Unfortunately, your friends’ concern is a great example of where a bit more knowledge could have given perspective.

People can already “return” Kindle store books…and the author then gets nothing for the book, even though the person may have read it front to back.

As a consumer, that’s always been one of the great things about the Kindle store (and a strong differentiator between Amazon on the one hand, and Barnes & Noble and Sony on the other).

Within seven days of purchase, a Kindle store user can “return” the book for a full refund. They can even do it themselves (without having to talk to an Amazon rep) by going to

http://www.amazon.com/manageyourkindle

That’s part of why we don’t see our royalties instantly through Kindle Direct Publishing.

Let’s say someone buys the book on January 10th. While we are told about the sale when we check the sales statistics, we don’t receive money for it until April or so.

If the person buys the book on January 10th and returns it on January 15th, it will show as both a purchase and a return, and we’ll get no money for it when the royalty payment eventually happens.

It sometimes occurs that the purchase is in one accounting period and the return in another. If you didn’t have enough sales in the second pay period to cover the returns, I believe you could actually owe Amazon money that month…but that’s very unlikely.

This new patent, and the potential program I outlined, would greatly reduce the risk of returns as they exist in the current state. If somebody didn’t like the book now, they could return it and the author would get nothing. If they didn’t like it under the other program, they might choose to resell it instead of returning it. Yes, they would get less money that way, but there would be some possible drivers.

I think most people want to be fair. If they read the book, but just didn’t like it, they might still want the author to get a royalty. By reselling it, the author still would…two royalties, under my system.

You’ve expressed the difference between re-sell and return well.

Is it scary that Amazon is such a power in publishing? Sure, I can see people being concerned. That’s not an illogical risk aversion feeling. Let’s say you’ve put all…er, 90% in your example, of your eggs in one basket. Now, somebody says, “Let me move your eggs to a better basket.” A lot of people would say “no”, simply being afraid of what could happen during transfer…and being able to live with the status quo, they don’t want to risk it.

One always has to weigh the risks and benefits, of course. Maybe the new basket actually is a lot safer, and you end up with more eggs.

They also seem to mistake the difference between return and re-sell. They seem to think that the purchaser would “return” the book after they have read it and get their money back and then Amazon would sell it. That doesn’t make any sense to me, since it’s a digital copy anyway. They don’t seem to grasp the concept of a re-sell where the purchaser still “owns” the book and then sells it to another party at a lower price compared to what he / she paid for it and thus transferring the rights of the book to the new buyer, hence, the purchaser no longer having the rights to the book and the book transfers to the used buyer’s library.

I really think that the authors who are opposed to this concept are not thinking the implications through and just reacting. Plus, it’s really early days yet, so I think we need to wait and see how Amazon decides to actually execute this.

I actually really like the idea and concept. Of course, the proof is in the execution of it. I’d really like to see it happen particularly where they are books that I have purchased for $12.99 or more and have read (will not re-read) and happy to sell off to another person who wants to read the book for a lower price.

I like your thought of Amazon even potentially setting prices. I would make sense to say – if it’s a first used sale, then it would be discounted say, 25%, and then possibly another 25% off the first used sale price, and so on.

Hmm…would people be Machiavellian enough to give something a good review when they didn’t like it in order to up the demand for a used copy? I suppose that is possible, especially if the reselling customer set the price. I’m not sure they’d allow competitive pricing, but they might.