The Market for Books: Are Used Books Really What's Wrong?

[pameladlloyd]

mmegaera recently discussed a New York Times article in which David Streitfeld bemoans the state of the publishing industry and ties this to readers' book buying habits:

What's undermining the book industry is not the absence of casual readers but the changing habits of devoted readers.

In other words, it's all the fault of people like myself, who increasingly use the Internet both to buy books and later, after their value to us is gone, sell them.

The idea that people who purchase used books are responsible for the current economic woes of publishers sparked a fair amount of outrage over in mmegaera's journal, as we dissected the offending article and our dislike for the suggestion that we should feel guilty about making sound economic decisions when deciding how to buy books.

Here's what I had to say in my primary comment:

This isn't the first time I've come across the idea that by buying used books we are cheating authors (and, now, publishers) of their due. It's easy to fall prey to the idea and I felt the author of the article handled it less bombastically than many.

One idea that is often lost in the criticism of buying used books is the fact that in order for there to be a used book, there must have been someone who first bought the book new. Those of us who buy used books (and I often did when I could still afford to, now I simply use the library), do so because we can buy many used books for the price of a single new one. Or, because we can manage a single used book, when we can't buy even one new one. It's simple economics. In hard times, whether they are personal hard times, or hard times for many, we tighten our belts and buy used whenever we can. It applies to books, but also to many other things.

It is odd, though, that we find articles in which people brag about the wonderful bargains they've found at the second hand store, in clothes, shoes, furniture, and what have you, and make of this practice a virtue (part of the environmental trio, reduce, reuse, recycle), while those of us who do the same with books are criticized for contributing to the downfall of an industry.

BTW, in the full interests of disclosure, my husband buys books and resells them on Amazon. He was, at one time a book scout, who brought books to used book stores. Later, he owned his own used book store. He's also been the manager of a chain book store. The books he buys from estate sales, yard sales, library sales, and thrift stores can't help the author or the publisher, they've already done that, but they can help our family out during these hard times. So, I hope that all who read this will realize that there is no reason for guilt about buying used.

As if the whole guilt trip wasn't bad enough, I was greeted by a comment by Matthew Selznick on LinkedIn's Just for Writers group about A Movement To Charge Used Booksellers and Change Copyright Law. His post in the group discussion area led me to his recent blog post on this subject.

I find the idea of imposing a resale fee upon used books, or any other kind of media, entirely unreasonable. After all, if I buy a car, then decide to sell it, I'm not expected to pay a fee that will go to the car designer or manufacturer; it's mine, to do with as I like. The designer and manufacturer have already been paid for their work and don't expect to be paid again. To expect used book sellers to pay such a fee to support the authors and publishers who have already been paid for their work is discriminatory and ridiculous.

The argument that, somehow, intellectual properties are being endangered by the market in used books seems quite a far stretch and I sincerely hope that no one takes it seriously. The new and used book markets, as Selznick points out, are not so much competitive, as mutually supportive. The used book market can't exist without new books, with every used book sold representing a new book sold, and the new book market is improved by the sale of used books. As Selznick's blog post pointed out, used book sales drive new book sales, as anyone who's ever bought a used book by an author they didn't know and liked it enough to search out additional books by that author, even when this meant purchasing them new. So, it's clear that this movement isn't about compensating authors--they've already been compensated for that sale (and there's no other business that expects to receive a portion of the sale of used items)--but about something else. There are a number of proposed changes to copyright law that I've heard of in recent years that increasingly act to limit our access to information, which leads me to a very cynical view of this proposal.

I also think the consequences of such changes would be absolutely disastrous to everyone concerned, ultimately lowering the compensation to authors for their works while also driving most small used book sellers out of business. Independent brick and mortar book stores, including those selling used books, are becoming increasing rare due to the competition of big box stores. Many of the used book sellers on Amazon either use Amazon sales to supplement their store sales, have given up a physical store entirely, or are very small mom-and-pop operations getting by on a shoestring. The sale of used books online is actually far more labor intensive than most people realize. Anything that requires more record keeping will be an undue burden. But, beyond that, the so-called "fair percentage" will make these already only marginally profitable sales less profitable, so that many businesses will simply have to stop selling used books entirely, or may even have to go out of business.

ETA: For more information about the Novelists Inc. position on used book sales, see their articles, Amazon.com's policy of promoting used books in competition with new book sales (in which they are joined by The Authors Guild) and Used Book Sales.

Comments

[azurelunatic]

If print books were something that someone could reasonably make an identical copy of before passing along, the argument that the publishers should get a cut of any resale monies might hold a small dribble of water. That is entirely not the case. A photocopied fiction book would hardly be readable, and would probably cost more to reproduce than a new copy. A scanned book would hardly be better. To think that the reader retains an exact copy in their mind is ludicrous. The number of people with perfect recall is vanishingly small. The number of people who buy a book and read it once is appallingly (to my my mind) large. (I don't like to buy books without the expectation that I'm going to want to keep the book.)

I would have gone utterly mad in my teenage years if not for used books. I need constant intellectual stimulation or I create my own, and not always in wholesome ways.

The thought of people throwing out unwanted books is a horrible one. I don't even like to throw out books that I didn't even like, because I'm sure that someone else would like it.

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

I hadn't even thought that this might increase the likelihood of books being thrown away. Like you, I like to keep my books. Still, there was a time when I had more time for reading and not a whole lot of money and despite frequent trips to the library I also did a lot of book trading, because there was a store that would let me take home a used book for every two of the same price that I brought in. (That model hasn't been economically viable for a while.)

[azurelunatic]

Yes. We had a store that would give you store credit for used books brought in, about half the amount that they'd then sell them for, and they had a rule that trade credit could only be used for 90% of a purchase, so you would have to cough up a nominal amount of money when trading books, but it was usually something you could scrape up from the dregs of the allowance (in my case).

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

The store I frequented when my kids were little didn't even ask for that much, iirc (of course, that was a long time ago, so my memory may be faulty).

The only way I bought books new was to slip one in at the grocery store, which actually had an amazingly good selection--I've never seen its like in a non-book store, since.