Used books use authors?

Blogs are all aflutter with countless schemes on how newspapers can find a way to “monetize” their content in an on-line world where we all expect to get our info for free. The Author’s Guild has fought the good fight in trying to secure electronic rights for authors, particularly those of us who signed contracts before there WERE electronic rights. I regularly see a 26 year old article of mine pop up on websites. Needless to say, I never gave away those rights. So, given these huge issues, maybe my concern seems a little trivial, but here goes.

What about used books? Hasn’t an author’s work always been sold and resold without any further compensation paid to the author or publisher? Once upon a time, this wasn’t much of a market. Used bookstores were mostly on college campuses or hidden away in quaint neighborhoods. You poked around and found interesting books you’d never heard of before. But attend any library book sale these days and you can hardly get within spittin’ distance of the shelves and crates. The place is swarming with desperate looking people with portable bar code readers who are checking market prices (used) for every book on the shelf, and dropping the books into crates without even looking at the titles.

Used book selling must be a decent business (if you have sharp enough elbows). Like every other business you can imagine, there’s even a book on how to do it: The Home-Based Bookstore, by Steve Weber. As a seriously addicted book-buyer, I adore used books. Don’t we all love getting something for a buck that used to be $24.95? As an author, not so much. So many writers make so little off their labor, I wish the author’s groups would give a little re-thinking to the whole area of copyright, resale, and author/publisher compensation.