Selling used ebooks could become a lucrative market for the Seattle company. But it might obliterate another retail sector.
Amazon remade the publishing business first with online bookselling and next with the Kindle/ebook one-two combination. Now it’s poised to reinvent another segment of the paper-and ink universe: used books. And Amazon could use the technology to drive another wedge between authors and traditional publishers.
Amazon’s plans surfaced in late January when the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office awarded the company Patent No. 8,364,595, titled “Secondary market for digital objects.” The abstract describes a way for the owner of an ebook, say one of titles in the wildly popular Hunger Games series, to sell the digital file to someone else. It could go to a friend or possibly Amazon itself. Amazon would earn a fee on the sale, or perhaps resell the digital file from its website. Amazon’s main competitor in digital goods, Apple Computer, filed a patent application on March 7 for a similar method.
According to the Association of American Publishers, ebooks make up 22 percent of the American book market. If Amazon is able to build a system for buying used ebooks, there would be fewer reasons for consumers to buy printed books, or for publishers to create them.
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Amazon’s plans surfaced in late January when the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office awarded the company Patent No. 8,364,595, titled “Secondary market for digital objects.” The abstract describes a way for the owner of an ebook, say one of titles in the wildly popular Hunger Games series, to sell the digital file to someone else. It could go to a friend or possibly Amazon itself. Amazon would earn a fee on the sale, or perhaps resell the digital file from its website. Amazon’s main competitor in digital goods, Apple Computer, filed a patent application on March 7 for a similar method.
According to the Association of American Publishers, ebooks make up 22 percent of the American book market. If Amazon is able to build a system for buying used ebooks, there would be fewer reasons for consumers to buy printed books, or for publishers to create them.
More
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