If the author still got a cut of the resale price, this might actually increase sales.
There are tons of books I'd like to read but I felt were out of my monthly book budget.
If I could recoup a good portion of my costs I'd buy more books.
Historically, this idea hasn’t gone over well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine .
As is, we're essentially artificially creating disposable goods, for the primary purpose of enriching distributors at a cost to consumers.
I would be less annoyed by essentially consumable digital goods if I knew sometime down the road they would enter the public domain in a reasonable timeframe, and not well after the eventual death of the current generation of children.
I sincerely hope I haven't made you feel the way I felt when my gramdmother told me I had, in fact, not invented scrambled eggs.
IMO if buying ebooks were super easy many people would do it, I know Steam and the PS Store had that effect on me.
Books could be universally free and maybe I'd browse a bit more but I wouldn't really read more.
my library lends ebooks using an app, works great
I use the Chrome Instant Multi Search extension to search all the libraries+services – about 12 different sites at this point. Between them they have almost every book I want in e-book or audiobook, and by placing holds I can keep a steady queue of books going. Managed 125 books this year that way, the majority of them digital, and free.
Actually, I believe that used ebooks can sell for almost the same price as "new" ones. Unlike with physical books, there is literally no difference in reading experience between an ebook that has been sold a hundred times and an ebook that's new.
However, as someone who reads books and who would appreciate a right for resale for ebooks, I don't appreciate it for being able to make money from reselling it. I am more interested about the effects: that I have actual ownership over the ebook. That the place which sold me the ebook going bankrupt doesn't disrupt my abilities to read it. That I can lend it to a friend. etc.
Now, if you allowed resale, ebooks would have close to "new" resale values, and more importantly, resale values of ebooks which have been sold three or four times would stay the same. This would create the problem that people could buy an used ebook, read it, and then resell it afterwards for the same price, basically reading the ebook for free. Now libraries are doing something similar with physical books, but they are inconvenient to use. You need to get to the library, stand in queue, handle the books, think about bringing them back in time, etc. But ebooks don't have such limitations and you could build a super convenient solution around ebook lending. While it's great that people read books, it's sadly not really good for publishers or authors. I kinda understand them that they want to close this loophole. Still, you could allow for resale in some different fashion. E.g. a resale tax of 10% of the value or something. In my opinion that would be the optimum, and a solution that's fair to everyone.