“Sony Developing New DRM to Make Used eBooks Viable”

[disconnected]

http://goodereader.com/blog/e-book-n...-ebooks-viable

From the article --

“Sony plans on making their new eBook encryption system very appealing towards publishers and e-reader manufactures.”

“ I have heard from a reputable source that Sony already has six publishers locked up and will be leveraging those relationship in order to establish new ones.”

“…. define a clear path of ownership, this will allow people to sell a used eBook and it will actually physically disappear from the original owners account.”


I don’t even want to imagine a future in which Sony would be the guardian of what is now MY library – where half of my books disappear and they tell me I must have sold them.

[eschwartz]

Well, I doubt Sony will be very successful.

For one, I wish them good luck signing up the number one ebook retailer, Amazon.

[rkomar]

Hard to believe that publishers are on board with creating a used ebook market.

[HarryT]

I'm sure that many people will welcome this, given the number of complaints we've had from people that they aren't able to sell their books after they've finished with them.

[disconnected]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I'm sure that many people will welcome this, given the number of complaints we've had from people that they aren't able to sell their books after they've finished with them.

In theory....... But I can't see how it could be accomplished without making Adobe's latest version look positively benign.

[disconnected]

Originally Posted by rkomar

Hard to believe that publishers are on board with creating a used ebook market.

Possibly the publishers can pick and choose the features they'd like. They might just get excited at the mention of new and improved DRM.

Also, no publishers were named in the article, so they could all be very small publishers.

[Xanthe]

Oh, Alfie....!

[carpetmojo]

Don't immediately see where the money is in it for Sony to worry about pursuing this - it's abandoned us Sony ereader fans, so why faff around in the used book market ?
Or are they just being altruistic, to help the consumer ?

Yeah, right ....

[pdurrant]

This is a different part of Sony, hoping to sell the tech to publishers/retailers. It's not the part of Sony that just abandoned its ebook stores and ebook readers.

[latepaul]

I suspect that Sony aren't counting on the used ebook market to actually pan out but what they do want is to get into the market that's pretty much Adobe at the moment - i.e. sell your DRM service to multiple vendors and get a cut of every sale. That's a nice business to be in because once you've set it up it's almost free money.

The used ebook thing comes in because in designing the system from scratch they probably wanted to put in all the features that potential customers may want.

So I don't think you have Sony saying "we think used ebooks are the future" you have Sony saying "we have a shiny new DRM system and look at all the things it can do, including used ebooks if that's what you want".

[banjomike]

Being able to sell your old ebooks could be attractive to publishers of technical books and also to students etc who buy them for a course of study. Many tech books tend to be outgrown by the readers with the possible exception of reference manuals and suchlike. It might explain why there are no clues about which publishers have signed up, ie they might all be small techie publishers, who aren't likely to impress the rest of the publishing world and cause a stampede to Sony (saviours of the ebook world and rootkit aficionados).

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by banjomike

Being able to sell your old ebooks could be attractive to publishers of technical books

On the contrary. I can't think of any (big, commercial) publisher that would want to encourage a second-hand market in ebooks.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

On the contrary. I can't think of any (big, commercial) publisher that would want to encourage a second-hand market in ebooks.

Especially publishers of high-margin products, like textbooks.

Obviously the students would love it.

[BearMountainBooks]

That's a pretty confusing concept. I can see a publisher maybe trying to work some kind of credits to "sell us back this one and we'll discount some other purchase" which is done mainly to bring readers back to a certain store. But just to resell used ebooks? Makes no sense.

Isn't the sony bookstore closed completely now?

[banjomike]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

On the contrary. I can't think of any (big, commercial) publisher that would want to encourage a second-hand market in ebooks.

Not sure about that. Many of my friends and colleagues (and me) are more likely to buy a textbook in a printed format because 1) it is easier to use and 2) it DOES have a secondhand market. My local University bookshop has a mountain of used print books at the start of each new term which very quickly sell out while I only know a handful of people who have ever bought an ebook version of a tech manual. Many are a similar price to the print version but print is often easier to use (for one thing, the batteries don't run out). Something that might, possibly, tip people into buying new ebooks instead of a secondhand print book might be looked upon with kindly eyes.