Amazon is working to redress one of the biggest disadvantages of ebook ownership; the fact that readers can not resell ebooks as they can physical books. According to patent filings Amazon is developing a system whereby customers will be able to list Kindle ebooks for sale in a way similar to which physical books can be traded via Amazon Marketplace. A proportion of the sale price will go to the original rights holder, the ebook will be deleted from the selling customer’s Kindle account and a digital copy credited to the purchaser’s account. Amazon have filed a 47-page document with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office that goes into extensive detail about the proposed system. It is available online at: http://writ.rs/amzpatent
How this will affect authors, whether traditionally or self-published, remains to be seen.