Patent Application
20050258638
This invention relates generally to the publishing industry and, in particular, to method and articles whereby the user a book may reduce its resale value to increase publisher revenues.
The reselling of books such as textbooks is not only legal, it is widespread. Although this practice may be somewhat beneficial to book users, such as students, and perhaps to the stores that sell used books, it causes publishers to incur losses which are substantial in some cases.
The current options available to publishers to discourage or minimize the used book trade are few and, for the most part, undesirable. In the case of textbooks, for example, it is not uncommon for publishers to come out with new editions on a regular basis, thereby forcing students to obtain a new edition for a particular course. While this practice is suitable for subject matter which might change on a regular basis, such as legal textbooks, art, new media, and so forth, it is less applicable to publishers of textbooks involving subject matter that either does not change, or does not change that often. Examples here include engineering, mathematics, learning a language, and so forth.
As it happens, book stores and other outlets will not resell a book if it is significantly altered. Whereas underlining and highlighting and the like are generally acceptable, torn pages, missing covers, and so forth, are not. There are several reasons for this. One is that potential purchasers are not likely to pay a very high price for a book that is significantly altered, making it economically undesirable for a book store to carry it. But in addition, and perhaps more importantly, one of the ways that book sellers “get credit” for books that did not sell, is to remove the cover and send it back to the publisher. Generally, this includes the return of the portion of the book including the ISBN number, but in any case, having done this, the book store is obligated to destroy the book itself without selling it.
Given these industry practices, the need remains for methods and articles to help protect publishers against losses incurred through used book sales while, at the same time, giving a book owner an alternative incentive to alter a book as opposed to reselling it.
Broadly, this invention resides in methods and articles whereby a book owner is given an offer or incentive to alter a book in a way that will minimize and, ideally, eliminate the potential for resale. In the preferred embodiment, the cover of the book includes a mail-in card associated with a sweepstakes, such that by cutting out the card and entering into the drawing, the user effectively relinquishes the ability to resell the book. As opposed to removing the cover, or a portion of the cover, alternative embodiments include sending in one or more pages of the book, either as part of a chapter or randomly extracted, or otherwise altering the text so as to dramatically minimize or eliminate its resale value.
Although the card 114 is shown as part of the front cover, consuming only a portion of a soft-cover book, the invention is not limited in this regard, as the entire cover may be involved, a back cover or portion thereof may be involved, and hard covers as opposed to soft covers may be used. In the case of a language book, advantageously, the card 114 may be associated with winning a trip to a country associated with the language being learned, for example.
Although specific embodiments of the invention have been depicted herein, other less attractive alternatives are possible, including cutting, burning, or tearing at least a portion of the book, and perhaps using a digital camera to verify the action. This would allow a photograph to either be sent through the mail or attached as part of an e-mail without the need for postage. A short “movie” proving an alteration may alternatively be used.
