Amazon investigating used e-book sales

And Amazon is right. Unless the used books are printed on rice paper, they shouldn't be making sake out of them.

JSSchley said:

The topic hit Nathan Bransford's blog today.

I made a tl;dr comment, but I am really intrigued by the commenter who suggests that in the face of DRM, etc., ebooks need to go the way of Netflix. I find myself agreeing that such a model is a superior way to handle a lot of the problems with ebook pricing (though I think the monthly subscription would have to be figured out--$15 seems too low for me.)

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Well, you have to figure in what people would pay. I only buy two ebooks a month at best—that's about $18. I use Netflix every single day watching various movies and television shows. I only pay $8 a month. I'm sure many people, including myself, would not be willing to pay an astronomical price like $50 a month to rent ebooks. I don't have cable because the prices are insane—and I'm paying for commercials when I can just catch the episode for free on Hulu.

But I've always thought the argument for keeping ebooks and hardbacks/paperbacks the same price was because you were paying for the content, not the packaging—regardless of how used paperbacks sell for less. Isn't that what it's always been? That it costs little to nothing to print a book?

thebloodfiend said:

Well, you have to figure in what people would pay. I only buy two ebooks a month at best—that's about $18. I use Netflix every single day watching various movies and television shows. I only pay $8 a month. I'm sure many people, including myself, would not be willing to pay an astronomical price like $50 a month to rent ebooks. I don't have cable because the prices are insane—and I'm paying for commercials when I can just catch the episode for free on Hulu.

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I suggested to work once that we put some kind of subscription mechanism in place but, you know what? It's all going to be too tricky in terms of rights and software and assorted other mechanisms. I am not sure who would be the person to institute this, considering you'd want AAA authors involved. But I'm sure something of the sort will happen eventually.

I hate that Zon would potentially get earnings (many times over, unless there is a limit to how many times the digital book can be "resold" as used?) while the author gets none. This is going to hurt content creators, IMHO.

On a side tangent re: DRM, I have a music playing device (that shall remain nameless), and it is several years old. When I first setup an online account to buy music, I used an email that has since changed. I have no idea what the old password was. Music I legally purchased there will no longer transfer to my new device. I also uploaded some music I owned on CD to that device. Well, the new software version wants to sync with my old device, but tells me I have no right to those old songs. So, that is several hundred songs that were lost in the shuffle, so to speak. Upshot: digital versions are not tangible and can be deleted/lost/denied to you. That is why I only purchase e-books I consider "throw-aways" or airplane reads. If I like a book, I want a physical copy.

With Apple announcing "me too" and ReDigi looking at books (not to mention the European Court of Justice ruling on reselling used software last year) this is starting to look like a major issue.

At least in the Apple and ReDigi models for money going to the original artists and/or copyright holders...but this all strikes me as one half-measure after another, epicycles on epicycles to avoid the (get ready for it) paradigm shift.