The secondhand market has always been an important part of the book trade, and suddenly it is at risk of disappearing in the digital enviroment, to the detriment of the readers. But it has not to be that way mandatorily.

First, there’s a distinction that has to be made: digital “products”, digital books in this case, are no objects (physical nor “virtual”) but information “packages”, so they cannot be considered as “used” after being read, but they definitively can be considered as “second hand” products if transferred from user to user -just like a physical book that, even if sealed and not read, is sold or passed by the original buyer (costumer/potential reader) to another person.

Now, a copy of an ebook is another thing. (The book is specifically propitious to copy, since virtuality is part of its nature. I can copy a novel by hand, word by word, and the result will be the same novel, no less, no more.I can copy a PDF book in RTF format, and the textuality at least will be the same, and the reading experience will be the same. Xerox copies are of common use since decades ago).

Just like the music industry years ago, the editorial industry is suffering a panic attack that the shift to a digital enviroment entails. “Will the readers share their readings without benefit to us?” “will the writer become his own publisher without benefit to us?” Yes, of course, this is happening, and will continue to happen no matter what efforts are made by the industry to prevent it. People will copy cultural goods whenever is cheaper and faster and better copying them than buying it.

Why, whitout the print, store and delivery costs, is an ebook almost equal in price than a physical book? Why, being technologically easier to share it is so difficult legally? Because, when in pannic, persons and companies act stupidly. They are mistaking the reader for an enemy, when he’s not. He´s a costumer (that is to say, a kind of partner), a friend, but not a silly one. He will go where he can find the best choice, the best buy, and if he can get the same for free, he will go for it. Because, as the song goes, “information want to be free”.

The current regulations prevent the existence of second hand ebooks, not only by sale/purchase, but by loan or donation also. It is not forbidden (yet) but is, indeed, constrained. If a physical book can be read by an unlimited number of “users”, due to technical and legal (that are not technological or ethical) limitations, an ebook cannot. So, the mere idea of secondhand books is quashed by design.

As a margin note: what about libaries (public, semi-public and private)? There are now experiments (limited in scope an reach) that, despite their shyness, demonstrates that a demand niche exists, more social that commercial.

Books, always, have been read mainly when access is provided. What I mean is: 1) the purchase of a book, is only one -and never the principal- in many ways to “get” a book. And it will continue this way. and 2) just as the gutemberg press provoked at its time a social change that went far further that a simply “printing and reading” revolution, the digital publishing can, and will, and has already spark cultural shifts that will develop with or without the involvement of the editorial industry.

Music and media industries has focused their efforts in prosecution and “re-education” of the public to “teach” them (by exemplary lessons) that sharing is a crime. But they´ll never succeed because the people know that it is a crime without victims (except, of course, of the copyright holders), and there is no real harm nor guilt in that.

Editorial industry will do wrong following the steps of music and media industry (altought we all know they are part of the same conglomerates). Among other reasons, because it has few aggregate bussines opportunities: no live concerts, no merchandising, no franchises.

The industry, in order to survive, has to adapt itself to the new realities, instead of trying to adapt the new realities to their interests. A new model of businnes is needed, and it has to include -technically and comercially- the possibility of re-circulation. Is the reader who has the power to invent it and demand it.

Publishing companies can ride the wave or stay at the shore.

I generally choose not to do those things. Partly I don’t believe in them, partly my experience is that very little can be done. It really is like littering; it seems disproportionate to bring the force of law on someone’s head – especially as it seems that people who download a lot are also people who buy a lot. I believe the solution lies in creating a better product and a better market, making a non-abusive relationship between content owners/creators and consumers/readers. We need a social norm which includes a sense of the content ecosystem and its legitimate needs.

I’m going to step away at this point, because I think we’ve come rather far from the original post, and I have other work to do, but thank you all for talking about this!

NH

You can also join the Yahoogroups AuthorsAgainstE-BookTheft to learn how to issue take down notices, etc. to have your books removed as well as links to the national and international copyright protective groups in charge of taking down the pirate sites.

Pricing is absolutely the hardest thing to sort out right now, because it’s not clear what the market will look like in the lomger term – and because Amazon initially priced very aggressively in order to make the Kindle attractive even though the device itself was not cheap.

On the one hand, there are obviously big savings in terms of paper and distribution (although physical costs make up a surprisingly small percentage of the cover price of a printed book). On the other hand there are costs associated with publicity and editing which don’t go away. If ebooks are going to be a big part of the market – and Jeff Bezos thinks they’ll be more important than paperbacks to Amazon in the next twelve months – then they can’t get a free ride. They have to carry their proportion of that cost.

What isn’t yet clear is whether pricing an ebook low can reliably generate enough additional sales to make up the shortfall. If it can, then we’re all happy. If it doesn’t, then ebooks will get more expensive, and your perception of what they ought to cost is based on bad information (those deep digital discounts).

Before you wonder whether I’m just defending my paycheque: I’ve spent quite a lot of the last couple of years arguing the other side of this with publishers. I have frequently made Howard’s argument, that we’re in competition with pirate downloads and therefore the product must be right and sold at the right price.

I have to say, though, having found my book on any number of download sites, that it is upsetting. If you don’t want the book, you don’t have to buy it. I’m fine with that. Millions of people, every day, do not buy my book. But to tell me that because it’s more than you want to pay that makes it okay to take it for free? It’s not okay. It’s impossible to prevent and unpalatable to pursue, but it’s no more okay than littering or playing your music loud all night. It’s a minor annoyance which, if everyone does it, screws things up across the board. And yes, absolutely, litter can be compacted to make building materials and I might hear some music I didn’t know from your overloud stereo. When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.

It is still not okay.

I am a writer and a part-time teacher so I understand poor.

And it’s rather insulting that you lump all readers together like that. My husband and I *don’t* pay for fancy coffee, because it’s ridiculously overpriced. We go see a movie in the theater maybe 3 times a year, for the same reason. And we don’t buy e-books that cost $13-15 (or more, thanks so much agency pricing model!) because we think that, too, is a ridiculous amount to pay for something we cannot return, resell or share with anyone we want. We don’t even own an e-reader – we use the free Kindle app and read on the Blackberry provided by his employer. Our disposable money goes to travel (hence the desire for e-books) but reading is still a high priority, and we will keep buying e-books, but only those in a reasonable price range.

I second everything that Howard (7/28 @ 2:49) said. $5-7 is what we pay, because e-books are worth less to us than paperbacks due to the limitations given above. I know people who won’t even pay that much, because they feel there is little cost to the publisher in putting out an e-format when such was already used in their internal production of the hardcopy version. Luckily they, and we, have no trouble finding lots of e-book choices in our respective price ranges. Authors and publishers are getting our money. Just not the ones who price their products too high.

As someone who has tried to interest college students in novels written twenty years ago, I wish you good luck with that. You would be eye-ball rolled to death from the public’s disdain.

Your life expectancy would be much shortened, also, if people learned that they would not be able to read the next “insert favorite author or series here” because you and your friends decreed the end of copyright.

Public domain at this moment is more than enough to keep you busy for the rest of your life. Dickens, alone, is a year’s worth of very good reading. (That man could write a mean story.) Throw in all the legal free stuff on the web, and you have two lifetimes of reading available.

Getting rid of copyright has no real value to anyone, even you.

But we already have plenty of creative works. We have far more writing available, far more music, far more plays, far more films, far more radio shows than anyone could absorb in ten lifetimes. Why do we need more? Imposing copyright just so that new novels can be written is like charging for air just so that people can be paid for making more. We don’t need more. All we need is unfettered access to what’s already there.

The manuscript in my filing cabinet is my property. The copy I give you is your property, but copyright says I can still stop you making copies of it even though it’s no longer in my filing cabinet. Now that’s magic.

Obviously, copyright is revealing its 18th century origins in its assumption that you’d have to visit one of the few owners of a printing press in order to make a copy or two, and so there might be a hope of detecting this infringement.

Due to economies of scale and geography patronage used to be the preserve of the wealthy few, but with the advent of the Internet millions of patrons (fans) can now commission (patronise) the artist to produce new works. Just as copyright is already ineffective, the adoption of what used to be called patronage is already happening. It now tends to be called crowdfunding. See Jill Sobule and many others for pioneering examples.

Which is to say, “biggest meanest monkey.”

“I’m pointing out the difference between a natural right to intellectual property…”

Yeah, but here’s the thing: there is no such thing as natural property rights.

The only thing that “protects” your property, in the end, is the threat of legal sanction. As I said earlier, it doesn’t matter what kind of barriers you throw up around your property–I can circumvent those barriers. Now, you can claim that I’d be in serious trouble if I did so, and you’d be right–but there’s only two ways I’d be in trouble. One is if the biggest meanest monkey comes and kills me for, so to speak, climbing in his tree. The other is if I get arrested and go to jail; but with this latter, we’re getting into the non-natural consensual concept of “law”. We’ve decided that it’s wrong to climb in someone else’s tree; there’s no inherent characteristic of trees that makes it wrong to climb one.

PS: Hey, have fun with that patronage system. I’m sure you’ll be pleased when the only creative works beyond street busking are commission pieces funded by religious organizations and megacorporations.

Crosbie, using “monopoly” to describe publishing is totally inaccurate as well as demonizing. Big publishing isn’t remotely a monopoly although most of the books found in the bookstore are by the big six conglomerates.

Except that, technically, copyright is a monopoly. It’s the government granting a monopoly privilege to people, businesses, or other entities over the printing of certain works. Otherwise, anybody could reprint anything they got their hands on (and in fact did, in America, during the 19th century when we didn’t honor other nations’ copyrights).

It’s not the sense most people mean when they talk about “monopolies” today, but still an entirely valid use of the term.

I’m pointing out the difference between a natural right to intellectual property and the privilege of a reproduction monopoly. Monopolies cannot be enforced except with the power of an army to overcome the inclination of individuals to ignore that monopoly.

This really is academic. You cannot rescue the monopoly of copyright by kidding yourself you’ve defeated my argument as to why the monopoly was doomed from the outset.

Copyright is over. DRM is a wet paper bag.

If you are a manufacturer of copies and want to know how to sell them at monopoly protected prices, when everyone is ignoring your 18th century monopoly, then I cannot help you except to suggest you find another business.

However, if you’re a producer of intellectual work and want to know how to exchange it for the money of those who would commission it, then I CAN help you. And that’s because you do not need copyright for such an exchange. If you sell work to those who want it, instead of copies to those who can make their own, you’re selling the right thing – that which there remains a market for.

The market for copies has ended.

But, y’know, put up your fence, put up your signs, claim legal enforcement…I can still walk on your land if I like. Maybe I need a bulldozer to take down the wall, but there is, ultimately, nothing stopping me walking on your land.

Such a reductive view of property rights really boils down to “I own what I can hold”, which means that the only one who really has property rights is the biggest meanest monkey.

There is also a robust independent publishing industry.

A vast majority of the copyrighted material available is owned by individuals who are not wealthy, have no part in a monopolistic conspiracy against readers, and have everything to lose if a majority of readers stop respecting copyright.

I’ve always believed that educating readers that not respecting copyright hurts them because a writer who isn’t paid for his work will stop writing and the publisher who doesn’t make a profit on the writer will stop printing those books.

A very dear friend who has been quite successful with a NY publisher and whose books have been on all the bestseller lists has just been told her ongoing novella collections will be cancelled because her sales numbers have dropped dramatically while the pirate numbers have skyrocketed.

On her website, blog, and Facebook account, a majority of the readers blithely admit they only read pirated editions and don’t believe they are hurting her and themselves. Boy, are they in for a rude awakening.

State granted monopolies on the other hand suspend the liberty of all in order to reserve it as the privilege of a few, e.g. the liberty to make/manufacture or speak/communicate things such as replicas or copies (of those things ‘protected’ by the monopoly).

So, property goes back to the caveman, whereas monopoly requires holy/crown/state fiat and a submissive/obedient/consenting populace.

You can expect to protect your natural exclusive right to your intellectual works in your possession, but frankly, if you expect to be able to distribute copies of your intellectual work to others AND expect them not to make/distribute further copies you’re expecting a considerable amount of consent.

You might have been able to get away with it if reproduction technology was extremely massive and expensive, i.e. rare, bulky, immobile and so economically policed by the privileged.

This is the difference between the 18th century and the 21st. Strangely, monopolists are stupefied that their monopolies are no longer being respected.

Really, it should not be strange that people fail to recognise why they should bow down to Queen Anne’s edict of 1710 that the individual’s liberty to engage in cultural exchange should be suspended until such time as immortal publishing corporations have exhausted its value (over an indefinitely extended period exceeding any mortal lifespan).

So, don’t worry DensityDuck, property rights aren’t consensual, they’re natural and easily enforceable. The thing that society has never needed are monopolies, and if they need the entire populace to surrender their cultural liberty those monopolies haven’t got a chance, however harshly you attempt to enforce them against a non-consenting society.

The DRM ‘protected’ eBook represents a final fling of a snowball in hell, an amazing triumph of hope over adversity.

However, all is not lost. The vendors of copies may disappear, but the producers of intellectual work will not. There remains a bright future for authors of novels and any other intellectual work. What there is no future for are vendors of copies at monopoly protected prices. If people want novels written they will pay for them to be written – handsomely. What people will not pay for are copies that they can make themselves for nothing.