I recognise some of the joys of ownership, but how much of this satisfaction is based on value systems from the past, and how relevant is it for the future when everything from movies to music are going digital and cloud? Is ownership in the traditional sense the central problem to be solved? I think differently.
1) A direct connection with the author.
Previously, there were a few gatekeepers (selective publishers, for example). The quality of work that eventually came out was extremely good, but a lot of content also got lost among the rejections. Moreover, once the writer is paid dues for submitting the manuscript, the connection of the publisher to the writer is tenuous; in the same vein, the links between writer and readers, and readers with other readers were also weak, if not non-existent.
Can these connections be made more direct? What kind of interactions would be nice to have when a reader is directly connected to an author (while taking care to design out negative interactions like harassment?) What happens when readers get to interact with other readers in shared communities?
[2021 EDIT: See Patreon and various fan-club fora.]
2) The traditional gatekeepers with their static functions perhaps are no longer relevant.
Can you have new nodes (reviewers, summarizers, audiobook voice-artists, podcast interviewers etc) who each add value to this knowledge economy by not just owning and reading books, but adding insight upon insight to the original, so that by the time you get your hands on the e-book, it is virtually dog-eared and bursting with the writings of a thousand minds in the margins.
Each of these actions adds value to each “special limited edition” of the book, making each unique with every addition. No copy will be truly alike, because no two copies had the same list of owners, who shared a bit of themselves with their time with the artifact. When it comes to digital originals, "mint condition" has no meaning anymore.
This is a new kind of "ownership", not of a static thing, but instead of a living growing document, that connects you not only to the writer but also the complete lineage of readers. I am incentivized to be a creator, rewarded in my own small way for each highlight, insight, mention and review. I am incentivized to read and share, because my copy only gets more valuable with each share. What I own then isn’t one book with one voice, but instead a chorus of collective insights a hundred voices strong.
It’s also a new kind of economic model. The same book can be released via different nodes: say a professional insightful reviewer, a holistic summarizer who captures the essence of the books, an academic who prepares Cliffsnotes for students, or a creative doodler who adds illustrations to accompany the important beats within the book. And each of these essentially creating a different edition of the same book.
[2021 EDIT: see dog breeds, fusion recipes, supercut video essays, yearbooks etc.]
3) E-books don’t have shareable libraries, and this is a pity.
E-books perhaps are easily amenable to libraries. Instead of library cards, users could get a eBook reader (hardware product possibility) that downloads “borrowed books” and deletes them after a fixed period of time. In other words, the blockchain as a permissive DRM - not denying access, but gathering value from each new person it reaches. Why limit how many users can access the document, when a modest sum from each borrower trickles back to the creator? A user can always seek out the free(?) normal-edition copy, but remember the special edition comes with the collective wisdom of hundreds of humans in tow...
See Flattr's business model for example. The underlying blockchain can track borrowers and transactions.
[2021 EDIT: see Spotify/YouTube streaming, rentable autonomous Teslas etc.]
Ultimately, the idea here is to move away from OWNERSHIP models (so 20th century, so static, so inherently zero-sum) to COMMONS models (wherein uniqueness is a living growing antifragile quality of an artifact, that only gets more valuable the more it is shared.)