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Amazon to add "lending" feature to Kindle

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Re: Amazon to add "lending" feature to Kindle

#21

Post by michaelchisari »

jules wrote: post #8
michaelchisari wrote: post #6

I 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.

Regardless of whether human creativity is intrinsically bound to economic reward (I would strongly argue that it isn't), the fact of the matter is that you can't make the case that what we're dealing with isn't a matter of artificial scarcity.

Re: Amazon to add "lending" feature to Kindle

#22

Post by [deleted] »

jules wrote: post #8
michaelchisari wrote: post #6

I 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.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon to add "lending" feature to Kindle

#24

Post by sliverstorm »

michaelchisari wrote: post #17
GHFigs wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you do for a living?

I write software and give it away for free, how about you? :P Also, there's a whole culture of free fiction on the internet. It's pretty huge, although most of it is crap, there are some real nuggets of goodness out there. Of course, most of the stuff people charge for is crap, too.

> I write software and give it away for free, how about you?

For a living, eh? So do we presume you feed yourself with soup kitchens, and live in a cardboard box on the street?

Re: Amazon to add "lending" feature to Kindle

#26

Post by InclinedPlane »

glhaynes wrote: post #13
secretasiandan wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

G. Waaaaaaaaaaaait a second. People currently write books and software and distribute them free.

Out of the books I've read in the last 5 years, I believe the only ones that were free were those whose copyright had expired. Yes, there's lots of good free software, but that's most often because the software, once written, scratched an itch for someone. The same phenomenon doesn't really exist with books: nearly nobody writes books for themselves; we write books to share our knowledge, stories, and opinions with o…

It's almost impossible to make a living writing technical books, worse yet if they're actually good (because the best technical books tend to have a smaller audience since they tend to be targeted at the best developers).

Technical books aren't written because they are profitable, they are written out of passion or pride.

Edit: the same is true for a great many non-technical books. The average writer has a day job, writing is for most a questionably lucrative hobby.

Re: Amazon to add "lending" feature to Kindle

#27

Post by michaelchisari »

sliverstorm wrote: post #24
michaelchisari wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I write software and give it away for free, how about you? :P Also, there's a whole culture of free fiction on the internet. It's pretty huge, although most of it is crap, there are some real nuggets of goodness out there. Of course, most of the stuff people charge for is crap, too.

> I write software and give it away for free, how about you? For a living, eh? So do we presume you feed yourself with soup kitchens, and live in a cardboard box on the street?

Open source economic models have been pretty well established, no? My income is through payment for services, not software. My software may be free, but my labor is not.

The same is being applied to music, artists like Unwoman regularly write songs and albums on spec and through crowd-sourcing. A friend of mine is a huge fan, and donated money for her to write a song using a Voltairine DeClayre poem.

http://www.unwoman.com

Re: Amazon to add "lending" feature to Kindle

#28

Post by rwhitman »

Most of my personal library is comprised of books I was given free or bought used in the $.50 - $6.00 range. On average I've read about 20% of each. What I can't get around with the Kindle is the idea of paying $10 for a digital copy of something I could find either for free or really cheap, that I probably won't even read anyway. Not to mention you can't give away or sell a copy of a kindle book to someone else after you're done.

Oddly enough though I don't have the same gripe with the apple App Store...

Re: Amazon to add "lending" feature to Kindle

#29

Post by jonhendry »

xiongchiamiov wrote: post #14
dlsspy wrote: post #3

Why 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.

I've never really understood this limitation. It doesn't exist for physical books (of which I've bought plenty), and it's the one thing that held me back from buying a Nook.

I would assume the thinking behind time limits is that a compromised Nook or Amazon account could be used to buy a crapload of books and then lend them out permanently.

Doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense, because they presumably know who you've lent them to.

Then again, non-limited lending raises other issues. How do you get it back? Do you allow the purchaser to forcibly take it back, removing it from the borrower's device? That sucks for the borrower. But that also requires that the device be connected to the web at some point; if the borrower only uses USB to load the device, the loaned item can't be snatched away.

Time limits, that don't rely on connectivity, are probably the simplest solution.

Re: Amazon to add "lending" feature to Kindle

#30

Post by sliverstorm »

rwhitman wrote: post #28

Most of my personal library is comprised of books I was given free or bought used in the $.50 - $6.00 range. On average I've read about 20% of each. What I can't get around with the Kindle is the idea of paying $10 for a digital copy of something I could find either for free or really cheap, that I probably won't even read anyway. Not to mention you can't give away or sell a copy of a kindle book to someone else afte…

One wonders then why you do not resent the iTunes store. After all, you can get vinyls and cassette tapes for next to nothing at thrift stores these days.
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