UK: book swapping

CheshireCat said:

A chair or a blouse, sold over and over again, is going to show some wear and tear, and eventually, in most cases, decreases in worth; my book, providing no pages are missing, provides exactly the same brand-new reading experience to the twentieth reader as it does to the first. In buying a copy of my book, they're buying a package that contains an entertainment experience.

Click to expand...

I'm not going to do a line-by-line, because that always feels argumentative, even when it's not meant that way, and I'm more interested in simply exchanging points of view. I'm going to assume that anyone reading this has already read the rest of the thread.

(For clarification: I'm going to exclude all the illegal means of selling books from my discussion, because I previously said that I DO oppose literal theft and piracy. If someone swipes a case of books from a shop or printer and sells them on eBay, nope, I'm not supporting that. Ditto torrenting e-books. I'm sure we all agree there, so let's not let that tangle this up. I don't want to have to type the word 'legitimate' everywhere; assume that I'm only talking about legitimate, unstolen books that people have purged from their shelves. )

The reason I don't agree with your conclusions, CheshireCat, is that much of the logic seems to me to be faulty. (Please note how heavily I qualified that!)

You said earlier that you don't have a problem with libraries, and yet every reader of a library book gets that same 'brand new experience' with the text as someone who buys or swaps a used book. So it seems as if you're saying on one hand that each new reader ought to pay for the experience, but on the other, you don't mind if they don't as long as the experience came through a library. But maybe book swapping (which happens to be what this thread is ACTUALLY about) falls into the same category as libraries to you? That would make a little more sense.

And where does borrowing books from friends fall on the spectrum? Or the original purchaser re-reading the book and getting a new experience from it? If I buy a copy of your book and loan it, one at a time, to 10 friends, do you feel that I stole from you? What about if a friend and I trade? To follow your logic, it seems that the conclusion would be that each experience needs to be paid for. (I don't think you actually think that; I'm just following your arguments to what seem to me to be logical conclusions.)

This is why I see a distinction (though possibly blurry) between the text and the book (the text's physical container). If I've spent good money on a book and know that I'm not going to read it again, I really don't see why I shouldn't recoup some of my investment in the book (the physical container). In my case, that would mostly likely be by giving it to a friend, dontating it to a library, or exchanging it in a book swap, but others might sell their purged books to a used bookseller. They spent their money on the book, and now they're recouping some of their investment since they no longer want the physical object.

As far as the comparison to the blouse goes, the book is far more likely to wear out and fall apart long before the blouse will (if you count one-for-one uses), so I don't think that analogy falls down at all.

Also, there's a very good chance that the person who bought the used book wouldn't have bought it new. Yes, there are exceptions, but the fact is that most people who WILL buy books new do actually buy them new, not used; so the buyers of used books are mostly folks who won't or can't buy them new.

Regarding people who aren't making enough money off their writing to live on, I just don't think that the used book trade bears enough responsibility to even mention. The used books that sell best are, well, bestsellers. Those of us whose books aren't doing all the great in retail shops also aren't making all that many sales of used copies. So that argument doesn't work for me, either.

Finally, I also disagree that the internet is 'responsible' for used book sales becoming big business. It certainly is responsible for making the sale of stolen goods an even bigger business than it was! But if we exclude stolen merchandise (as I said above I would do), I don't think the legitimate used book trade is all that much bigger now than it was before. As someone else pointed out upstream, used bookshops have almost disappeared, so the business moved from local shops + mail order to the internet. I mean, c'mon, surely you've read and enjoyed 84 Charing Cross Road!

The rare and collectible book trade has been thriving for centuries, as we can see in our very (ahem) literature. Used booksellers pop up as characters all the time. Some other books that come immediately to mind (both current) are Sarah Waters' Fingersmith (a novel) and The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession, a true crime book by Allison Hoover Bartlett.

I will continue to fall back on what I said from the very beginning. I was poor once and bought my favourite books used so I could read them over and over. I remember saving up a few dollars for several paychecks to be able to get a beautiful hardback copy of War and Peace. And stopping by the used bookshop a couple of times a week to see if a popular book I wanted was there and hadn't been snapped up yet. (After all, I couldn't keep borrowing it from my friend!) As I started earning more money, one of my best pleasures was to be able to walk into a retail shop and buy a brand new (hardback, if possible) copy of an old favourite.

And again I say that, to me, it would be exceedingly poor form to turn around, now that I can (and do) buy brand new hardbacks whenever I want to, and say that poor folks today shouldn't be able to buy used books, and that instead, all unwanted books should just be thrown in the recycling bin.

PLR and principle

Terie said:

You said earlier that you don't have a problem with libraries, and yet every reader of a library book gets that same 'brand new experience' with the text as someone who buys or swaps a used book. So it seems as if you're saying on one hand that each new reader ought to pay for the experience, but on the other, you don't mind if they don't as long as the experience came through a library.

Click to expand...

But in a lot of countries they do pay - or rather the government pays on their behalf. It's not a lot (just under 6p per loan in the UK) but it still establishes exactly the principle CC is talking about - that an author has a right to be paid whenever a new customer 'experiences' their book.

It's a great shame the US has yet to set up a PLR scheme of its own (as Canada has, for instance). It's something the American Writers' Guilds could perhaps think of campaigning about, which is what happened here.

And where does borrowing books from friends fall on the spectrum? Or the original purchaser re-reading the book and getting a new experience from it? If I buy a copy of your book and loan it, one at a time, to 10 friends, do you feel that I stole from you? What about if a friend and I trade? To follow your logic, it seems that the conclusion would be that each experience needs to be paid for.

Click to expand...

Well - yes, actually.

I don't have a problem with the original purchaser re-reading, since they've paid for a lifetime experience - just as someone who buys a CD can listen to it as long as the 'physical container' lasts. Borrowing, however, is different. I've both borrowed and lent books to friends, but since I became aware of copyright I feel a lot less comfortable about it. To me it now feels the same as copying someone else's CD or borrowing someone's software disc instead of buying the program myself. Norton, Microsoft et al are working to make this harder to do for precisely the same principle CC is talking about - there is an 'intellectual property right' here which has nothing to do with the physical object of the disc.

I admit that (like you) I'd lend a book to someone who wasn't otherwise in a position to buy it, and I do recognize that this is the case with many people who buy second-hand books. However, there's still a principle at stake. Should a farmer give away his produce for free to those who can't afford it? Should someone else give it away to people who can't afford it? Writers can make the choice to give away the content of their own books, but do I have the right to make that choice for them?

It's a hard one. I don't see myself refusing a friend who asks to borrow a book, because it just seems so petty. I'd also lend one (or buy one second-hand) if the book were out of print and hard to find. But I'm not going to offer to lend books to people who can perfectly well afford them, and I don't buy in-print books second hand - ever.

I haven't by any means been guiltless in the past, but I've found a lot to think about in CC's post and am feeling rather bad about it now.

Louise

You said earlier that you don't have a problem with libraries, and yet every reader of a library book gets that same 'brand new experience' with the text as someone who buys or swaps a used book. So it seems as if you're saying on one hand that each new reader ought to pay for the experience, but on the other, you don't mind if they don't as long as the experience came through a library. But maybe book swapping (which happens to be what this thread is ACTUALLY about) falls into the same category as libraries to you? That would make a little more sense.

Click to expand...

No, what I tried to make very clear is that the reason I don't object to libraries loaning out my books is that they are not in the business of making money by doing so. They do not make money on a sale and are not in the business of doing so. Amazon is. They sell my books used -- promote them actively, avidly, right alongside the newly-published copies -- in order to make a profit on the sale of them. Without compensation to me, the creator of that intellectual property.

And book-swapping, actually, does fall into the same category as libraries to me. I get letters all the time from reading groups who buy a copy or two and "pass it around" before discussing the book. Which is fine by me. Nobody is trying to resell my work for their own profit.

What I don't like about book-swapping and, actually, libraries in the US, is that the numbers aren't counted. So, again, my true readership is unknown to both myself and my publishers.

And where does borrowing books from friends fall on the spectrum? Or the original purchaser re-reading the book and getting a new experience from it? If I buy a copy of your book and loan it, one at a time, to 10 friends, do you feel that I stole from you? What about if a friend and I trade? To follow your logic, it seems that the conclusion would be that each experience needs to be paid for. (I don't think you actually think that; I'm just following your arguments to what seem to me to be logical conclusions.)

Click to expand...

Again, please pay attention to the one phrase that matters, the single definition that seems perfectly clear to me: you and your friends are not trying to profit by the resale of my work.

Think about that. Please.

It's Big Business making a profit off the sale of my work that I object to. There are a lot of gray areas in all this, to my mind, but that one thing is very, very clear.

If a person or business entity is in the business of making money off the sale of my books, then I deserve a royalty. Period.

Also, there's a very good chance that the person who bought the used book wouldn't have bought it new. Yes, there are exceptions, but the fact is that most people who WILL buy books new do actually buy them new, not used; so the buyers of used books are mostly folks who won't or can't buy them new.

Click to expand...

You can't prove a negative. Nobody can. So while the argument (it isn't a new one, believe me) is that people who buy used would not have bought new, there's simply no way to prove that.

However, since my argument has always been that used booksellers should pay a royalty -- two freakin' pennies per book would be fine with me, one for me and one for the publisher, so we have numbers to look at -- if they resell my books with the intention of making a profit, please stop looking at this as an attack on the buyers. It's not the people who buy used I have any objection to; it's the people who sell used -- to make a profit.

I don't see how much clearer I can make that.

Regarding people who aren't making enough money off their writing to live on, I just don't think that the used book trade bears enough responsibility to even mention. The used books that sell best are, well, bestsellers. Those of us whose books aren't doing all the great in retail shops also aren't making all that many sales of used copies. So that argument doesn't work for me, either.

Click to expand...

If you had been writing romance in the 80s and 90s you wouldn't say that. Not in the US, at any rate. On this side of the pond, romance has always been a HUGE seller in used bookstores, often making up 60-75% of the inventory. Women would come in with grocery bags of books to trade for another grocery bag.

It was, at the time, sadly understandable for readers; category romance had (and has) a retail shelf life of approximately three weeks. If you didn't get the book then, you HAD to buy it used. And you had to buy the author's backlist used, when you discovered someone you loved, because these books were not reissued (unless the author hit the Times list later on and her/his backlist became highly valuable to the publisher).

I watched really good authors who published as many as a dozen or two dozen books -- or more -- simply stop publishing. Especially after the book clubs came along, and Harlequin and other publishers were sending the new books to their book club members weeks in advance of retail sales. By the time the books hit stores for that pitifully short sale time, the books were already in lively circulation in used bookstores.

I saw it happen. Again and again. I was there. I have friends who no longer write because that's what happened to them.

Those of us whose books aren't doing all the great in retail shops also aren't making all that many sales of used copies.

Click to expand...

How do you know? Seriously. Who's tracking these sales you believe don't add up to big numbers? Have you factored in Amazon? Ebay? The network of used booksellers world-wide who now operate out of their homes and use the internet to move their products -- for profit? How do you know what those numbers are?

Finally, I also disagree that the internet is 'responsible' for used book sales becoming big business. It certainly is responsible for making the sale of stolen goods an even bigger business than it was! But if we exclude stolen merchandise (as I said above I would do), I don't think the legitimate used book trade is all that much bigger now than it was before. As someone else pointed out upstream, used bookshops have almost disappeared, so the business moved from local shops + mail order to the internet. I mean, c'mon, surely you've read and enjoyed 84 Charing Cross Road!

Click to expand...

Before Amazon and ebay, there were only mom and pop used bookstores and a few small chains in the US. Now there are tens of thousands of people making a profit by selling used books. And I'm not counting Amazon or ebay.

And, no, you won't convince me otherwise.

Finally, though I never read 84 Charing Cross Road, I did see the movie. And loved it. But that was a different time, and those shops dealt, mostly, in rare or out-of-print books, not new books.

As I said, if a book is out of print, then I certainly don't blame a reader for buying it new. The bookseller, on the other hand ... them I blame. If they're reselling a used copy of my book for a profit, then I believe they owe me a royalty.

You know, a friend once sent me a copy of one of my earliest books. She had bought it at a used bookstore, and wanted me to see it. In those days, every store stamped their name somewhere in the front of the book. This particular book of mine, which was a category romance and had been out of print for ... oh, a year or two at that point, bore the stamps of sixteen different bookstores in several states.

Sixteen. That's at least fifteen readers my publishers never knew about, and at least fifteen different stores who made something -- maybe not much, but something -- on the resale of my book.

And that was just one copy of one book.

And again I say that, to me, it would be exceedingly poor form to turn around, now that I can (and do) buy brand new hardbacks whenever I want to, and say that poor folks today shouldn't be able to buy used books, and that instead, all unwanted books should just be thrown in the recycling bin.

Click to expand...

And I'll say, one last time, that the reason this issue IS an issue is because people keep coming back to the poor reader -- with whom I have absolutely no quarrel. Never have.

But if a bookseller is making as much as a quarter on the resale of my book, I don't believe it's unreasonable that they should pay a two-penny royalty.

It's not the readers.

It's the companies and people in the BUSINESS of reselling my work FOR PROFIT.

Like I said, everybody has to make their own decision on this. Decide what they believe, and where they stand.

I believe in intellectual property rights, and I believe creators should be compensated when their work is resold for profit.

I don't believe a book is the same sort of thing as a chair.

And I'm done.

I'm only going to respond to two comments here and then drop it.

CheshireCat said:

It's Big Business making a profit off the sale of my work that I object to.

Click to expand...

You and I clearly have very different definitions of 'Big Business'. The used book trade is a drop in the bucket of international business, and the vast majority of money made in the trade is on out-of-print, hard-to-find, collectible editions that sell for hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of dollars, not on the flurry of last year's bestsellers that sell for a couple of bucks each. You take away the collectible part of the market, and what's left isn't very 'big' at all in the world of business.

CheshireCat said:

How do you know? Seriously.

Click to expand...

I know about my books because I know how many copies were printed. Even if every single one of them was currently for sale in a used bookshop, if every single one of them sold today, and if your scheme for the author to get a penny for each one (a scheme that I like and absolutely would support, BTW) were in place, I'd get enough money from it to pay two-and-a-half months' gas and electric bills.

I don't know if all publishers include the number of copies printed on royalty statements, but at least in my case, I do know this figure. And even if we were generous and said that a full 25% of what was printed (of my books) were for sale in the used book market, we can see that it's not enough money to make the difference between me needing a day job or not.

As a HUGE consumer of books, I will not feel guilty about my occasional used purchases or swaps, nor about what I did back in the days I could hardly afford to put food on the table. I've paid full retail price for books I can't stand and kind of feel like I wasted my money on. So occasionally, I'll buy a used book to sample the author's work, and if I like it, I'll buy the rest retail. If I don't like it, I don't feel quite so stung.

On the other hand, I've bought books (at retail) by favourite authors in multiple formats and editions. In one case, I've bought every single one of an author's books both in hardcopy and audio format, and I've bought several extra sets of some series to give as gifts. When I found a set of collectible first edition hardbacks at a price I could afford, I bought them, and the author herself was nearly as excited that I found them as I was. And, best of all ironies, how did I discover this author (who is now also an actual personal friend)? Because a friend loaned me the first book in her first series.

So we shall simply have to agree to disagree.

Terie said:

Even if every single one of them was currently for sale in a used bookshop, if every single one of them sold today, and if your scheme for the author to get a penny for each one (a scheme that I like and absolutely would support, BTW) were in place, I'd get enough money from it to pay two-and-a-half months' gas and electric bills

Click to expand...

I'm not in your league, Terie, and I doubt I'd even get that much. But there are writers in this world to whom two and a half months' of gas and electric is A LOT. It can make all the difference between a feasible existence writing full time and having to go back to a day job. For some people in these hard times I'm afraid the difference may be bigger even than that.

You're quite right not to feel guilty, and I'm honestly not trying for that. I have enormous respect for the way you're helping others the way you were helped yourself at a time when you needed it. All of us have our own way of dealing with ethical difficulties, and the only guilt that bothers me is my own.

But I do think the principle's important. I've understood about copyright for a while now but CC's posts have clarified the moral and intellectual issue for me, and yes, I've had my mind opened by a post on AW. I hope this discussion can be preserved in some way, and I only hope more people will see it.

Louise

I know about my books because I know how many copies were printed. Even if every single one of them was currently for sale in a used bookshop, if every single one of them sold today, and if your scheme for the author to get a penny for each one (a scheme that I like and absolutely would support, BTW) were in place, I'd get enough money from it to pay two-and-a-half months' gas and electric bills.

I don't know if all publishers include the number of copies printed on royalty statements, but at least in my case, I do know this figure. And even if we were generous and said that a full 25% of what was printed (of my books) were for sale in the used book market, we can see that it's not enough money to make the difference between me needing a day job or not.

Click to expand...

Had to come back in and respond to this. Yeah, I know how many copies of my books are printed too. But that doesn't tell me how many of those copies end up selling used -- or how many times they do.

You're assuming one sale used per book, even though I told you an absolutely true story about one copy of one of my books selling at least 16 times.

I honestly don't know if it's still true, or if it's only true of romance, but I can tell you for certain that the (mostly women) who bought romance used back in the day rarely kept those books -- they brought them back a week or two weeks later and put them back into circulation. To sell or trade again. And again.

I'll tell you another true story. After I hit the Times list, a friend alerted me that a copy of my very first book was up for auction on ebay. And it sold. For more than $50. To my certain knowledge that happened at least three times, though not for quite as much on the second and third copy.

Would have been nice to get a little royalty percentage on those sales.

Which brings me back to one of the points I was trying to make: You have no way of knowing for certain how many times one of your books is bought used, because nobody reports those sales to you or to your publisher. So you also have no way of knowing just how many of those gas and electric bills you might be able to pay with a penny royalty off every sale.

Hey, I had periods in my early career when I hocked jewelry to pay the electric bill. And I'm not exaggerating about that. A penny royalty on all the used sales of my books would have helped. A lot.

But, as I said, it ain't gonna happen. Not as long as A Book is defined as real property rather than intellectual property. And I don't see any writers group, or publisher, or individual author stepping up to take that one through the court system.



It'll be interesting to watch how the Internet continues to change the way people buy books.

And by "interesting" I mean the way it's used in that ancient Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times.

We are.

It's too bad they can't embed a chip in each book. Then every time it hit a cash register scanner the sale would show up. I frankly admit to buying used, from a used book store. But I also buy about two new books for each used. So I am contributing to the authors royalties. My reason for buying used is two-fold. I can afford more books (it's an addiction I readily admit to), and I can pay cash and sneak them into the house in the bottom of the bag of books from the library.

MM

But surely second hand bookstores and sites like the one aruna was initially talking about are completely different kettles of fish? I can see where you're coming from in your arguments against second hand bookstores, but I'll fight pretty hard in defense of book trading sites like bookmooch.

megan_d said:

But surely second hand bookstores and sites like the one aruna was initially talking about are completely different kettles of fish? I can see where you're coming from in your arguments against second hand bookstores, but I'll fight pretty hard in defense of book trading sites like bookmooch.

Click to expand...

Book trading, if done for free, if no "service charge" beyond postage is charged, is not something I'm going to argue against. I don't like it, because while it may well introduce new readers to my work, it also keeps them invisible to my publishers and me unless and until they buy new, but I won't argue against the practice as long as no one is in it to make a profit.

That's where I draw my line in the sand.