Online Sales of Used Books Draw Protest. Authors are rebelling against new efforts by Amazon.com to spur sales of used books, a practice that has become a major source of revenue for Amazon but pays nothing to writers or publishers. By David D. Kirkpatrick. [New York Times: Technology]
We're shocked -- shocked! -- to discover that people sell their books after they read them. What's the next big revelation, that libraries actually let several people read the same book and only buy one copy?
Or maybe even before. A couple years ago, Po Bronson was signing books at a party; I knew he was going to be there, so I found a copy of his latest book at a used bookstore, and asked him to sign it. We were both amazed when he opened the book to sign it, and found that he'd already signed it once already for someone else! Who had, apparently, really valued that signature.
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