New Service to Buy and Sell Previously Owned eBooks

New Service to Buy and Sell Previously Owned eBooks no comments

Posted at 11:08 pm in eBook Stores,Random

Lexink announced today their Unloder service that allows readers to sell their used ebooks for store credit which can be used to buy other used ebooks. The service will also work with other digital media such as MP3s and movies.

Lexink is promoting its service as a means of fighting pirating and says that publishers will get a cut of sales. From the press release:

UNLODER™ provides a place for buying and selling ebooks online in addition to providing a resale solution for every type of digital media. Music, television shows, movies and ebooks can be sold and purchased for less. UNLODER™ thus helps to stem the epidemic of digital piracy by making legal file resale a viable alternative to illegal file sharing.

“Since unloaded titles are resold for about a third of the original cost, UNLODER™ makes digital products affordable for people who want to buy licensed media but who are very price sensitive. In addition, digital rights are respected so publishers and creators get their dues with UNLODER™,” says Despallieres (Owner of Lexink).

UNLODER™ provides two revenue streams:

The Works – UNLODER™ lets the consumer trade in unwanted multimedia titles and is integrated into the Media Player digital download store. Once a title is unloaded and someone purchases it, the media vanishes from the seller’s library and can no longer be played. The seller gets store credit redeemable for other unloaded content or brand new titles.

The Perks – UNLODER™ creates a new revenue stream for the download store; record companies, studios and artists; publishing houses, bookstores and authors. Currently, the profit line ends once a customer purchases and downloads a product. The UNLODER™ adds a profit opportunity via resale. The more media traded, the more money made. After the initial full price sale of a new title, that same title can generate income over and over as it is unloaded.

This might be interesting if it works, but it sounds like it will be very complicated to implement. If I buy an ebook from the Kindle Store, for example, when I sell it to Lexink it would have to be removed from my library in the cloud. A system like this might help publishers to feel better about ebooks – when a pbook is resold in a used book store they get nothing.