It sounds like he’s rather concerned with the the fact that authors are only paid when the book is first sold. I can sympathize with his concern for the author but reselling certainly isn’t illegal.
For what it’s worth Robert Rauschenberg rocked the art business over this issue. Sort of. It’s different with art since art is resold all the time, as an investment much of the time, and the value of art can go up expontentially. This meant that in the past very little of the money made off of art went to the artist while investors made an arm and a leg off artists work and notoriety. Rauschenberg thought that was pretty shitty and he did something about it. Now a percentage of the reselling price goes back to the artist (if I remember correctly).
It’s a noble adjustment to the system, but reselling art and books are really different beasts. Books typically drop in price on resale so authors aren’t constantly losing more and more money as the value of their books rise. It would be neat though if a small percentage of used books salrs went back to support authors. It would be unwieldy trying to get residuals back to specific authors, but it would be nice to set up a fund to help authors get insurance or something like that. I’m pretty sure there are programs like that for artists and musicians.