Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Used e-Books May Now Be Sold

If you are the author of a book that is sold as an e-book, you may be able to gain additional revenue from that book in the near future through its resale in used form in a digital marketplace called ReDigi.

ReDigi is a company that sells digitally pre-owned music, and is poised to do the same with pre-owned e-books. It calls itself "the world's first pre-owned digital marketplace." The company partners with iTunes to sell its digital files. (It cannot partner with Amazon, presumably because Amazon is not willing.)

Currently there's a lawsuit against ReDigi by Capitol Records that claims copyright infringement and is trying to shut the company down, but ReDigi executives say this is a mere blip that will not be a problem for them. According to an article in the July 30 issue of Publisher's Weekly (ReDigi Plans to Sell Used E-Books), "(i)f ReDigi prevails in court, it could upend the way e-books and other digital products are sold, since such products would get a second life on the resale market and provide a new revenue stream for publishers and authors."

In the music world, ReDigi is working directly with artists rather than the record labels, because of the lawsuit, and paying the artists 20% of the sale of their pre-owned music. With e-books, the company "plans to pay authors through their publishers. Publishers and authors will get paid in cash; sellers get cash or credit in their ReDigi account."

Cost to consumers is what is driving the marketplace that ReDigi envisions for pre-owned e-books. The lower price of e-books versus paper books is a major factor in many consumers' choice to read e-books, and ReDigi believes that the even lower price of pre-owned e-books creates huge market potential.

The e-revolution just keeps getting more interesting.

6 comments:

  1. Fascinating! I wish I could resell old drugs ... man! What we find in our cabinets when we clean.

    This electronics distribution is interesting. I suspect we may see more lawsuits in the future. But I'm not sure how the ebooks are "resold." I wonder if it's basically a marketing ploy of bringing out the old books with a low price? Interesting.

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    1. It absolutely is, Karlene. That's where these guys see huge potential profit. We writers have always known it's not a good idea to quit our day jobs unless we actually amass a fortune, but with everything more and more bottom line driven, looks like the trajectory is toward no writers making any decent $$.

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  2. I'm intrigued! This could be promising, so long as it gives royalties to the authors. I look forward to hearing more about it.

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    1. Intriguing is definitely the word, Heather. If I see any results of the lawsuit I'll be sure to mention them here on Write of Passage.

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  3. "The lower price of e-books versus paper books"

    Actually among the Big Six publishers paper books are usually cheaper than ebooks.

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    1. So interesting you say that, PT. Whenever a non-writer friend tells me that the reason they buy e-books is that the price is lower, I'm surprised. It must vary quite a bit. Some big six publishers have recently created digital only imprints because of lower costs of publishing. Wonder how that will translate to consumer pricing?

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