I was looking for a book on Buddhism yesterday and, as I’m sure it not uncommon for many reader, I checked Amazon first had a browse around and found a book I liked the look of. Amazon had a used copy for sale for 1pence + £2.75 p&p. Now that’s a pretty sweet price all in all.
I thought I’d check if there was an eBook out there of the book as I wanted to be able to get my hands on it sooner and found it for £12.
It occurred to me that we might see the death, or at least dramatic reduction, of the 2nd Hand Book. I can’t imagine that publishers of eBooks/iBooks would be happy for you to sell on your eBooks/iBooks, after all they get no cut from this so why would they want to facilitate it?
Also if the eBook is DRM’d to you then it won’t even work for someone else even if you can sell it to them. Or worse still if the practice of putting your credit card details, or other such personal details in the file, are taken up by publishers then you wouldn’t even want to sell that eBook on as you’d be giving away private information that you wouldn’t want out there.
So will will all end up buying ebooks and keeping them forever? Will the days of being able to pick up a second hand book be a thing of the past? And more importantly does this mean we’ll always have to pay the publisher’s full price for a book?
Slashgear raises some valid counter points that could make 2nd hand eBooks work: http://www.slashgear.com/kindle-drm-the-case-for-an-ebook-marketplace-1570019/
