[toomuchtodo]

This is a copyright law issue, not a publishing industry issue. First sale doctrine applies to the physical book, you only have a license to the ebook. Even if you were to "disrupt" publishing, they could change their benevolence at any time and no longer transfer ownership of the ebook.

This is why the Internet Archive is fighting the Controlled Digital Lending issue in court; if all books are ebooks, libraries can no longer be libraries due to onerous publisher control, and culture is locked up in perpetuity (life+whatever in your country of copyright dystopia). You have to fix the delta between how the physical book and the ebook are treated legally.

TLDR Without physical media, there is no first sale doctrine. Everything is licensed, and locked up under license terms.

[ilrwbwrkhv]

I mean start a new publishing house which does all of that. Not use existing publishers.

[toomuchtodo]

Relying on the benevolence and lifecycle of a single org in an industry is not a systemic or meaningful fix.

[ilrwbwrkhv]

Well a single org needs to start. Thats how all change happens. Just look at Tesla. Now everyone is doing electric cars.