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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
A call to get rid of libraries as they damage sales? Actions like this are going to make the changes which are going to come for copyright law all the more popular with regular joes.
The more you know, the less you understand.
"Bezos wants everyone to be 'super-clear' that Amazon.com is supportive of and good for authors," - so that's why the Guild of authors wrote:
"Amazon's practice does damage to the publishing industry,.."?
Video Game cheats, hints a
No used books? Just imagine if the car industry was going through the same thing.
Everyone, not just the rednecks, would have used cars sitting on their lawns.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
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.
The Author's Guild had their chance when the first-ever used bookstore opened however many decades/centuries/millenia ago. Just because Amazon.com can sell used books on a much larger scale than Mom&Pop Used Book Store doesn't change the fundamental issues about selling used books.
I say to the authors, "Too bad." This whole supposed scandal just reeks of the same Napster fiasco odors, where the proposed solutions just don't fix the underlying issues. Publishers, authors, record labels, musicians, etc., just need to think harder about how to live in this modern world. If they can't deal with it, they should just become Amish or find some 3rd world country that is stuck in 1400AD and move there.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Offering customers a lower-priced option causes them to visit our site more frequently,
I don't doubt it, Jeff.
which in turn leads to higher sales of new books
Does it? Or does it simply lead to higher sales of used books?
while encouraging customers to try
authors and genres they may not have otherwise tried.
Absolutely.. too bad used books give no indication to the publishers that these authors and genres deserve a second book contract.
I've got no problem with Amazon selling used books. More power to'em. But when a book published in April 2002 already has a used book link offer up *right beside* the new book.. that strikes me as hurting the author and the publisher.
At least have the courtesy to separate them out for a few months so that publishers can have a more accurate indication of what's selling well and what's not.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
...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
"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.
... I've discovered by picking up used copies of their books. I'm more willing to risk $0.50 - $4.00 on a used book by someone I'm not familiar with than $7.00 - $25.00 on a new book by same. And when I discover someone whose work I really like this way, I go out and buy everything I can from them new -- because I know that's the best way to ensure they keep writing.
I'd also talk about the number of bands whose work I discovered via Napster, and whose CD's I then bought new, but that's a dead horse.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
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
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.
WOW, look how much money I can save! Thanks to the authors guild for bringing this excellent service to my attention!
mp3's are only for those with bad memories
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
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.
Everyone seems to think the authors are trying to outlaw used books. They are doing no such thing. They don't like the fact that Amazon is selling used books almost immediately when the new ones go on sale (and I can understand their frustration with this). The Guild's response is to encourage it's members not to link to Amazon, but rather one of the other online bookseller that does no do this. It makes perfect sense for them to do this. Why send people to site where they may end up buying a copy of your book used (and you will get no money from it) when you can send them to another online bookseller where this isn't likely to happen? They don't like how Amazon is doing business, so they are trying to send their business elsewhere. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
"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
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.
I think my responsibility to ensure an author's income is the same as the author's responsibility to do the same for me. Zero. If I can't afford to buy his book, then he doesn't get my cash. If he can't afford to make a living on selling copies, then I don't get his works. Simple stuff.
Why do we always have to justify or excuse exercising our first sale rights on the grounds that this will be good for the industry?
According to this logic, if someone can show publishers are seeing declining revenues, well then kiss your first sale rights goodbye. And say hello to the big brother world of realtime, privacy-invasive, content controls on every damn thing you buy.
Finally, and to balance the debate a bit, we need to reestablish the legitimacy of sharing, borrowing, loaning, and conserving the things we use. Share a lawnmower with the neighbors. Carpool. Loan out the books you aren't reading, make mix compilation CD's of your favorite music and give them to your friends, invite your neighbors over for dinner. Buy a newspaper and then pass it on to your coworkers when you are done with it. Loan a friend some of your DVD's or VHS tapes. Trade videogames. Borrow that cool salad bowl the old lady upstairs uses. Loan out your fishing poles. Be part of a community.
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.