In a recent interview, billionaire investor and entrepreneur Mark Cuban talked about how non-fungible tokens (NFTs) could be useful in the book publishing industry (especially for textbooks).

Cuban is the majority owner of the professional basketball team Dallas Mavericks, as well as one of the “sharks” on the highly popular reality show “Shark Tank” (which is aired on the ABC television network).

Cuban’s comments were made during an interview with Forbes that was released on September 26. According to a report by The Daily Hodl, Cuban had this to say about the use of NFTs in the book publishing industry:

“NFTs as books, I think particularly for textbooks. Now, whether or not we can get the college textbook publishers to go along is another issue but the idea of kids buying books for classes… The whole process of buying books.

“First, do you want new or used? Then, you lug these books back, then at the end of the semester – because they’re only good for the time you’re in the class – you make the decision, ‘Yeah I’m going to sell it. How do I sell it?  Do I ship it off? Do I take it to the bookstore?’ It’s just a pain in the ass and in a digital world, it’s ridiculous. 

“With those as NFTs, well the NFTs allow you to apply royalties so that when that book is resold, the author and the publisher and whoever else is involved can get a set royalty fee. That means that the publishers who created the book can keep on getting paid, whereas when there’s a physical book that’s sold and resold they have to hope that book falls apart, so that they can sell a new one. So I think that’s a great application.“