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Amazon & Used Books II: Bezos Strikes Back
theodp writes: "Last week's call for authors to de-link Amazon from their sites has reportedly prompted Jeff Bezos to fire off a letter to all Amazon Marketplace sellers, asking them to help out by sending e-mail on Amazon's behalf in response to the Guild's call for Amazon to stop placing prominent used book ads on each title's main web entry and soliciting new books purchasers to resell their books through Amazon shortly after purchase.
Bezos wants everyone to be 'super-clear' that Amazon.com is supportive of and good for authors, indicating that Amazon's steep discounting of new titles and royalty-less sales of used books are two examples of how Amazon helps the book industry and
authors. Good to see Jeff's found a new cause, since it looks like he's done with up patent reform."
Good god, I wonder if writers buy all their books new?
love is just extroverted narcissism
There may come a time when book publishing starts to think seriously about used sales. They tried long ago to capture a portion of secondary sales but failed when the Supreme Court said that the purchaser actually got something for the money.
If Amazon gets more successful at this, we may have only a few copies flying around the country as people resell books. This would be great for the postal system but bad for the author.
I'm not in favor of giving the copyright czars any more power, but I do get a bit creeped out by the "buy it used" button on Amazon. If authors make less money, there will be fewer books. I would rather the authors get the money than the post office.
Eventually, Amazon and Half.com are going to really hurt the publishing industry too. We need to find some balanced, middle ground. I wish someone could suggest something.
Ok, not in the way that you think. However, I have bought MANY MANY books online, as opposed to going to a book store and browsing. I don't have time or patience to drive to a book store and buy a book that way. So, for me at least, they have made it easier to buy a book, therefore I buy more.
Sent from your iPad.
90% of the books I buy used are out of print!
love is just extroverted narcissism
Authors != the publishing industry.
...but I agree with Amazon on this one. This is such a throwaway culture, it really pleases me that reselling used books has become a real, mass-market movement. Until recently, you were pretty much screwed if you lived in an area where you didn't have any good used book stores.
...and frankly, if you're just in it for the money, you probably shouldn't be a writer. It's just not a good way to get rich.
reduce, reuse, recycle: even on just an enviromental basis, isn't reselling books the best of ideas? How many trees have been saved because people bought used books?
just a thought...
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
already has a used book link offer up
Just because there is a link doesn't mean there are enough used copies to satisfy everybody that wants to buy the book.
For there to be used copies, there has to be sellers.
And if it's a new book, sellers are likely to be outnumbered by buyers.
"but I do get a bit creeped out by the "buy it used" button on Amazon"
Why? Do you get creeped out by the used car lot? How about the used software bin?
By your reasoning, nobody should be allowed to sell something used because it hurts the sale of new.
I've got news for you. Its too damned bad. Forcing people to pay for everything they do every time they do with it will be the commercial death of books, music, and entertainment. You're advocating a place where you've got to pay a lot of money to be part of popular culture. Maybe that's for the best (because it will kill off popular culture), but in the long run it will destroy the book and entertainment industry.
It isn't the government's job to "protect" industries (although they seem to love trying). And as to your assertion that less books will be written....GOOD! The world can live without a new stephen king novell.
I think you're screwed up in the head or trolling for the industry.
We have found a disturbing trend among car owners, when they no longer want a car they are not just storing it on a shelf to collect dust.
Used car dealers are actively working to divert customers shopping for new cars into their used car lots by prominently placing used car ads on websites and newspapers.
This is affecting the quality and diversity of new cars available to car dealers.
We believe it is in our members' best interests to de-link their websites from dealers who sell used cars. There's no good reason for car makers to be complicit in undermining their own sales. It just takes a minute, and it's the right thing to do.
I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people. - Jack Handey
if the authors get the royalty payment when the book is sold the first time, why should they get royalties for each time the book is sold after that? this would be akin to chevy collecting a profit every time anyone sold their old nova.
I disagree. I think this will, in fact, help the industry.
First, let's clear something up. If someone is buying a book used (or even selling a book used), then the author already got money for the book sale. Beyond that, they don't deserve anything.
Second, if someone is buying a book used (or, again, selling), that means someone else bought the book and for some reason found it not to be worth keeping. They then make this book available to others at a cheaper price, who in turn may or may not feel that it is worth it, until:
- Someone finds the book worth keeping, and keeps it.
- It sits on the shelf of a used book section, and no one ever buys it.
In any case, each time the book is bought used, it devalues the overall worth of the book to the author. This is a good thing. It means that if they wrote a crap book, then the market compensates then at the rate for crap books.This means that yes, we may see less books. Authors who write books may see less money. The qualifier is that these authors are the ones who are writing crap books, and the should be making less money.
Books have been passed on and sold used for centuries. I don't think we have any fewer books today because of it.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
inefficiencies exist. one such inefficiency is related to locating the book that you want, used, at a price you're willing to pay. the new-book market has been determining its pricing and its revenue model on the basis of the fact and magnitude of this inefficiency for, oh, let's call it *EVER*.
amazon is presenting The World with one way to eliminate (or at least greatly reduce) this inefficiency, by removing the fee-for-convience that is built into new books, rendering them no easier to get one's hands on than used books.
is this going to hurt new books' sales? probably. i don't see why it wouldn't. do we, as people who have been pissed at record comapnies for the last five years, have any tolerance left for individuals who choose to whine when their business model is exposed as outmoded by advances in technology? no. because when one's business model is threatened by changes in the environment, one can either try to turn back time, or one can embrace this change, and figure out how to best serve their customers given the new set of conditions. the former approach is pathetic and doomed, the latter, in the end, both more viable and admirable.
whether amazon, on the whole, is good or bad for authors is academic here -- although as someone mentioned above, the general increase in availability for both used *and* new books certainly has me buying more. all we need to keep in mind here is how ridiculous the RIAA looks going to court instead of updating its business model, calling on the public to pity them when a new technology makes it clear that they've been riding on an inefficiency for quite a long time.
ladies and gentlemen of the publishing industry, the ride is over, please exit to your left.
god is just pretend.
Why the hell should authors expect to get royalties from second-hand sales? First sale doctrine and all that.
They weren't hoping to get royalties from second-hand sales. Please try to keep up with the issues, otherwise you'll just look like a fool.
Dinivin
I honestly don't see what the guild is kvetching about.
I'm an author. I have a book on Amazon, and although the used price on my book is still fairly close to the new price, there's a chance that used sales will start to cut into new sales at some point.
So, does Amazon have a right to sell used copies of a book, or not? If not, then they are breaking the law, and should be sued. If so, then the Author's Guild is interfering with legitimate business, and is exposing itself as a bunch of whiny brats.
Books are SOLD, *NOT LICENSED*. If you buy a book, YOU OWN IT. There is no contractual relationship; it is your book. You can sell it, rent it, burn it, or make paper airplanes out of it. The only things you can't do are copy it or claim its contents as your own, due to copyright law (which I mostly agree with, except for the DMCA). If the Author's Guild wants to claim that this is not true, then they have an uphill battle against hundreds of years of tradition. But frankly, I think they're just bitching, and should be ignored.
-John
The important part is that by selling Amazon their used books, buyers can afford to buy more new ones, effectively lowering the buyer's economic cost of new books without reducing the profits for the publishers or Amazon. A buyer who knows that he can recoup a bad book investment is more likely to buy books that he is uncertain he'll like - and hence, more willing to buy new books.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
"I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better."
The Author's Guild is trying to get Amazon to change for what they see as better.
"If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain."
Again, the Guild is attempting clause 1.
These publishes have to realize one thing: Something is only worth as much as someone else will pay for it!
Don't whine, COMPETE! Offer us something unique with a new book that doesn't come with a used one. Think outside the box. Offer us a chance to meet the author, updates, discounts on new versions, sofware, login to web site, the chance to get connected to a community of others who bought the book, etc.
This is just the marketplace taking care of certain inefficiencies. This is a GOOD thing! You can't expect people to not take advantage of this.
This is not necessarily true. Publishers have other options: PDF books, digital ways to cut costs, independent publishers, etc. in order to encourage people to buy a new version.
This is a moral appeal? Don't confuse a practical $$$ decision with a moral one. "Right" and "wrong" arguments have no place in an appeal like this.
Sure...go ahead and do that. I'll still shop at www.addall.com and www.addall.com/used and www.abebooks.com to get better prices on USED books than new ones.
If you want me to do otherwise, then GIVE ME SOME SORT OF VALUE ADD FOR BUYING A NEW BOOK!
There are two components to a book's price: the intellectual property and the physical object. If you reduce the price of the physical object by sharing it, you liberate more money to pay for the intellectual property.
When the contents of a book are shared, by reselling used books, the net average price for each user is reduced. When price goes down, demand goes up. Thus there is more demand for the contents of books.
However, note that the price for the book contents is what went down, so demand for the contents is what increases. Fewer actual physical books are needed, because each book transports the contents to multiple users. So demand for books goes down, and the price goes up.
Thus, in the end, an actual book will cost more, but fewer will be sold. The income for publishers will decrease. But the intellectual property value has increased, and market forces should result in authors getting more money.
It is really a simple effect: When you make a process more efficient, both the supplier of the actual value and the consumer benefit, because they no longer have to pay for the inefficiency. It is only the supplier of the previously needed inefficiency that suffers.
But it does change the fundamental issues. It is part of a bigger trend that computers and networks cause: the disassociation of content from any fixed medium.
Low-friction resale of used books enabled by computer automation is a way to reduce the importance of the fixed medium of the physical book. This is similar to (but not as extreme as) what Napster and its ilk have done for music.
The problem is that all copyright laws were written under the assumption that content is always fixed in a physical medium, and furthermore, transfer of any physical medium is burdensom. This is no longer true, and will become less true in the future.
The current laws are fundamentally broken because nobody can figure out how they should apply to the most obvious ways people want to use their computers and media equipment. Countless flamewars prove that there is no good way to apply the current laws to the new ways to handle content.
For this controversy to end, both sides of this debate will have to change their outlooks. Content producers would have to accept the reality of end users copying content. End users would have to modify the concept that once they've got a copy of bits in any form, that it is a tangible good that they own outright.
Right now, the content producers want to enforce the second part of the above paragraph without allowing the first part. That's bogus.
I don't know how to solve this problem, but something along the following lines seems fair to me:
Overhaul the entire copyright concept to not be dependent on physical media. Allow anybody to copy/share/resell any work they have, but such a transfer would require a compulsory royalty to the orignal creator (rights can't be reassigned to corporations). The fee would be a nominal amount similar to the current ASCAP system (pennies per song). Of course, any author (RMS for example) could choose to waive the royalties.
By law, all file sharing systems would need to automatically collect these fees (probably through some kind of PayPal-like system), but the law would forbid encryption or other technical enforcement measures. It would just be illegal and wrong to share files for or resell books online for free. Cheaters could be dealt with harshly by law enforcement because they would no longer have any good argument that the publishers are ripping them off.
How would the consumer benefit? The sharing/ resale fees would be set at pennies per work. The high markups of publishers would be eliminated. There would be no DRM hassles. They would have the guaranteed right to use the work on any equipment they own.
How would content producers benefit? They get paid every time someone new uses their work. They might get more royalties than they do now. The only people that lose out are the publishers, but who cares about them? They'd still be around to create copies on old-style physical media, but they'd nolonger have a stranglehold over their customers or the content creators.
If the fixed licensing scheme seems to "communist", replace it with some kind of real-time auction. Free market and all that :-).
"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."
Robert Heinlein's Life-Line
nuclear iraq bioweapon encryption cocaine korea terrorist
First, their assertion that used books hurt the book industry and
authors is not correct. We've found that our used books business
does not take business away from the sale of new books. In fact,
the opposite has happened. Offering customers a lower-priced option
causes them to visit our site more frequently, which in turn leads
to higher sales of new books while encouraging customers to try
authors and genres they may not have otherwise tried. In addition,
when a customer sells used books, it gives them a budget to buy more
new books.
(Emphasis Mine)
Actually, it sounds like selling used books is good for Amazon.com, not the lit industry. Look, Amazon uses very predatory tactics to get their remainders, which they then sell as "used". These books never made their authors any money via royalties because they were sold as remainders and the publishers took a loss.
No one is arguing against anyone's right to sell used books. It's about treating your business partners nicely. If you're an author with a personal website, or a publisher, you'll want to link to an e-commerce site that will get someone to by your book new and make you a buck. That's only natural.
Actually, this is more of a pissing match between the publishing industry (corpulent, unimagninative and greedy) and amazon (just greedy). Who do you think funds the authors guild? Authors. Please... what authors do you know (megastars aside) who can support a "guild". The author's guild is funded by publishers.
In a perfect world, authors (and other content creators) wouldn't need greedy-stupid publishers and distributors to get their work out there. That's the promise of xlibris, but it's yet to really make an impact, mostly because the people who publish via xlibris couldn't get published anywhere else.
How I long for a day when artists and scientists don't need corporate patrons.
Howard Dean for president
Here's my letter to the Authors Guild:
Dear Mr. Aiken,
I'm writing today to voice my support for Amazon's innovative used-book program. I'm a professional science fiction writer and journalist, the recipient of the Campbell Award for Best New Science Fiction Writer at the 2000 Hugo Awards, and the author of two novels forthcoming from Tor Books and a short-story collection forthcoming from Four Walls Eight Windows. I also spent my adolescence working in book stores and libraries.
I'm quite distressed at the Authors Guild's reactionary position on Amazon's used-book service. As a new author whose books will be published as $25+ hardcovers, my principal challenge will be to find a way to introduce my work to new readers. The intershelving of used and new books has been shown to be an effective means of driving sales of new authors -- I discovered this myself when I was a bookseller, and it's an experience that has been replicated in many bookstores, from corner operations like my local genre bookstore, Borderlands Books, all the way up to Powell's Books, the largest bookstore in the world.
What's more, the Amazon used-books service does not push the bounds of established copyright law or practice *at all*. The right of a consumer to resell the property s/he's lawfully acquired (called the Doctrine of First Sale) is the reason that we are able to have used bookstores at all. Also, yard-sales, charitable donations, library discard sales, collectibles sales, etc and so forth.
Indeed, one of the most revolting characteristics of many e-book technologies is that they abridge this right -- think of all the tens of millions of books donated to schools and libraries, sent to prisons and literacy programs, passed from friend to friend or within a family. The Doctrine of First Sale makes all of this possible.
Amazon's used-book service only reduces the friction involved in a used-book sale. When I worked at Bakka, a science fiction bookstore with new and used stock, young sf fans with tight budgets would often request popular titles that were available new on the shelf as used copies on their wish-lists. These are precisely the readers whose disappearance that we science fiction writers lament at every sf con as we look around at our greying ranks and wonder whether the genre is disappearing. Amazon's service makes this kind of thing easier and better for those readers -- why would we, as authors, wish to stop Amazon from extending the service?
Arguably, this is what the Internet is *for* -- connecting people at low cost, finding new market niches and exploiting them, reducing friction.
Copyright is a bargain between the public domain and creators -- we are able to create well and profit by our creations because we are able to benefit from the commons created by the works of those who came before us, which have entered the public domain. The bargain allows us to be effective creators, and it allows others to be innovative consumers.
Here Amazon and its customers (who are providing every one of those used books!) are building an innovative secondary market that will improve the overall economy. The bargain allows our *creative* expression, it allows their *innovative* expression.
To quote one of my colleagues:
> Companies should be lauded for extracting additional value from the formerly
> fallow copyright resources that belong to the public (like first sale and
> fair use).
In short, keep your disapprobation to yourself -- I want to work *with* my readers, not *against* them.
Thank you,
Cory Doctorow,
Former Canadian Regional Director,
Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America
"They don't like the fact that Amazon is selling used books almost immediately when the new ones go on sale "
No, they are selling them immediately when the purchaser decides he/she doesn't need it anymore. Whether it's a new release or not means nothing to the book owner - if it's a POS, or if I later receive another copy as a gift, I'm getting rid of it, and I'm not waiting for the buzz to die down. Better to go to Amazon and connect with someone who wants it, than to hope some random individual happens across it at my garage sale.
This can't seriously be a threat to an author, unless their product is so bad that nobody wants it. Seems like the public library would be of greater concern, since more people can read each copy without buying it.
This is an exact duplicate of what is going on in the music industry. If you are an artist worried about making money maybe you should get a job.
Nobody ever told me i had the right to make money doing what i like. ive got the right to do what i like if it is within the law and ive got a right to make money.
Thanks to the above artist/writer who makes it clear that doing both independently is possible!
Now back to your regularly scheduled rant already in progress...
The Writers Guild has determined that governmental organizations are buying limited quantities of original copyrighted works and lending them to the public without compensating writers for each viewing or "reading".
Its called a library. They're worried about used book sales?
Sheesh.
I'm afraid it might be a little late for this comment, or someone might have said something along these lines already, but here it goes:
Wouldn't you buy a book easier if you knew it would also be easier to sell it, in case you do not want to keep it? So, wouldn't making reselling easier would also have a positive effect on book sales. Maybe, this sounds farfetched, but imagine you want to buy a book which is somewhat expensive. You check your library and see a couple of books you might live without, you sell them and get the book you want. I wouldn't sell my books for dining outside, but I would feel OK if I am selling them to buy new books.
ato
One correction to the blurb I'd like to make: the used-book sales aren't royaltyless. No royalty is paid to the author on this sale because the author has already received the royalty on that copy of the book the first time it was sold (as a new book). The Guild is complaining not that the author isn't being paid, but that they aren't being paid multiple times for a single copy sold.
> The problem is that all copyright laws were written under the assumption that content is always fixed in a physical medium...
It isn't just an assumption, it is a requirement. A work must be "fixed in a tangible medim" before copyright protection can be applied at all.
> current laws are fundamentally broken because nobody can figure out how they should apply...
That's not entirely true. We pretty much know how they apply, we're arguing over the looting potential to be had by expanding copyright to cover the intangible "information" content of a copyrighted work. There will never be a meeting of the minds when so much new money is in play for a taking. That doesn't mean the laws were, or are, bad or otherwise "broken". It simply means powerful interests are pushing their personal agenda.
> there is no good way to apply the current laws to the new ways to handle content.
Again, not entirely true. You buy a book and put it in your library. You can apply the knowledge gained to your life, pull the book itself out and let someone read it, give it to a friend, sell it. It is both tangible and severable.
Today, Digital Content uses your disk drive as both the tangible media AND your library. You have a tangible copy, but you cannot hand that copy over to someone else without giving them your disk drive. It is tangible, but not severable.
Content providers have chosen, for their own economic reasons, not to accept the fact the technology considers a "copy and delete" operation to be a physical transfer, just as handing a book to someone. The law isn't explicit, but sounds to me like a "good way".
> Overhaul the entire copyright concept to not be dependent on physical media.
...
> They get paid every time someone new uses their work.
Oh God, no. You know not for what you ask.
Copyright always, always, applies to the "tangible media" (aka, the book you buy), and NOT, ever, the content the book contains. If you remove the "media" requirement, you leave only the information content subject to protection.
This is, however, exactly what the media companies want codified into law.
But, information content has always been, and must forever remain, completely free (beer). And for very good reason. Everything you know can be traced to a book. Grade school through college, all books. Everything you learned from friends and word of mouth, ultimately all books and other copyright materials. Confuse copyright royalties with "use" royalties then you, I, and most everyone else must, basically, cease to exist.
Your freedom, individuality, and right of choice and association will be replaced by whatever latitude is granted in your "right to use" licenses. Imaging a world where your first grade primers are covered by a Microsoft EULA...
"You may not speak badly about this work"..."You may not use this information in the act of teaching another unless they own a copy of this book"..."You may not use this information in understanding books from other publishers"...
Way, way, yuck.
Yet this is what content providers of today claim as the only "fair" way to think about things. They seem to have convinced you. But it is patent nonsense, and remarkably dangerous thinking. But, all is fair in a "capitalist" world, if you can sell your Congressmen on the destruction of life as we know it for a few bucks, then it's all good.
> such a transfer would require a compulsory royalty to the orignal creator.
Again, you are selling information transfer rights. Not good.
I do buy into the original creator thing. But, you have to cover everyone, like computer programers and system designers, architects, engineers, etc. etc. All work products suitable for copyright and grossly exploited by corporate interests. Then, you have to figure out what amount that un-reassigned payment should be. And, let's not forget that, even today, we can't stop arguing over who the "original creator" actually is.
> By law, all file sharing systems would need to automatically collect these fees...
"sharing" is illegal. You cannot both give a copy, and keep the one you have. What you seek is called "cumpulsory licenseing" of intellectual property. I tend to agree with you that it is a good thing, but it has never fit with the US worldview.
>>>> And, that leads us to the answer.
Sharing is illegal. Both giving a copy to someone else, and keeping one is illegal, be it a book, wav file, or MP3.
Publishers need to start going after people doing the crime. Treble damages are perfectly acceptable in today's world, so your typical Napster type can be hit up for $18 x 3, plus costs for each CD they "share". Computers are generally traceable, and tools are being put into place to make that all the easier. The cost to "nail" a few hundred college kids would pr