Yes, I think this would be what pushes me over that line. I am a voracious reader. I try to buy new when I can, but with many paperbacks and ebooks approaching $10 or more I cannot buy all that I want. The library is my next stop, and if that fails it’s on to the used book stores. If I still can’t find it, or borrow from someone, I just don’t read it. But asking to be paid twice for the same item makes me really not want to even try to pay you the first time, and if something like this eventually kills the secondary market then it’s off to the black market for me.

What other manufacturer of *anything* tries this? Can you imagine if Ford or GM tried to insist on a cut of every used car sale? Or furniture companies or appliance manufacturers for every used sale in the classifieds? Does the concept of personal property not matter to authors? If I paid you for it, it’s not yours anymore, understand? You don’t get to keep reaching into peoples pockets over and over again, grubbing for every dime. If this *job* doesn’t support you in the lifestyle you want, get a different job. That’s what us mortals have to do.

A: Cory Doctorow gets paid by BoingBoing to write. Long-form books are a sideline for him. He can afford to give them away for free.

B: Wow, he made number nine on the kids’-book section. Did that actually make any money for him?

@Anon:
“Yes Ben, the gist of what you are trying to say is that writers should be paid multiple times for the same product…”

Congratulations, you’ve just argued that e-books should be free. Good luck with that.

Sorry, I couldn’t help saying that above, it was just too tempting. Anyway, for the record, I’m not against second-hand bookshops or selling books second-hand. It would be a shame if those wonderful second-hand shops would disappear, often run by passionate people who sincerely love books and don’t do it for profit, often hardly making a living out of it. They are the complete antithesis to the greedy on-line sellers like Amazon and Abe who don’t care about books and writers apart from profiting from them. They are listed companies under pressure from investors to constantly grow and show more profits. By selling books second-hand on-line listed next to new ones they found a way to profit even more by not having to pay royalties to the writer. If people can’t see that this is wrong and harming the writer (plus the local second-hand bookshops) then I see a very dark future for writing ahead with more trash being sold and cheap celebrity writing instead of good and more demanding literature.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Brother_%28Cory_Doctorow_novel%29 :

“The book debuted at No. 9 on the New York Times Bestseller List, children’s chapter book section, in May 2008.[2] As of July 2, it had spent a total of six weeks on the list, rising to the No. 8 spot[3]. Little Brother has also won the 2009 White Pine Award[4], the 2009 Prometheus Award.[5] and the 2009 John W. Campbell Memorial Award”

He gives the book for free, and still he manages to have it be a best-seller. I won’t bother to explain you why, since you obviously are in no mood to listen.

Whao, that’s amazing. It’s nice to hear that some authors manage to live from thin air.

This chapter is dedicated to BakkaPhoenix Books in Toronto, Canada. Bakka is the oldest science fiction bookstore in the world, and it made me the mutant I am today. I wandered in for the first time around the age of 10 and asked for some recommendations. Tanya Huff (yes, the Tanya Huff, but she wasn’t a famous writer back then!) took me back into the used section and pressed a copy of H. Beam Piper’s “Little Fuzzy” into my hands, and changed my life forever.

Here’s an example of how used books helped a writer being born, thus accomplishing the end for which copyright exists.

The idea of author royalties on used book sales is about as likely to happen as GM getting a percentage on used Chevy sales.

Regulating the sale of second-hand books will not change that but it can make a difference for some writers between worrying how to get the money to pay the next rent and focusing more on the Art of Writing.

You still didn’t show the numbers.

The writer has only one product, his story, which of course needs to be distributed multiple times and for which he should be paid.

That’s why you don’t sell your manuscript, but instead you make an edition of the book, and sell copies of it. You’ll earn for each copy sold.

If you sell your Microsoft Office CD or give it to your friend, if she wants to be legal she will have to pay Microsoft a license fee.

That is not true. It is legal for you to sell your Microsoft Office CD (with it’s license, of course) second-hand. Actually, there’s an huge market of Microsoft software second-hand licenses (most seen for those versions that Microsoft isn’t selling anymore, just like an out of printing book has more people looking for its 2nd-hand option).

Ben:
Of course I have given justifiable reasons. Why do I constantly have to repeat myself? The writer has only one product, his story, which of course needs to be distributed multiple times and for which he should be paid.

I say you haven’t given any justifiable reason whatsoever.
I also sell my software to others regularly and am perfectly legal to do so. I sold my Photoshop a month ago to a neighbour for €$20. I sold an email program just after Christmas to my friend for $10. You are talking nonsense.

Ben:
You write as if the internet revolution never happened. Can’t you see that there are many things that worked in the past but don’t work any-more? Before the internet second-hand books were not offered alongside new ones.

I see no significant change whatsoever. In my city we have had many large reputable second hand book stores within walking distance of our largest bookstores. It is part of traditional life and the net has made no difference.
This is greed pure and simple, trying to concoct a false justification for screwing more money out of readers who already own a purchased object fairly and squarely.

“This practice of multiple payments does not occur in any other industry. To suggest that it should be the case for writers is naive and unfortunately greedy.”

Of course it does. If you sell your Microsoft Office CD or give it to your friend, if she wants to be legal she will have to pay Microsoft a license fee. She might own the CD at the point you give it to her but she has no right to use it unless she also pays Microsoft. Microsoft receives multiple payments for the same software, for each person who uses it, not just from the first-buyer of an installation CD or DVD.
______________________

Actually, in the US, Vernor v. Autodesk probably governs, and you may sell original software disks, so long as you don’t keep a copy, and it was understood at the time of the sale that you did not have to surrender the software at a given time. It may be different in the UK, but in the US, software vendors who don’t keep permanent control of their software don’t get paid multiple times.

Regards,
Jack Tingle

“I think that if a person has to earn a livable wage they must do what they can to earn it. If a person chooses to go into an industry that is notoriously ill-paid and precarious in terms of earning potential, the individual should expect to pursue other forms of income. For anyone who wants to pursue a life of writing, it’s childishly naive to think otherwise.”

This isn’t the argument. Of course you are right that anyone who wants to become a writer has to consider that it is a notoriously ill-paid job. Regulating the sale of second-hand books will not change that but it can make a difference for some writers between worrying how to get the money to pay the next rent and focusing more on the Art of Writing. They won’t likely not get rich from it but it will hopefully allow them to live a little bit better than they currently do.

“Do some research Ben. Look at the abundance of Creative Writing courses available throughout the United Kingdom, all taught by household name writers and poets. Currently the T.S.Elliot award winning poet Sean O’Brien teaches at Newcastle University.
Carol-Ann Duffy CBE, poet laureate of 2009; currently teaches at Manchester University.
The fantastic Tom Leonard was one of the founders and former tutors of the MLitt at Glasgow University.”

It’s fantastic that we have creative writing courses and Tom Leonard lives in my neighbourhood as does Alasdair Gray, my favourite writer and the other founder of the MLitt course alongside James Kelman. It was James Kelman who made me first think about the unfairness with which the writer is being treated. I would recommend reading his book “And The Judges Said”, it contains some very interesting and thought-provoking articles.

“Yes Ben, the gist of what you are trying to say is that writers should be paid multiple times for the same product but unfortunately – as stated by several of the commentators above, you are offering no justifiable reasons for this.”

Of course I have given justifiable reasons. Why do I constantly have to repeat myself? The writer has only one product, his story, which of course needs to be distributed multiple times and for which he should be paid.

“This practice of multiple payments does not occur in any other industry. To suggest that it should be the case for writers is naive and unfortunately greedy.”

Of course it does. If you sell your Microsoft Office CD or give it to your friend, if she wants to be legal she will have to pay Microsoft a license fee. She might own the CD at the point you give it to her but she has no right to use it unless she also pays Microsoft. Microsoft receives multiple payments for the same software, for each person who uses it, not just from the first-buyer of an installation CD or DVD. If you install software for which you haven’t paid a license fee, you are breaking the law (except where it is explicitly stated, that you’re allowed to do this). Here the rules are clear. The software owner (in this case Microsoft) decides if he wants to be paid or not, not the public. The same applies to freelance software developers. They can decide if people can pass on their software for free or are required to pay further licence fees. Shouldn’t the same right be given to writers? Think about it.

“This is the contract they signed, this is the way the system has worked for more than a century …”

You write as if the internet revolution never happened. Can’t you see that there are many things that worked in the past but don’t work any-more? Before the internet second-hand books were not offered alongside new ones. Is it so hard to see that it is this practice that changes everything. With your argument one could say, why ebooks if printed books worked for centuries? Why selling over the internet when bookshops were working in the past? If you like it or not, Howard, but times are changing and with it practices and laws need to be adapted to cope with it.

If you buy a book for £10 and resell it for £5, there are now two people who got the book for half the price. This means, the writer get’s only half of the royalty. If this doesn’t harm the author, I don’t know.

What? If the author has one book for sale at £10, and it sells, he earns royalties for one sale. No matter if the buyer ignores the book, sends it to garbage, offers it, reads it, eats it, resells it or anything else, the author still sold one book and got royalties from that sale. There’s nothing the buyer can do with the book to take that royalties (or half of it, or whatever) from the author. Trying to subvert this calculations with illogic maths is a deceitful way of trying to confuse your readers, but it won’t make your arguments true.