone is now entitled to their million dollars at the expense of everyone else. the joy of creation (be it music, words, or whatever) is now not in the thing itself, but the fat f*cking paycheck the creator "deserves". screw 'em, if they will only write or play cuz they think they can make a quick buck, then get out of the business! the BEST ones will be driven, they'll HAVE to create, they won't be able to help it. it would weed out the worst 90% of our culture if we stopped paying our artists, musicians, and writers.
i could live a little longer in this prison