Literacy news
The possibility of “used” e-books
26 Jul 2010
Nick Harkaway has posted on the Bookseller’s “FuturEBooks” blog about the possibility of selling “second-hand e-books”. He argues that since there is no physical object to depreciate, an e-book couldn’t be considered “used”, so people would be able to resell the e-book for the same price as they paid for it or at a discounted price.
Harkaway also suggests the possibility of “returning” an e-book to the seller in return for store credit to apply against future e-book purchases, or allowing e-book buyers to keep but also “resell” e-books to others. However, Harkaway’s ideas have been heavily criticised because the eBook system is already vulnerable to hackers.
According to the US First Sale Doctrine, there is no difference between a "used" eBook and a "new" eBook. The establishment of a secondary eBook market has the potential to harm publisher’s profitability in the eBook market by driving down retail prices and devaluing the eBook whilst denying authors of royalty fees from the sale of their work. Publishers and authors alike would “fight tooth and nail” to protect the full retail price of their work against undercutting by a used market.
Many popular e-books have already fallen vulnerable to hackers, and there’s no reason to expect future efforts to be any more secure due to the nature of the system.
It might simply be best to accept that there will always be some things paper books can do that e-books cannot, and adjust the pricing on e-books to compensate.
Read the full blog here
Read the response to the blog here
