The charming smell of must and the ghosts of fingers past

[serai]

.

Bye, bye, used bookstores...


Think I'm kidding?

I only wish I were.


*sigh*


ETA: Do feel free to repost these links. Readers everywhere should be made aware of these shenanigans.

Comments

[belleferret.livejournal.com]

Geez! I suppose I should feel guilty because a friend is loaning me her copy of Deathly Hallows. Not even selling or giving, just loaning.

Send me to jail.

[ex-lbilover.livejournal.com]

"Used books are to consumer books as Napster was to the music industry," she said. "The question becomes, 'How does the book industry address its used-book problem?' There aren't any easy answers, especially as no one is breaking any laws here."
That is one of the most bizarrely wrong-headed things I've ever read.

[samena.livejournal.com]

'How does the book industry address its used-book problem?'

Problem? I don't see a problem. It's very sad that the boobk publishers apparently do. Another beautiful institution bites the dust in favour of commerce. Bah.

[gloryunderhill.livejournal.com]

Oh good lord! Business men running amok! I found the Napster comparison logically flawed. Selling a used book isn't the same as copying it then selling the copy which is what the music swappers do on Napster. Business is about competition, if they can't compete with the used book market maybe they should consider...oh, I don't know...lowering their prices? I'd buy a new book over a used one if the price gap wasn't so huge.

I worked in the food industry for a long time, they compete with generic brands by increasing quality, offering incentives (coupons, movie tie-ins, promotional stuff) and keeping their prices as low as they can. It's called competing. So friggin compete already, give me a reason to buy the new book!

I don't see how they could police a total used book ban. They might strong arm a concession out of Amazon, but there's just too much commerce going on for them to enforce a ban.

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Oh, they have a problem, but it's not the one they think they have. The problem is the same one the music industry has - the majority of what they produce is shit, so who wants to pay overinflated prices for it?

The government here goes around touting how "great" the economy is, but the truth is it's only great for rich people. Ordinary people are in the hole money-wise, so we can't afford to pay $35 for every book we want, or $15 for every paperback. If we have to choose between buying enough food, or that medicine we need, and buying a brand new copy of 25 New Diet Fads, guess which one we're going to choose.

Of course, the whole decline in reading doesn't help much either. Seems more and more people these days prefer to be virtually illiterate (being able to read makes no difference, if you refuse to read), the easier to be misled and lied to.

Ah, the humanity! Such fun to watch it going down the crapper, eh?

[serai1.livejournal.com]

I'd buy a new book over a used one if the price gap wasn't so huge.

So would I. The other thing that would be an incentive would be, I don't know, quality? Most of what's published these days isn't worth more than a cursory scim, in my opinion. Maybe if publishers started being more discerning about what they put out there, readers would be more willing to pay for it.

But mostly, this is just greed. Publishers have dug a hole for themselves, then they look at the money being made in used books and want a piece of it. Which is unbelievably ludicrous because - money? What fucking money? You know anyone getting rich that way? Even with it being perfectly legal, used bookstores have all but disappeared, what with most people not reading books anymore. What they're really pissed of about is Amazon, which for a lot of people (myself definitely included) functions more as a card catalog and reference system for finding books I can then buy used, rather than a marketplace for the overpriced new volumes. (Even with Amazon's markdown, used is almost always cheaper.)

Considering that the ability to buy used books may very well be the only thing keeping the art of reading afloat for most people these days, I'd say these publishers are seriously considering shooting themselves in the foot. What they need to do is re-imagine the whole idea of publishing. They've got to cut down on the sheer number of books being published, for one thing. A recent survey showed that while a surprising jump in numbers of books published has occurred over the last ten years, fewer and fewer of them are books of any quality.

But the most important aspect will probably be the hardest. That is, taking book publishing out of the rapacious corporate money-making model. The distribution of knowledge should never have been made part of that matrix in the first place. Like the music industry, the breakdown was built into the whole idea of publishing from the beginning. Where we're at is where we've always been headed - more and more crap at higher and higher prices, while the market gets less and less able to pay their prices. The audience of readers gets tired of the whole thing, and finds ways to opt out - at best, buying used, at worst, giving up reading altogether. (Humans being fundamentally lazy when it comes to mental effort, most people would rather be spoon-fed images than have to work to decode words.)

I don't know how this will end, but as for me, I'm going to start buying EVERYTHING used. They want to force me to pay their prices? Fuck them. I've got enough books in my house that I haven't read yet (and enough on my Amazon wish list) to keep me occupied for several years. I'll be happy to get my reading matter from other readers and garage sales, and I suspect there are millions of people like me. And what with the internet and technology galloping along, I also suspect there will always be ways to frustrate those who don't give a fig for knowledge, and treat selling books like selling breakfast cereal. We'll teach them a thing or two.

Readers, unite!

[serai1.livejournal.com]

The bit about no one breaking any laws is the only part that makes sense. It also seems to be the only part these people aren't paying any attention to. *eyeroll*

[serai1.livejournal.com]

As is said at one of those links, you should feel guilty for even READING it. After all, you're copying it into your brain! You might actually, *gasp*, TALK about it to other people, thus disseminating the work without paying royalties!!! OMG CALLDEPOLEECE!!

What a complete bunch of fucktards.

[blackbird-song.livejournal.com]

This is just the "logical" progression of intellectual property rights and sloppy thinking run amok. I'm hoping that the general public will start to get the idea that this garbage has to be stopped very soon, but I'm afraid that it will take things like making illegal the resale of one's home and/or car without the permission of the original maker before that happens.

What a gluttonous, monstrous idea to criminalize the selling or archiving/sharing of used books! If it gets to the point where we're licensing the right to read books, as we are licensing the right to use software, I'm going to stop going to any kind of bookstore. I shall also be writing this to any book publishing/selling agency that I can verify as supporting this sort of thing.

Thank you for providing these links. I'm not quite ready to give up on humanity yet, but damn, it's getting close to that point.

Catherine

[serai1.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. Please feel free to repost them or pass them along.

I'm thinking it would be worth starting a letter-writing campaign on this subject. Getting as many readers as possible to write to publishers and publishing consortiums to protest this idiotic attitude on their part. Perhaps if enough readers threaten to stop buying their products completely, they'd understand how much they're proposing to alienate their customers.

As I wrote to gloryunderhill above, the basic problem is that publishing should never have become part of the corporate money-making world in the first place. Knowledge is not something that should be sold for money, in my opinion.

[honeyandvinegar.livejournal.com]

Not to sound like some blathering Pollyanna, but I wouldn't put too much stock in this--yet, anyway. A lot of this seemed more opinion based on trickled-in facts, rather than absolute truths. The idea behind libraries being banned was a 'what's next?' rather than 'they said THAT, too'.
But anything to make sure he rich stay rich, really.

Lol, just a thought...

[honeyandvinegar.livejournal.com]

...I wonder what they could do if they implmented some sort of plan. MSN and DVD companies put out copy-protection... could a used/re-read book come with a laser that burns out the retinas of someone trying to read it a second/second-hand time?
Or maybe they'll come with magic ink that erases the words as you read it. It'll at LEAST make people read a bit more carefully.

[mollyringle.livejournal.com]

Ugh. As a writer I already have plenty of grievances with the publishing industry, and this does not help. A long time ago I decided it was fine that I would never get rich by writing, and the reason I know I won't get rich is that I myself almost never buy books new, so I can't expect other people to. Therefore, I'll count myself lucky if I get readers, not money, and earn a living in some other trade.

Unfortunately the other trade I had in mind was librarian. Heh. Here's hoping libraries survive a little longer than used bookstores.

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Considering how draconian and ridiculous IP laws are getting, I'm not going to pooh-pooh anything I hear along these lines. Yeah, maybe it's just a gleam in publishers' eyes at this stage, but you better believe they're not going to let go of the idea until it's proven to them that it won't work. And I don't see why it wouldn't - the laws surrounding this kind of thing are getting tighter all the time. So in my view, the time for readers to act is now, before the legal wheels start to turn and we get locked out of the discussion.

Re: Lol, just a thought...

[serai1.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't put it past them, frankly. Sony got caught putting malware on their DVD's to track users' attempts to copy their own discs (a legal right in the U.S.), so putting a chip in books is not nearly as far-fetched as we might think. Retina identification is a technology that already exists. Do you think they wouldn't try to use it if they thought they could get away with it?

This sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but sci-fi gets outdated everyday.

[gloryunderhill.livejournal.com]

I don't know how this will end, but as for me, I'm going to start buying EVERYTHING used.

I nearly do already, my appetite for books being far beyond what I could pay if I had to buy them all new. Not only will I join you in this boycott, when I purge my collection to make space for new stuff, I'm gonna GIVE AWAY my old books. They sure as hell can't jail me for that! Keep us posted if you hear of any efforts at uniting. I'll throw my $0.02 in!