From The Kindle Nation Daily Mailbag…

Don’t Cry for Me, La Agencia! Making a Silk Purse Out of the Sow’s Ear Fact That You Can’t Resell eBooks After You Read Them 

Thanks to Kindle Nation Citizen Western Reader for this comment on an earlier Kindle Nation Daily post:

Item for Wishful Thinking Department: Wouldn’t it be nice if one could sell one’s "used" Kindle books? Ah, but how could one legally and/or ethically sell a book that was acquired at no cost in the first place? There are probably too many hurdles to even begin the journey. That’s why this idea is classified as wishful.

Well, @WR, you are correct that it’s unlikely you would ever be able to resell your license to your gently read Kindle books, but there’s more than one way to look at this. And, no surprise here: I prefer mine, which is based on the following notions:

Turn the concept inside out and what do we get? The fact that ebooks cannot be resold, compared with the fact that most print books will bring 30% to 50% of what you paid for them if resold in "very good" to "like new" condition through Amazon Marketplace, is a powerful value argument that aligns well with various cost arguments (most notably the lack of publisher costs for production, storage & warehousing, fulfillment, and returns) in favor of significantly lower suggested retail list prices for ebooks. It’s not how the publishing world or the executives of Steve Jobs’ collusive Agency Price-Fixing Model (SCAP-M) are seeing the world today, but the economics are straightforward and the logic is compelling, so it is just a matter of time.

• While I would argue that you cannot ethically or legally resell your Kindle books, I have posted recently that Kindle owners of all ages should consider not only their Kindles but their Kindle accounts and their Kindle content to be part of their estates, something of significant and palpable value to be passed along in each case to a single favored heir. And Amazon should assign two smart people, a lawyer and a marketing copy whiz, to figure out the ins and outs, set the policy, and codify it in language on the Kindle portion of the Amazon website.

This is a reprint from Stephen Windwalker’s Kindle Nation Daily blog.