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Used Books: An Actual Internet Success Story
theodp writes: "An Actual Internet Success Story explains how, in just a few years, the Internet has transformed the world into a huge marketplace for used books, utterly transforming a business that had gone pretty much unobserved for centuries. The Net has changed how we buy and think about books - someone in Illinois can easily buy a cheap used hardback over the Net from a New York dealer, read it and then resell it to someone in California, having spent, in effect, only a few dollars. According to the story, the increase in the number of used books sold is staggering, maybe 100 times what it was in 1995, and now accounts for more than 15 percent of Amazon's sales. Tales are told of used book dealers lining up nine hours before a library sale to get 'free money,' cutting deals with thrift-store managers and library-sale organizers to avoid 'feeding frenzy' fights, volunteering at the Salvation Army to get first dibs on donations, and offering review copies for half price on the Net weeks before a book is even published."
Ahh yes, but then the book companies can complain about the used book market stealing money from their pockets. I wonder when the selling of used books will become illegal.
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# Modus Ponens
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Three or four comic book stores in the Orlando area went out of business quickly about 2 years ago. While scrounging for stuff, I got to speak with the owners and they ALL had the same story.
They made more money in one month selling their inventory on Ebay than they did in a year selling inthe "real" world. They pointed out all the really good stuff was gone, and I wasn't going to find what I was looking for.
All were quite happy with the situation and planned to continue selling at online auctions.
A side note is that in the last week I've sold 5 books on Amazon that I no longer wanted. I got decent money, too, not like the $1 or so at a garage sale. I *HATE* throwing books out -- they need to go to a good home.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
I think that this is partially off. For the most part, it is correct that many people are able to buy/sell/trade in the "global marketplace" whereas they could not before. However, used bookstores have been around for a long long time, and they always seem to have a good selection, even in small towns. I can only see the "specialty" market actually being helped by this. Its only the lazy people who order groceries from the web and don't want to go down to the local used book store to look around.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
How will this effect brick and mortar used book stores. I really like used book stores, they always have an interesting atmosphere. They are usually characterized by bizarre organization that only the employees can decipher, a funky used book smell, an odd assortment of books and interesting people.
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I've been haunting used book stores for years. It's usually a hit-or-miss proposition. The mass market books are usually pretty easy to find in the local shops, but the more obscure or esoteric books are nearly impossible to find.
Amazon.com and B&N (and their associated sellers) have greatly changed that. I can find almost anything now and usually at a reasonable price. I looked for years to find copies of out-of-print and obscure books before and now it's pretty easy.
I expect it'll be a few years before we're able to get the majority of used-book stores on-line though. Most stores have far too much stock and too few resources to make that happen.
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
Sam Wellers in Salt Lake City.
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If this was used movies and used CD's, the various **AA's would be all over it. Can someone explain the difference between the latest book, the latest movie and the latest music CD as it pertains to property?
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.
One thing I absolutely love on the net is the chance to go someplace like Amazon, E-bay, or www.thewantad.com and find something oscure that I am looking for.
.com everything might have overloaded people with the notion that get online and you will find piles of useless companies that don't belong there, but it never really hit the sites like e-bay hard.
I have always been someone that likes to buy good stuff, but it's not always economically feasible. Of course, buying a great couch online from Oregon isn't the best idea when you live in New England, but these types of sites are there if you want to do it.
The strength of this scenario is that it is exactly the type of marketplace the net is suited for.
I guess I am saying I am a big fan of this, whether it be books or anything else. It's a great form of recycling when one man's junk becomes another's treasure.
So people sell used books online. The customers are happy (they get their books) and the sellers are happy (they sell more and get the best prices). Who loses?
Well, if the book's still in print then the publisher and author lose out on royalties. But that's all.
So why is everyone so up in arms about this?
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Word of warning on Half.com, though, which is owned by ebay, they appear to do a very poor job policing their partners. If you must buy through them, brace yourself.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Actually, I haven't looked yet, but I wonder if i can get a copy of this book called Engineering Economics. It was used for a class named the same as the title of the book while I was at Va Tech for engineering. Looking back, I wish I didn't sell that book, cuz it had some really interesting examples for figuring out the price of inflation and some otherwise, truly interesting math that most normal people would not ever use. Nonetheless, ahhh... the weird memories of Engineering Economics.
Anyone out there taken a similar class to this at the other engineering or liberal arts or business schools?
What about dumpster diving behind book binderies? =) It's amazing that if a page is cut slightly funny during the binding process, it can still be sold over the net for about half of the cover price...
This is because the book publishers have embraced the internet and allowed the new technology and their industry to naturally merge together into something beneficial for everybody.
On the other hand the music and movie industries seem to be doing the exact opposite. Example - Stephen King's + Scott Adams E-Books. Publishers embrace the technology and don't try to make money with lawyers. I doubt the RIAA will learn a lesson however.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
.. X has been unmeasured for centuries, but in the last n years, its gone up 100 times! Please, there is no way to do a realistic study. The best they can say is, used book sold on the web have gone up x amount since we began studying the trend.
There are many used book stores that don't report to anybody.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
When I want a book, I buy it new and treat it carefully and store it in well protected conditions such that in 20 years, I can pull out the same book and it will still be in perfect condition just as the day I bought it. I have read my set of Lord of the Rings more than 3 times now and still they are immaculate. The damage and wear that multiple reads, shipping, selling, etc puts on books in my opinion ruins them. Sure, the words are still on the page and still readable. But the damage to the book undermines and disrespects both the work of the author to put together a thoughtful work of writing, the work the artists to create the cover artwork, and the whole 'book feeling' that cannot be reproduced by PDF, e-book or newspaper. And thus, when it comes to my personal reading, I only buy new books and keep them in perefect condition.
I really hate getting a used book that someone has taken a highlighter to. The light yellow/green/pink really distracts my eye when trying to concentrate. Even worse when the previous owner has a really bad highlighting technique. Far less annoying are the standard food stains/coffee cup marks, even when half the book in stained.
Anyone know of any online bookstores that at least check a few pages of used books for highlighter marks and the like, and mention if they found any in the book description?
:^)
Ryan Fenton
plus, used bookstores smell good.
and they usually have a cat.
I can't believe it's not lard!
Former AAP (Association of American Publishers) changes its name to BPAA. An AAP spokesman said, "we IP bullying trusts have to standardize on naming conventions".
Restricting used books has been tried. The example which first comes to mind is the publisher a long time ago who put a license in books which prohibited resale. Courts rejected it.
For the impatient here's an automatic registration link to the article.
if it wasn't for Ebay and Bibliofind (now part of Amazon) I never would have been able to find copies of my father's book and my grandmother's book.
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Online bookstores are great, if you already know what book you want. But, one of the biggest attractions that used bookstores have for me is the thousands of books that I've never heard of. I can spend hours in a bookstore, just browsing through the shelves - that experience is pretty hard to duplicate online.
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back in the '80s, it was said that the rise of the electronic office would dramatically cut the usage of paper in the modern office. the opposite happened!
;-P
i think it is kind of funny then that the internet, this colossal, immediate, hyperlinked textual monstrosity, should greatly increase the market for... used books!!??
so i am hereby predicting the next big media revolution will have everyone reading the saturday evening post... or life magazine... don't ask me how or why, but the precedent is clear. LOL
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This is a great example of how capitalism is suppoesed to work. The system will squeeze out as much efficiency as possible from the market. A way for "recycling" these items has become avaiable and now the market has sprung up around it.
I'm sure it pisses off the book publishers, but they can join the ranks of the candle makers and buggy whip producers.
If you're buying a used book so you can read it and then resell it, what are you gaining? Why not just go to the library?
Nosce te Ipsum
Working at an Academic library I must say that this is very true. About half of the items that I see (being the cataloguer I see all of them) come in are from B&N, amazon, and other books sellers online. And if the item is more than a few years old or an esoteric (sp?) most of these are used. It has made the acquisitions department very happy these sites. And the directors too. Much more bang for thier ever shrinking buck.
"If a quarter is two bits, then a dollar's a byte." -R Deric Miller
I would love to buy things in online auctions - except that invariably, some obsessive-compulsive type halfway across the continent is willing to bid half their net worth for whatever it is I'm looking for. My upper bidding limit (and I don't think I'm being cheap) is often a fraction of what the latest top bid is...
The good thing of course, is that this benefits sellers, and thus encourages a thriving auction market. If I can't afford to bid on an item that I can't get locally anyway, I guess nobody's hurt by that. The downside, as you say is that the often financially risky proposition of running a "brick-and-mortar" physical storefront somewhere is not as compelling for would-be retailers. So collectible items like comic books etc. may become completely unavailable, except online and in very large cities. One of the two local gaming/comic shops in my city just closed down to become a strictly online business (putting at least one fangirl out of work in the process...)
Freedom: "I won't!"
It even worked without the internet.. A lot of towns and cities have the big buildings filled with books. If you live around there you can get this card that will let you walk right in, find the book, then take it home and read it.. all you have to do is bring it back in a month.. and the best part is that its free!! you don't even pay shipping and handling.. I think its called a "library"..
You know the publishing companies will not be thrilled about this. They've already mentioned "cracking down" on libraries that allow multiple people to read the same book without paying.
We wouldn't want to consider the fact that used/loaned books can contribute greatly to the education of less wealthy folks that can't afford to purchase all the books they'd like to read.
I think they'll try to impose some kind of tax or other legal law about transfer of ownership.
We'll see...
There is a concept called the "Right of First Sale", which says that once someone has been sold a physical object (like a book), the seller can't tell them what to do with it. It's theirs to do with as they please.
Now, that does not give them the right to use the product to break other laws (xeroxing the book, scanning it in & posting the results to the net, etc), but if they want to use the book to wallpaper their house, there's nothing the seller can do to stop it.
This gets more complicated when you have to have a license to use what's on the physical thing (like software on a CD), but the First Sale principle is pretty well established in the US.
Why should you care? Because it means that there's no way in hell that used book sales are ever going to be shut down...they're protected by the Right of First Sale. The trading of MP3s is not protected by this, so you can expect a legal fight there.
is correct or else the time honored joke about the rancher who looked out at his pasteur after an earthquake to see all the cows sprawled on the ground but the steer still standing would be incorrect. See, the rancher asked the steer why he was still standing when all the cows had fallen. It replied, "We Bulls wobble, but we don't fall down."
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
...beyond helping us consume more.
Ok, so here I am, doing my PhD in Australia. It is exceedingly difficult to find *good* books in my area of study at reasonable prices. Buying a $70 book to read it in a day and find half of it useless garbage, as I did yesterday, is *very* frustrating, and rough on a student's budget. It's also frustrating to spend a month harassing the interlibrary loan clerk at the Uni library to try to track down a book that ONLY the University of Waggawaggabernong has only to hear "oh sorry, they won't loan that one out!".
I've got more than a few books - books I'll be using to draft my "original contribution to knowledge" - that, were it not for centralized used-book databases like amazon.com, I would never have found.
Amazon can make their little profit on used books and referrals - that's honest money to me. They (and others that do the same thing) provide a mechanism to share information (real, print information - there's very few good books on the net) that provides a signficant net benefit, and one that will only grow more beneficial as more academic/intellectual/literate types take advantage of it.
Nice to see ecommerce used for something other than consume-consume-consume. Even e-bay doesn't seem like recycling - well ok, not to me at least, I only seem to be able to buy stuff from it! (/me looks guiltily around at numerous silly ebay purchases)
-- "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." (Charles Darwin)
...or, they ran out of space for books, or they once had a use for it but no longer do (for instance, a textbook for a course that's peripheral to his main interests).
Not that I've resold much of anything for a while -- I'm really a packrat in human guise -- but there are quite valid reasons that one might do so.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
It's not about the physical mainfestation of the book, it's about the words and thoughts and ideas the author is communicating. I'd be willing to bet most authors would rather have people share their books and re-read them and really love them than pamper them and be afraid to read it one more time for fear of hurting it.
When I read a book, I'm brutal to it, that's just my way. I fold pages and highlight things that really move me, and I really don't think the authors would think that I'm being disrespectful.
Like I said, I wouldn't ever be critical of some one like you taking great care of the book, but you really have no right to be critical of the way others treat their books.
Vote Quimby.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
What if the equivalent of the RIAA and the MPAA in the book industry (what's that, the BIAA?) starts suing those who sell used books? The reason? Those who buy used books aren't paying a dime to the author of the books. It must be stealing. Right?
...yet :)
If not, what's the difference between music sharing and used books selling? That I'm giving you a *copy* of a song, and not the original one, right? But who prevents me from deleting the "original" song once you downloaded it from my pc?
...if 'original' and 'copy' has a meaning in a digital world..
ok this was joking. Obviously selling used books isn't a crime.
cheers
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
Books that aren't in print aren't affected by used book sales. Publishers get rid of those books within a year or two. They used to warehouse them for decades, but the tax benefit they used was removed and the publishers couldn't afford to pay both those expenses and their taxes.
Because if you mail only published materials (books, magazines, etc.) than you pay a much reduced price.
Do other nations do this?
How long before the USPS, in an effort to gain more revinue, rids itself of the discount to mailing books?
On a side note, I get free Amazon gift certificates because of the credit card I use. I can't apply it toward used anything, but I rack up enough points to get new stuff as fast as I can read it. (I don't think this offer exists for new customers anymore... but it couldn't hurt to try/ask)
Support a few technologists in Washington.
/me has a look at his bookcase and tries to estimate the dollar value of the used books there - then equates it to computer upgrades. $-)
Video Game cheats, hints a
A good person won't sell a good book: I know I don't. So you are either buying from a bad person, or buying a bad book, or maybe somebody died.
What about space as a legitimate reason to sell? If I still had every book I ever bought, well, I shudder to think what my apartment would look like.
I'd suggest you don't use Slashdot as your only news source, or you will suffer permanent brain damage.
Bookfinder used to be the king of used book searches. It would search all the other sides like Albris, Half, ABE, Amazon, B&N, Powells and others. But now it's a sad shadow of it's former self. Somehow it's data is now long outdated, like it's only updated once a month or worse.
So now you need to search all those sites manually to be sure to find a particular book.
I start with Amazon to find the book and get the ISBN, and make note of Amazon's used price.
Then I look at Half (because it's so damn easy! and I trust the eBay ratings system). Usually the best place for recent books.
Then the dreaded ABEbooks where it's a zillion little dealers, each with their own shipping rates, and method of payment. ABE is what used book buying via email and BBS used to be like (except now we have PayPal).
I was amazed to find the best price via Bibliofind even though it's a branch of Amazon. Seems Bibliofind searches ZSHOPS, while the normal page in Amazon didn't list the ZSHOP copy. The best price I found anywhere else was over $40 (for a less than 10 year old Del Rey paperback!). The ZSHOP price? $2.50! Yes! The joy of buying used.
Of course the shipping kind of kills those wonderful deals. Nothing could beat walking out of a used bookstore with huge stack of paperbacks for $20 ($1 to $2 a book). Thats how you really discover authors (and accumulate shelf after shelf of stuff you will never get around to reading).
I'm not quite as optimistic as you. While there are areas where this is a win (such as books that were previously unavailable because the only copies were buried in an unknown used bookstore), it is also cutting into the revenue for the book publishers. That's the same money that is used to encourage authors to spend their time writing books instead of writing advertising copy, flipping burgers, or working in a factory.
There are a number of ways the book industry can try and adapt. They can adjust the initial purchase price to reflect the larger average number of people reading each copy. They can cut costs through cheaper materials. They can use cheap materials to make the books fall apart sooner, making it harder to resell the books. They can focus only on the mainstream authors who always sell big numbers.
Now I'm not saying that reselling books is evil, immoral, or illegal. But it does have a potentially negative effect on the book industry, and I believe there's a good chance that that negative effect will get transferred back to the consumer.
Well, you can go to Census.Gov and look at their statistics on Retail Bookstore sales over the years. They keep going up.
No, a person who has already read a book and will probably keep it on the shelf unread till their heirs have an estate sale is a *bad* person. ok ok, I'm a bad person too :( But packrating books is not a virtue, its a vanity. keep em moving, let everybody have a chance!
I think my heaven may be (or at least contain) an infinite library.
steve
Vote Quimby.
You know, you have a great point. Last week I was looking for something and when I didn't find it on E-bay I went looking for options as far as other online auction sites go. There really are none that compete.
E-Bay has the brand, almost akin to Coke in the net auction sense. What I was wondering is if this is a good thing or a bad thing. Is there room for 2? How can we improve upon the current situation? 2 ideas I had...although they may not be the most popular, were to either have the site run for charitable purposes by an organisation such as the Salvation Army. People could donate products for auction to benefit the organization and get the tax bennies, or just pay the fee to the organisation for running the site and have the profits doing good work in the community. The other idea I had was to have the site run by the government. It would bring up the possibility of sales tax, for good or for bad, and potentially regulate international sales, again for good or for bad. The money could be used for just about any government program and could be a good step towards lower taxes in other areas. Then again it could become a useless government run agency...helping the IRS put the S in service...that kind of thing.
someone in Illinois can easily buy a cheap used hardback over the Net from a New York dealer, read it and then resell it to someone in California, having spent, in effect, only a few dollars.
I can usually walk down to the one down the street from me, borrow the one I want and return it, having spent, in effect, nothing.
Yes, not all books are available at the local library but I'll wager the vast majority of the ones being traded are. And if it isn't available at the local one, they are usually willing to get it for you within a few days.
Sadly, though, with the economy the way it is, the library system is one of the areas that my city is considering cutting back on.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Yes, this is true, and not only books, but other things as well.
I don't know about the rest of you who sell on eBay but I've noticed something over the past year or so .. everytime I buy something, I immediately think of the inevitable eBay resale.
Electronics: I will buy a more expensive digital camera because I know I can resell it later to buy the next model. Instead of collecting junk in my closet I can "upgrade" it by selling it and buying something else. I'm already anal about keeping things nice and clean and like-new, so it's no problem keeping stuff in ready to sell condition.
CDs: I used to buy lots of obscure indie/electronic CDs, but I had to pick and choose. Now, I basically buy everything on the new release lists because I know I can unload the ones I don't like on eBay (sometimes for more than I paid for those limited releases).
Books: I don't hesitate to buy the "intro" computer books (e.g., O'Reilly's Learning XML) because once I outgrow them, I can get $10-$15 back on eBay. And I might be helping some programmer who couldn't afford the full price of the new book.
It's not "the internet", it's eBay! eBay is the only Internet company that has really changed things, if you ask me. With eBay, everything can be "try before you buy".
The courts have already ruled on "first sale". Once the publisher sells the copy, they have no say over what you do with it, wether its read it and throw it out, give it away, sell it, burn it, etc.
Yeah, that makes sense. I can sell my moldy old couch (this is a hypothetical example: no one in their right mind would buy my couch) because it is, after all, mine. So I'm wondering why this doesn't apply to music in the form of mp3s over the internet? After all, I've sold used CDs to music stores before. Suppose I decide to give my CD to the store instead without payment. And then suppose instead of giving it to a store, I give it to someone over the internet. And then suppose instead of giving them a CD, I give them a lower-quality mp3. Why don't I have the right to do this?
Clearly I'm missing something here. Little help, Anyone?
GMD
watch this
I wish someone would take this rapier business-changing stuff over to the used pr0n book market. I am so tired of purchasing "like new" books only to find out they come with many "unidentifable" stains.
You mean that they are not glued shut?
Ask my wife, the librarian -- I have no sentimentalized romance about books. Books are tools for storing and delivering information.
However, I find entertainment value in visiting my favorite bookstore, a hole in the wall downtown stacked floor to ceiling with volumes. I frequently find something unexpected. I bump elbows and converse with other people. I can sit in a comfortable chair and examine the product thoroughly before I buy.
On-line is nice for a surgical strike, but it's not the same as spending Sunday afternoon browsing the bookstore.
--
bachiatari na torisetsu o yome!
That we've reached the situation where there is a sufficient concentration of idiocy, arrogance and financial interest to push for the removal or truncation of first sale rights on items that contain content, including books?
I know it sounds insane, but bear with me. I'm thinking about the Elcomsoft judge, and his assertion that because you can transcribe an eBook by hand, that satisfies the right to copy it in part for fair use rights of quotation, and in whole for eventually putting it into the public domain. So a court has said that it's both possible and practical to copy an eBook, and so by a close extrapolation, that applies (even more so because of OCR) to a text book.
So... (thinks an unscrupulous IP lawyer concerned that kiddies are actually sharing copies of Harry Potter and the Amazonian Gift Certificate or another lucrative movie tie in) if it's even easier to copy a paper book than a highly protected eBook, then why shouldn't some of those juicy DMCA criminal penalties apply to paper books?
Bear in mind that some eBooks are already tied to individual devices (my colleage has just bought a new PDA, but simply can't transfer his Microsoft licensed eBooks from his old one to the new one). They are treated as information licensed to you; you have no rights of first sale. Now, transferral of an eBook is copying of information, not a physical transfer, but look also at how hard it is to sell software on eBay. Publisher can and do have you shut down in an instant, even if you explicitely state that you are selling a boxed non-OEM copy that you have removed from your hardware. The very idea that you can own an object that contains copyrighted content is being challenged by habit and usage, and that's often a precursor to a change in the law.
I'm not saying that this will happen this year or the next. I'm thinking five or ten years, but I'm thinking that it can and will happen, after all digital content is locked down tight with mandatory DRM. I'm not proposing that it's Constitutional, or even that it's in any way workable, but that's not necessarily a bar to having a law passed that will take years of fighting up to the Supremes to have struck or modified.
I'm also thinking that it might be the issue that finally wakes up Joe Consumer regarding fair use and the balance of power in copyright, but that by then it might be too late to recover any of the rights that we've already lost to the publishers and distributors.
What do you think? Am I delusional, or am I just following the money?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Yeah,us that's pretty neat. Recently, I bought a used book about Linux kernel programming for EUR 15,--, a few weeks ago "The C++ programming language" by Bjarne Stroustrup for EUR 10,-- and today, 4 books about OSF/Motif, neural networks and object oriented programming with Smalltalk for only EUR 19,--. Pretty cheap, and the books' contents is still valuable for a poor CS student. ;-)
A monkey is doing the real work for me.
you must mean this
I really enjoy buying on the internet. Regarding used (and sometimes new) books, here is what I discovered:
- I get a lot out of the reviews posted by other buyers. But this requires to be vigilant about the posts (the wolfram book is one example where people posted negative reviews one day after the publication, even if the book is 1000 pages.)
- Some people will just lie about the quality of the books they sell just to make more profit. Shop to places with good credibility and don't be surprised to pay a little bit more to get a nicer copy.
- Some sellers are charging up to the nose for books that are out of print. Use google extensively to find your copy for cheaper (half is not always the best place, amazon zshop is also very good.)
- Shipping cost is not negligible. Even using media mail, it will be higher than to pay for sales tax. And media mail is slow and doesn't let you insure your packages.
- Shipping delays are sometimes what makes me go to Borders or BN (the latter which I try to avoid) and get my copy there. Then I order online for cheaper, then I have one month to return my copy to the bricks+cement merchant. You've got to do what you have to do. Not my fault if the "real" stores don't compete aggressively with online prices.
- I still like to go to some dusty used bookstores and browse thru the huge selection, because I support moms&pops businesses and it's really enjoyable to find that rare copy of something I would never have thought buying online (e.g. D&D first ed. monster manual that I bought last weekend.)
PPA, the girl next door.
-- I feel better now. Thanks for asking.
Do like I did. I filled out the registration. Within days I was barraged by spam. So, what's an aspiring [sic] person to do? I went to my NYTimes profile and changed my email address. I wonder if 'webmaster@nytimes.com' wonders "why all the the extra spam?"??
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
Must... Restrain... Doing... bad... joke...
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Half priced books.
I've spent MANY a Saturday (and yes, that means the whole damn day) browsing around and finding little nuggets here and there. Anyone whos been to their store knows what I mean.
Anyway, that is pretty much the equivalent of giving your .mp3s away for free over the net from your ripped CDs, is it not? The problem isn't necessarily the copying, I suspect, but rather the distribution.
I imagine that it is pretty much OK to transcribe a book to your computer to transfer to your PDA, but you are not allowed to post that copyrighted work to your web page and give it away. On the same note I imagine (even though the RIAA is trying to take even this away) that it is pretty much OK to rip your CD for use in your portable .mp3 player, but you are not allowed to post those songs to your web page and give them away.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but that is pretty much how it works, right?
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
..my one problem with used book sales is when they are done so heavily in those crucial "first few months" you mention.
When that happens, the publisher gets a distorted view of how popular the author's work is, which can lead to new authors simply not getting a second book contract. This is a BAD thing for the publishers, the authors, AND the fans.
And this is also why selling review copies is just plain short-sighted.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
Remember, remember, the ninth of November
Aeroplanes, treason and plot.
ObL will be treated better than GF, I suppose.
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E_NOSIG
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2. To visit often; frequent.
It's great there's competition from indie Internet dealers, but for those trying to run a brick and mortar shop, business is much more difficult.
Record companies would love to stop used CD sales.
I wouldn't worry about restrictions on the sales of used books until long after CD resale becomes illegal.
There is one fly in the ointment- I have seen stories regarding restrictions on the resale of books that include CD-ROMs, related to the licensing of the software on the included CD.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
Is see a similar market emerge for used DVDs at some point in time. Will the MPAA try to shut it down? How?
I realize this...it was just a well known example. If you had ever worked in the food industry (I don't know if you have), you would know that 99.9% of the people that ask for cola ask for Coke. That is where the example gets it's feed from. It's also why if you work in an establishment that serves Pepsi, the staff must be trained to inform the customers that the restaurant serves Pepsi and not coke.
Anyways...like I said, it is just an illustrative example. No need to get all technical. What do you think this is...Slashdot? Oh...
I just recently purchased a used book entitled Word Freak, which is about competitive Scrabble players, from Amazon and I couldn't be happier. The book is in excellent condition and the delivery was pretty speedy. I've got a bunch of old books that I'll probably do the same with.
As with the sun's light
My mom was magnificent
Unquestionable
I have found many things that I couldn't easily find before the Internet. Examples:
1. Older hardcover books by Robert E. Howard
2. Comics
3. Graphic Novels
4. Metamorphosis Odyssey Portfolio by Jim Starlin
5. Operating systems.
:)
This really helps me. Most textbook prices are insanely high, especially for Computer science textbooks.
Places like half.com, efollet, and amazon are a great place to find cheap, used textbooks that i need for most of my courses. In one semester, I saved almost 200 bucks buy buying used books online. It realy is a great thing for poor college students, like me.
----
One of us needs to stick ones' head in a bucket of ice water.
- Hobbes
Instead of buying abook, reading it, and then selling it for "only a few dollars", why don't you visit your library, check the book out and read it for nothing at all. If you really want to blow some money, I am sure they will except a donation even
This is something I noticed long before eBay... Once upon a time I would attend (real world) auctions and I noticed that quite often people would get so caught up in the frenzy of bidding that they would bid well beyond what something was worth. A few auctions were so bad that the bulk of the people in the room would be laughing (loudly!) at the 2-3 idoits in the room who just couldn't let something go... I think this is the prime motivation for folks to hold an auction instead of just placing it up for sale some other way. Furthermore, opening up the bidding audience to a nationwide set of bidders only increases the chances that there will be an obsessive-compulsive type bidding against you... Even better for the seller!
With that in mind, I think the Internet has affected "real world" sales in two distinct ways... eBay has made it incredibly easy for folks to auction something. Before you had to have a decent amount of stuff and hire an auctioneer, now all you need is a digital camera and a credit card. In cases where a seller has not gone the eBay route, the mere fact something can be sold to a wider audience will raise the value of that item. If I sell a relatively obscure book in a real world shop, chances are pretty low that someone will come in and buy it. But if I can open my audience up to a larger group of folks looking for that book, the value rises. (Higher demand, fixed supply -> price goes up.)
-z
In Soviet Russia, the Beowulf cluster imagines you!
The best thing about this new service is that books by the best author I've ever read, Jack Vance, will be more widely available now. No more haunting through dusky, torch-lit used book stores, no more dueling to the death over a book with other people who also know the pleasure of this great author. A book is kind of like a woman. You know it has to be good if everyone has enjoyed and recomended it.
Having several friends who are authors (both in text and music), I have to say that while the consumer may benifit, the people who worked hard to give you the joy of the story or song are losing.
If you can, buy the book or CD new - these guys don't make a lot of money (unless they are the lucky ones!) and need everything they can get.
This is what copyright should be all about...and was all about for centuries. This is what copyright SHOULD be about for CD's...but is Congress and the courts have their way, it'll disappear forever.
The notion of the old-fashioned massive book sale is not dead yet, either.
There's a book sale that Case Western Reserve U. has every few years. It goes on for four days, and the last day is "box day" - meaning that you fill any size box with books, and pay only $5. People drive from Alabama for this sale, it's something of a legend.
This year, I got the complete set of Asimov's Foundation series (in hardcover), 4 of Buckminster Fuller's greatest books, 4 hardcover William Gibsons (of these, the best find was The Difference Engine), 4 lonely planet travel guides, Carl Sagan's Cosmos and Dragons of Eden and about 35 kilos more of miscellaneous biographies, textbooks, philosophy anthologies, Time-Life coffee-table books, the complete corpus of James Michener - all for five bucks!
Meanwhile, my compulsive roommate bought two complete encyclopedias, one from 1905 and one from 1860. I asked him why, he says, "they were old."
Right. Now I have to build new shelves.
They also have some rarities. From the website:
Among the finds on this year's silent auction table will be a first-edition copy of E. B. White's Charlotte's Web, with illustrations by Garth Williams; a copy of Paul Cheswick's Robin Hood, illustrated by N.C. Wyeth; a rare James Joyce Pomes Penyeach, printed privately in Cleveland in 1931 and from a limited series of 100 copies; and a leather-bound copy of Charles Dickens' Master Humphrey's Clock and The Old Curiosity Shop (printed in London by Chapman and Hall).
If you're anywhere in the East, I encourage you to come next year. All the proceeds go to the Association for Continuing Education.
'Be always mindful, even when ditch-digging.' --D. T. Suzuki
Unless your library had all of those books donated and everyone working there is doing so on a volunteer basis it really isn't "Free".
Someone's paying for the books and the staff. Maybe your Tax dollars. It's not free.
I find it ironic that while the popular vision of the future is that we will have most things (may everything) available at our fingertips instantly and transparently, isn't this the nightmare of existing media outlets (magazine and book publishers, the music and movie industries)?
I mean, whether it's legitimate (like used books) or illegitimate (watching "Insomnia" on one's laptop the day before it comes out) the media outlets that make money from selling society more than it needs are going to make less money.
I suppose they just charge more... but then that would give more folks an incentive to turn to "alternative" methods. It isn't a simple answer, I guess. Things are definately changing though.
Your library, like most, may have a small selection that does not include the book you are interested in.
You might plan to read it over more than the 1 or 3 week period that the library allows.
You might have bought it intending to keep it but simply have decided that the book wasn't that good, or just not something that you'll ever read again.
You might try to sell it on e-bay for more than the retail price. I have a friend who has sold a lot of books on ebay, both stuff bought at Goodwill for a nickel or dime and sold on-line for $30 or more, as well as new books that she was surprised to see bid up significantly higher than the new book price she paid at Borders for the still in print book (plus an extra profit made in that shipping fee).
You might see it in the book store, want it and buy it now planning on selling it, and still be further ahead than making several trips to your local library (about a 35+ mile round trip drive each time in my case) to pick it up and return it, even if they do have it when you look for it.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
The search for a series of seven OOP paperbacks made me a used bookstore lover. Every vacation involved mining the used bookstores in the area. The thrill of the hunt.
Now I can find most of what I want online, but at significantly higher prices.
Used books, like many items on eBay, are a seller's market. (Like the used but still available DVDs that are bid up until they're over list price.) Good for the dealers, their target customers aren't limited to the locals. Bad for the buyer who used to take the trouble to hunt.
In used bookstores, the buyers and the sellers loved books. Now there are people who are just trying to score an easy profit. Consider the people working just-in-time inventory scams: Advertise a book on half.com or amazon.com for an inflated price. (A lot of people don't look past those two.) After on order comes in, buy it online somewhere else to ship to them! Actually this isn't really a scam. If someone agrees to pay an inflated price, that's their problem. But it shows that you really need to know what things are worth.
I'll continue to use both online and B&M sources, at least as long as there continue to be B&M sources.
If Chaos Theory has taught us anything, it's that we must kill all the butterflies.
I may be wrong, but I believe that you do indeed own the music on the cd, or the words on the paper. However, copyright law restricts what you can do with that music or those words. These restrictions last until the copyright term expires, at which time you're free to do whatever you want with your possession, including distribute copies willy-nilly. Of course, so is everyone else.
This idea that the actual content of the media is the property of the creator is something we need to be careful with. Like you mentioned at the end of your post, what the creator owns is the exclusive (time-limited) right of distribution on that work. The media industry actively works to push the idea that 'intellectual property' is the content, and not the trademarks, copyrights, and patents on that content. Accepting that the content is owned by the creator and is just licensed to us makes it easier for the content publishing industry to increase their control over media, at the expense of our rights. Ideas and the expressions of those ideas cannot be owned.
I just realized that books are the one media that will continue to be sold and re-sold for the forseeable future. As someone who is currently replacing all his CDs, Videos, DVDs with digital equivalents I can see that sales of 2nd-Hand films and music will fall off in the next few years because a lot of people will be "pirating" their own DVDs, computer games, albums and videos then selling them; once everyone is doing this there will be nobody buying originals to sell on.
With books however we still haven't got to the stage where the electronic "rip" is as good as owning the original. I think it will take years before portable readers are as good as real books (in terms of ease of reading, battery life, portability etc).
The other thing that may happen is that it becomes feasible to print a book to read it then recycling the paper. I think the price of ink in a format to suit a printer will always make this uneconomical though.
Just my thoughts
graspee
Today, of course, it is worse.
So let's not jump to the conclusion that the publishing industry is about compensating authors. They've always needed to flip burgers in addition to writing. That's also why retired or disabled (like Heinlein) people have made up a large percentage of authors: it's generally not possible to spend the time writing without being paid, and being paid isn't necessarily an option for everybody who does good work.
The book industry isn't going to solve that- it appears to be going the other direction and making matters worse.
I continually get reminders from readers I've never heard from- asking when will my latest book be finished (I gave up and just put everything on the web so at least it could be read). I get 'em maybe a couple times a year, and I reply "Oh, it'll be finished one day!" and don't tend to devote much time to it. If I was getting reminders a couple times a day, that's when I'd start thinking about replying, "Want to buy a copy?" and devoting more time to it. Until then I just have to hope I live long enough to eventually finish the stories I'm gradually telling.
I'm more interested in reading Terry Pratchett than in writing my own stories. _HE_ writes all the time. and it's his main thing that he does. I have too many other outlets to really do that.. at least for now. Well-rounded is good but it won't make you a Stephen King.
The question to ask is 'do you want to do this all the time for the rest of your life?'
With all the scamers and crooks on ebay it would be better called try to buy. But even if you don't get taken on ebay as a buyer, as a seller buying and reselling on ebay comes at a steep commision for try before you buy. Also, it is based on the concept that there's another idiot out there that's even dumber than you and willing to buy something you decided you don't want. While logic tells me that this can always be true, reports indicate that it acually is.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
You are talking about the Thor Power Tools case, which made books in a warehouse subject to inventory taxes.
I've been told that publishers found easy workarounds for this, though. It only applies to completed products, not incomplete assemblies. So one thing they did was store covers and pages separately, and do the final binding only as demand requires.
These days you can look at things like books in the frame of total cost of ownership. Now that easy resale is possible, you can figure in the likely resale price and figure your TCO. There are a lot of things I can afford to buy new and forget about, but looking at it this way is kind of fun. I do it for everything from books to computer equipment to camera equipment to bike parts to blue jeans. Yup, even blue jeans- used 501s have a great resale value, and very low TCO!
There are some newer technologies that extend the old concept of "search", in order to make browsing much easier online. For example, check out Barnes and Nobles BookBrowser. It organizes books by overlapping categories, and makes it much easier to find books you didn't know about. I picked up a couple books I'd never heard of, by exploring their science fiction categories.
though, is that digital books are not a good substitute for physical books, and cannot be digitized without a lot of effort.
Although I cannot condone the ostrich-like response of RIAA and MPAA, I don't envy their position because they could easily (and eventually will) lose the farm if digital media becomes freely available.
AnhZone
Patriotism is the conviction that your country is superior to all others because you were born there. (GBS)
...when books are so expensive here in the US.
My office is directly above a second-hand bookshop on a university campus. I often browse through the books on offer, which are typically around 2/3rds of the original published price. It is almost always still cheaper to buy and ship the books from Europe!
For example, my most recent purchase of 3 books cost the equivalent of $98, in total, from the UK. The price here (say from Amazon.com) would have been about $160. The second hand bookshop had one of those books (the famous Modern Operating Systems) for $15 less than the published price - still $5 more than the price that I paid.
Auctions favour the seller when the item is in high demand or they can create the illusion that the item is in higher demand. Provided there is more than one interested buyer, the item will always be sold to the party with the highest estimate of the value. See "The winner's curse" by Thaler (You might want to find it used some place though...)
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
It is the evidence that some resellers are making a lot of money that is spurring publishers to monitor the resale market and bring old books back into print if they are still popular (see the original article). It is now possible for publishers to print very small lots of books economically because of IT.
Capitalism doesn't work so well with monopolies, such as copyrights. If the publishers of Robert Anton Wilson don't realize that money could be make by reissuing his books, no competitor is allowed to do it for them (assuming the publisher holds the copyrights). But there is still a strong incentive at work here to correct this kind of problem.
The public library is an institution partly for dealing with the adverse social consequences of the copyright monopoly. You can find all the Wilson books you need there.
This particular hoarder is a problem for you, but the phenomenon should mean more books being reprinted at a reasonable price in general.
Anh Zone
Patriotism is the conviction that your country is superior to all others because you were born there. (GBS)
I keep re-reading the above statement but it still doesn't make any sense.
Yes, because I only want one copy. The other copies mean nothing to me despite the potential to profit from their sale. There's a death of one's soul that comes with evaluating every moment of life in terms of economic profit.
Do you remember Beanie Babies? This was just one of a continuous stream of cheaply made toys that nearly every child wanted. Children are conditioned to believe that these toys will bring them happiness, so they put a lot of pressure on their parents around birthdays and holidays. These fads come and go--eventually the children stop playing with the toys and grow to despise them for not being "in" anymore. It's a fairly harmless process as long as the toys are inexpensive for the parents. It was different with Beanie Babies because some people who thought only in terms of profit began to hoard the supply and hype up the demand. These mass-produced toys became very expensive as collectors joined the craze. I have known and worked with plently of people who would be categorized as lower socio-economic class. They paid steep prices to satisfy their children's desires, often taking financial risks with car and mortgage payments. There were stories of parents fighting over Beanie Babies in retail stores and other irrational behavior. I've heard of parents smacking their kids because the Beanie Babies were lost or got dirty. Some kids weren't allowed to play with their Beanie Babies at all because they had to remain in collectible condition--an ironic fate for a toy. It is amazing to me that so much angst can surround something created as a toy. The angst has a single source: an outsider's desire to profit at any cost. This story is not unlike the book dilemma--an innocent experience is becoming tainted by artificially high pricing.
In conclusion, don't confuse "profitable" with "good". I am not saying that profit is bad either, but that the world would be better if people would be mindful of the effects of any transaction. I will gratefully pay a fair price to the author, the printer, and the distributor of the book because they have played a part in enriching my experience, but I do not feel indebted to the book hoarder, no matter how cunning he is. Perhaps he should learn a skill that is useful to someone instead.
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
Those folks who have pointed out selling used books would be impossible to stop because of long-standing inertia are quite correct. The same is true with public libraries (indeed, ANY libraries) because they are very much entrenched. Indeed, there is along-standing friction between libraries and publishers over this very issue. In some countries there is a so-called "public lending right" which results in the goverment paying fees to publishers based on library corculation. Authors, in truth the most low-paid cog in the publishing machine, are all for this because that means more royalties (they think), so it's been made into a class issue as well.
Today is not the problem; tomorrow is. Today e-books and e-distribution, and e-paper, and all that is not much of an issue. After some initial excitement the concept is in the trough of disillusionment at the moment once publishers figured out people didn't want to lug around a Rocketbook.
In about then yeras or so we are likely to see the first signs of a peak in the "book" industry and the first statistically significant moves to digital in the industry. As that happens you will be buying a license to read the material. Time and technology will gradually decide this issue as more and more material is produced in the new formats.
It does not bode well for libraries or the used book trade. I am a librarian of 30 years in charge of our IT department. There is a sentiment in our profession that we may not be around as an institution very much longer.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
To take an analogy that's similar to yours:
In Canada, we have fair use laws. The law allows me to purchase a CD (or tape, or whatever). I can give or lend the original CD/tape to a friend legally. My friend can also legally make a copy of that CD or tape for his/her own use, and then return that (original) CD back to me.
I am allowed to make copies of that CD or tape for my own personal use.
I am not allowed to give/sell/lend those copies to anyone else.
It's not a bad compromise, I think.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
If the cost of a used book, plus shipping, minus the income from resale is a good deal, then I'm bullish on the transport companies that are going to be shipping these books all over the place!
A good e-Book reader would take a bite out of that I'm sure.
You can't make copies of your moldy old couch if parts are protected by patents. The design might also have copyright protection...your couch is really old if copyright has expired.
Before the Internet, you'd ask your local book dealer to find a book. He'd look at the ads in bookstore trade publications or he'd place an ad. Then he'd negotiate with the bookstores which have the book and negotiate a price with you. Eventually you'd have your copy of "From Link Lake / Canadian Stories".
I haven't seen anyone bring it up yet, so I thought that I would mention abebooks. The site is basically a portal for used book stores, and you can usually find multiple copies of just about anything that you're looking for.
-
"Moderation in all things--..."
:{D
Let's see...
You believe in moderation in all things, thus necessarily you believe in moderating moderation, as moderation itself is a thing.
But, to moderate moderation yields immoderation by definition.
Thus, in at least one case you believe in immoderation, thus contradicting your original statement.
Ergo, your original statement is self-contradictory due to the fact that it's self-referential, and thus a semantic paradox. We therefore must conclude that the phrase "moderation in all things' is nonsensical, and thus useless in a rational dialog.
Sorry, but I've been itching to post on this topic for some time.
"Oh drat these computers, they're so naughty and so complex, I could pinch them." --Marvin the Martian
Well, there's always half.com, eBay's sell-it-used-at-a-fixed-price site. Beyond that, the best advice is not to bid on an item you want, until the very last minutes of the auction...because your bid will drive the price higher than it would otherwise, and at the end you'll know just what you're paying.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
I do not believe that there is some sort of a moral right for you to be able to buy a particular book at a particular price, any more than you have a right to any other good.
However, you should have reasonably convenient access to the information in this book, because free speech in my opinion also mandates free listening, or, in this case, free (as in speech) reading.
I think that in the US, as in many other countries, a publisher has to give a copy of any book he publishes to the library of congress.
Why not expand this duty to a copy in electronic form, such as a PDF?
Then, after a book goes out of print for more than a very short time (e.g. two months), anybody should have a right to have a copy of that book "printed on demand" in a library or bookshoop for something like 120% of the initial price of the book.
Of this 120%, 30% should go to the author, 20% to the publisher and 20% to the Library of congress for providing the service and the PDF, and 50% for the place that does the "print-on-demand".
I think this would be fair to everybody (author and publisher probably make more out of this than by selling new books), and would resolve the problem of books that have not enough readers to warrant a reprint.
And, of course, there should be an international treaty on cross-providing this service, so nobody could reprieve people of their right to a free flow of information by not publishing books in some countries for economic and other reasons.
Actually, I bet comic books really lend themselves well to online sale via eBay and so forth.
The big advantage is their light weight. The nagging problem I've always had trying to sell books online is the cost of postage (with hardbacks especially!) prevents you from making much on the sale. I could toss a comic book in a cardboard mailer and send it via 1st. class mail for under $1.00.
The U.S. post office is once again raising prices at the end of this month - so it's only going to get worse.
It used to be, people always said postage was pretty much a non-issue, because by mail ordering (or buying on eBay), you avoided sales tax. It's getting so now, that's no longer true for anything that's somewhat heavy but not worth a high dollar value.
As I said, Anonymous Coward: it isn't exactly true. The fact that I only gave ONE reason why it isn't doesn't mean I think that's the ONLY reason. You should never take anything so literally. I said it wasn't exactly true: what more of a disclaimer do you want?.
Your comment seems to suggest you have a personal investment in making your point: as if someone on Slashdot implying your a bad person because you sell your books makes it true.
I don't sell my textbooks, and I'm poor like most students. I've made a personal commitment to keeping them both for the knowledge they contain and to remind me of classes I've taken and the time in which I was taking them. I never sell my other books either. I didn't sell my childhood toys, no matter how hard up for money I got (or how valuable some of them have become on Ebay - can you say MINT Fortress Maximus?), because for me it would feel like selling my childhood away. Call me sentimental or stupid: luckily for me I don't emotionally invest enough in Slashdot to determine my self-worth by what people on it say, but I do like communicating with people (however artificial the medium may be).
That said I understand what it's like being in dire financial straits and the pressure it puts on you. So you caved in and sold some books? I don't REALLY think that makes you a bad person, but I also think from your defensive position you're acknowledging it's not a great thing. But ultimately you do what you have to do, right? If I needed money for an operation for my brother or something, that Fortress Maximus would start looking less like my childhood and more like a piece of plastic. Given the right conditions, we all do what we have to do.
Anyway the point I was TRYING to make was: I don't understand how this market exists, since (in all reasonable situations) you'll get my books when you pry them from my cold, dead hands. I'm sorry if you took that position as an assault on your character.
I don't think I'd ever sell a book I've read, with the possible exception of if I for some reason had more than one copy of the book, and maybe a book I really, really didn't like, or one I only bought and read (partially or wholly) for school...
I may be wrong, but I believe that you do indeed own the music on the cd, or the words on the paper.
I might not have been clear when I said "own". What I meant by "own" is that that words in the book or the music on the CD are that of the author. You can't claim that they are yours, even if you bought the book or the CD. It is hard to use ideas of ownership for ideas. As I said, you can't pick up and hold words or music. They aren't tangible things.
The author of a work does own the rights to the work, for a limited time as defined by copyright laws. Once the copyright expires, the work becomes part of the public domain. Yet, you still don't "own" the work. I am again using "own" as definded above. The words are still those of the author, you can't claim that they are yours. Your use of the work is no longer restricted but you still don't own the work. The public as a whole does.
So, when you buy a book or CD or other work, you own the physical stuff that the work is distributed on. But you don't own what is contained on the physical stuff.
Heidi, FactorFantasy.com
Could be that people in small towns spend more time reading, than participating in "city life". With less time on their hands, their all busy reading some good books.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
the world ... Illinois ... New York ... California
It truly is a small world after all!
Try someone in Australia buys from California if you want to illustrate a "world" market. The amazing thing is that I can buy used books from the US - good quality at much cheaper prices - and beat the incredible cost of imported tech books in Australia.
The internet is much better than the old international "mail order" way of buying books. Finding those mail-order firms by looking through imported journals and newspapers was a lot harder than using the web.
Better still, I want to buy some German books that never even make it to the academic library shelves here, let alone the bookshops. This is a lot easier to do on the web.
You need a bigger concept of the world.
I am anarch of all I survey.
And plenty of my books have been dropped in the bath, or chewed by one of my cats, or something like. And that's a trigger to memory when I reread. "Schrodinger's Cat" mangled? Ah, that was when I lent it to one of my lecturers, now sadly deceased, and what a fun guy *he* was. CJ Cherryhs "Foreigner" all wrinkled? That was the first experience of cat Qetesh with baths, and she whirred like a paddle steamer getting out. Unlike the book, alas. Some serious chewed bits on several of my Vernor Vinge collection? Other cat Luschka trying out the dentals before she hoed into a variety of my clothing (t-shirts with prints on the front and lycra bathers are favourites).
Yep, memories indeed. Just like the musty, indescribable smell of a good secondhand bookshop. Can't find it anywhere else.
The author of a work does own the rights to the work, for a limited time as defined by copyright laws. Once the copyright expires, the work becomes part of the public domain.
In the USA, copyrights don't necessarily expire and automatically become part of the public domain. They become available for purchase by the highest bidder. (Witness Michael Jackson's purchase of the Beatles' copyrights a few years back.) Otherwise, all works for which the original copyright has expired would currently be in the public domain and there are none.
1. New books will sell until there are enough used ones in the system to satisfy demand. Thus, Mr. Bigshot Pulpmaster still makes money.
2. Hardcover books made from cheap, expendable materials will not sell. People who spend $30 each on hardcovers want to put them on their bookshelves for display, not resell them on half.com.
3. Most mass-market paperbacks are already made from about the cheapest materials imaginable. What is truly incredible is that they still cost $8 a copy. By the way, I have crates of the damn things laying around the house; what am I to do with them, burn them?
4. The market for English-language literature is so vast that I doubt there are any writers out of work who shouldn't be doing something else anyway. If this were not the case, Barnes and Noble would have gone out of business ages ago, and Amazon would never have gotten venture capital.
5. If anything, half.com and the like are loss leaders. Readers are introduced to new authors, genre, etc., at a much lower initial investment, but you can bet that sooner or later, they'll be around to B&N, Borders, etc., VISA cards in hand. It's cheaper than advertising.
So, I think I've given enough evidence that it is best to leave well enough alone.
Republicans are idiots.
> ...having spent, in effect, only a few dollars
If a user buys, reads and immediately resells a book online, and spends a few dollars doing so, I don't understand why that user wouldn't simply go to a library and borrow the book for free.
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
That is an excellent idea. Thanks!
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
I will buy something, I hope shipping prices to Uagudugu are reasonable.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The library in my town is open 9;00-17:00, Monday to Fridays and most libraries in this country only accept people living in close prosimity.
Nedless to say libraries are mostly empty and are the meeting point of the unemployed and the retired people.
This is a developped country BTW.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Yes, copyrights are transferrable, but they do expire at a time that is determined by law. They are available for purchase pretty much like any other property. The copyright term does not automatically get extended when the copyright is sold to a new party.
All works for which the copyright has expired *are* in the public domain. The problem is that Congress continues to retroactively extend the length of the copyright.
Yea, this is closer to how I think of things. Once expressed and disseminated, no one can truly own the idea. We can still recognize the creator as the one who first came up with the idea, but he now longer 'owns' the idea any more than I do.
Is this post a joke? Most writers actually do not make the majority of money from writing. And most published writers make hardly any money at all (a few thousand for a book). Believe me, there is a very, very small number that actually write and make a living at it.
Writers write because they love writing. Even the grocery-store authors did it largely for the experience of writing, even if now they write to line their coffers. If you think the literary community is fueled by writers whose purpose is to make money, boy, do I have a bridge to show you!
Oddly enough, she seems not to have enjoyed the experience...
That may be true. However, as producing books becomes less profitable for publishers, they're more likely to cut back the number of books they publish to the revenue-heavy ones. So even someone writing purely for the thrill of having other people enjoy their work will have a harder time getting published.
Not "correct" but rather "likely to be worth my limited time". It's also the same reason I read Slashdot rather than independently searching through the sites that Slashdot draws its material from.
The Internet serves as the perfect example of an easily accessible content distribution system. Anyone can get their message out to quite a few readers provided they're willing to invest a couple bucks in the process.
But there's a catch. 99% of the stuff on the Internet is sheer, unadulterated, mind-numbing crap. That "anyone" I mentioned in the previous paragraphs includes everyone from people who think aLtErNaTiNg cApS makes you cool to people who think "a lot" is one word. Some kind of filter is nice.
I'm allergic to many old books and papers, and
would much prefer to have a digital copy on a good display or possibly even printed on paper again if needed. For this reason a digital certificate which certified the existence of one owned, printed copy of a book would be useful. This would allow for fair use and (might) discourage putting things in public domain (though it is not necessarily bad for authors).
Then if you buy a used book and the book had a serial number in it you could get the digital version online. To me these digital versions would be more valuable and I would be willing to pay money for quality digital reproductions (not as much as the original book though).
I have found that short documents printed two pages to a side is also useable, though at only a single side being used, too thick and wasteful of paper.
Having read the digital versions of many books on my Palm which I had previously purchased years ago in paperback, I can attest to the utility of even a low quality display. The only problem is not getting to sleep until 4 am! Publishers should get on the bandwagon and stop being such police. A little flexibility and trust may go a long way. Personally I have only picked authors I have already read everything of years ago, and now I have rediscovered them.. and found some new authors to watch for, having given up on small bookstores until now.
I wish you could like to see a digital certificate provided with each printed book (could even be issued retroactively through a website if publishers wished..) which would
If it's a good book but I need to get rid of my library (moving into cramped quarters), the only proper thing to do IMHO is to give it (as a gift!) to someone who'll appreciate it. On the other hand, I have no compunctions about going into a used bookstore, buying five or eight books that might be interesting, and selling back the ones I don't like.
Having your own personal library kicks ass, though, I utterly agree... to sell every book after a read or two just wouldn't be right.
www.addall.com/used searches smaller book shops for used and out-of-print books.
Arrogant and unrealistic? Of course. Hard to imagine congress criminalizing used book stores! I doubt if anybody at AOL/TW or Disney really envisions achieving such a goal. It's just a legal/political tactic. It's one more case of "lost intellectual property" that they can use as a bargaining chip when things like copyright extension and the precise definition of "fair use" come up for negotiation.