Amazon to add "lending" feature to Kindle
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Re: Amazon to add "lending" feature to Kindle
#2> Second, later this year, we will be introducing lending for Kindle, a new feature that lets you loan your Kindle books to other Kindle device or Kindle app users. Each book can be lent once for a loan period of 14-days and the lender cannot read the book during the loan period.
Hmm, I'm currently Reading Steven King's "Under the dome" I'm about half way through and it's been 14 days. I'm not sure this will be all that useful.
Re: Amazon to add "lending" feature to Kindle
#3Why can't we model it like a real book? Even if they limit it to owner -> borrower -> owner, it'd be great to just not have time limits. A market will be created in any case.
Re: Amazon to add "lending" feature to Kindle
#4> Second, later this year, we will be introducing lending for Kindle, a new feature that lets you loan your Kindle books to other Kindle device or Kindle app users. Each book can be lent once for a loan period of 14-days and the lender cannot read the book during the loan period. Hmm, I'm currently Reading Steven King's "Under the dome" I'm about half way through and it's been 14 days. I'm not sure this will be all t…
I'm guessing there will be some kind of prompt along the lines of "Your load period for this book has expired. If you would like to continue reading, please select the 'purchase now' button below."
Re: Amazon to add "lending" feature to Kindle
#5> Second, later this year, we will be introducing lending for Kindle, a new feature that lets you loan your Kindle books to other Kindle device or Kindle app users. Each book can be lent once for a loan period of 14-days and the lender cannot read the book during the loan period. Hmm, I'm currently Reading Steven King's "Under the dome" I'm about half way through and it's been 14 days. I'm not sure this will be all t…
You might not even get that far. Since it's left to the publishers to decide if the book is lendable, expect many best-sellers not to be.
Assuming the book could be re-lent to an individual after the first 14-day period has expired and can be returned early without penalties I think this is pretty good. Two weeks is a nice break-even point for shorter works and massive novels.
Now I can recommend the kindle to friends and family without losing the ability to lend them some of the book I've purchased and would like to share.
Re: Amazon to add "lending" feature to Kindle
#6I recognize that I'm posting an article by Cracked here, but anybody who's a regular reader knows that Cracked hits the nail on the head at least 2% of the time. They recently had an article about the future and artificial scarcity (using a colorful acronym), and this is a perfect example.
You don't have to "lend" books, you can just make a digital copy and give it to your friend. Anything less than that is software and hardware that is purposely crippled in order to manufacture an artificial scarcity.
http://www.cracked.com/article_18817_5-reasons-future-will-b...
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#4 To Stay Afloat, Businesses Have to Pretend Unlimited Goods are Limited
A. Why can't the library just buy as many digital copies as are needed for the customers, and keep them forever, if they don't naturally degrade?
B. Wait a second. It's just a digital file. Why not just buy one copy, and just copy and paste it for every customer who wants to read it?
C. Wait a second. Why do you need the library at all? Why can't a customer just buy a copy from the publisher and "lend" copies to all of his friends?
D. Wait a second. If no printing and binding needs to be done, why do you need the publisher? Just buy it directly from the author.
E. Waaaaait a second. Why buy it? Once the author makes one copy available, why can't everyone just grab it for free?
Re: Amazon to add "lending" feature to Kindle
#7The main problem that I have with the Kindle is not the lack of lending. What I want more than anything for the Kindle is support for ePub books, including DRMed ePubs.
The Kindle would be enormously useful to me if I could navigate to my library's website, check out an eBook, and read it right on my Kindle.
Re: Amazon to add "lending" feature to Kindle
#8I recognize that I'm posting an article by Cracked here, but anybody who's a regular reader knows that Cracked hits the nail on the head at least 2% of the time. They recently had an article about the future and artificial scarcity (using a colorful acronym), and this is a perfect example. You don't have to "lend" books, you can just make a digital copy and give it to your friend. Anything less than that is software…
F. Waaaaaaaaait a second. Why would the author write a book of which he can only sell 1 copy? There is no book.
Re: Amazon to add "lending" feature to Kindle
#9>Each book can be lent once for a loan period of 14-days...
Only once? People won't enjoy that.
Re: Amazon to add "lending" feature to Kindle
#10It would be nice if all the interested parties could come up with a solution that involved public lending libraries.
If all print books were to (for the sake of argument) completely vanish right now, I'm afraid that we'd find ourselves in a world where books were less generally accessible, not more generally accessible. Given the relative ease of ebook reproduction and distribution, this strikes me as the reverse of the way things ought to be.