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."

Comments

Writers

[avandesande]

Good god, I wonder if writers buy all their books new?

Whine, whine, whine...

[pmz]

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.

Re:Whine, whine, whine...

[Waffle Iron]

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.

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 :-).

Car makers guild letter

[bubblegoose]

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 disagree.

[oGMo]

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.

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:

1. Someone finds the book worth keeping, and keeps it.
2. 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.

Guild full of itself, film at 11

[OverCode@work]

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

Re:I wonder..

[gillbates]

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.

Economics

[edp]

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.

Here's the reality

[Argyle]

"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