Well my two main book titles are now available on kindle. I learned a few things as soon as I hit the send button.
Regular readers of my blog know that one of my pet peeves in life is the fact that people who have bought and read my books can re-sell them online, and they and amazon split the profits, leaving me out. I try to explain to everyone that if authors do not get paid for the use of their work, there will be less of that work for everyone to enjoy. This has fallen on deaf ears. Everyone tells me that if someone owns a physical copy of my book, they have the right to resell it, just as if I had sold them a car.
Okay, well, let’s look at this a little deeper. This argument is slowly falling apart.
If you buy one of my books to read on your kindle, should you not, by that same above chain of logic, also be able to re-sell that electronic file once you are done with it? You can’t, of course, because Amazon and the other ebook machine entities make that impossible (well, very hard) to do. You certainly can’t sell an ebook on amazon after you have read it.
So, getting back to the issue of my complaining about people selling used copies of my books without paying me: If you see the book as a mechanical device and not intellectual property, okay. But here is my new take:
The word “publish” means, literally, “to make available for sale.” If someone is selling one of my books on amazon, . . . Drumroll please . . . they are not an owner, they are, in essence, a de facto “publisher” of that book. And as a publisher, they are obligated to pay royalties to the copyright owner, just like the publishing entity who published the new copy.
Serious law has been based on flimsier arguments.
The fact that one cannot re-sell the digital versions after you have used them is serious precedent here. Any argument?
God I would have made a great constitutional law lawyer.
— jl
