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Amazon to add "lending" feature to Kindle

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Re: Amazon to add "lending" feature to Kindle

#51

Post by jonhendry »

stevenbedrick wrote: post #46
seancron wrote: post #7

The 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.

If your library is anything like mine, supporting it would mean that Amazon would have to add support for Adobe's "Digital Editions" DRM scheme- which strikes me as somewhat unlikely, unfortunately (and by "somewhat unlikely", I mean that I'll be able to write a Duke Nukem' Forever review using TextMate 2 long before the Kindle supports ADE). This was actually a (small) part of my thinking when I was trying to decide…

Amazon could always come up with their own system for libraries to lend kindle books.

Which would probably make a lot of sense at this point, given all the free reader apps they provide on various devices.

Hell, the system could be pretty sweet. Look up a book at Amazon, and Amazon could determine your local library system based on your address, check the ebook 'inventory' of that library, and if a copy is available, offer a library loan as an option. You wouldn't even have to go to the library website.

Re: Amazon to add "lending" feature to Kindle

#53

Post by ig1 »

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…

It's not anything new. The whole point of copyright (and other intellectual property law) is to artificial limit unlimited goods. Copying has become cheaper with the digital age, but copying's been cheaper than buying monopoly copies for a long time. Why do you think libraries impose limits on how much you can photocopy out of a single book ?

Re: Amazon to add "lending" feature to Kindle

#54

Post by michaelchisari »

danudey wrote: post #42
michaelchisari wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.unwom…

So what you do for a living is provide (consulting? programming?) services related to open-source software, not write free software.

I write free software for a living, because the result of my programming services are GPL licensed.

Re: Amazon to add "lending" feature to Kindle

#55

Post by rwhitman »

potatolicious wrote: post #41
rwhitman wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do, kinda. Lets just say that I haven't paid for music in quite some time.. and when I did it was always CDs, I've bought maybe one album digitally. Its not the idea of paying that bothers me so much as the price point. I know damn well there's nowhere near the overhead costs to digital distribution that there are to printing, publishing and retail, why am I only getting a $5.00 discount? Popular digital books and…

> "I know damn well there's nowhere near the overhead costs to digital distribution that there are to printing, publishing and retail" I dislike this argument - it assumes that products ought to be priced according to their cost of production, which is patently false in reality. The price of a product is whatever the market will bear. Does this means MP3s aren't overpriced? Nope. The monopolistic cartel-like behavior…

With the price fixing the only competition in town is priced at free. Therefore the market should bear somewhere between $10 and free. But not $10. Its still a ripoff no matter what way you shake it. Competitively, paying to download something is purely for the convenience of not having to hunt down a free copy. So I'm paying not for the music, but the ease of downloading it instantly. And thats not worth $10 to me.

(Ok, so the music you buy doesn't have DRM, that is true. But its still worth absolutely nothing after you download it...)

Re: Amazon to add "lending" feature to Kindle

#56

Post by itiztv »

FWIW, i returned my Kindle last week. Reason I bought was to carry mostly techincal publications to read on my trip to Africa. Somehow Kindle a bad daytime read but in the night????? Cant be used in the dark, no way to tweak contrast to suit darkness. I find it rather over-hyped and think Amazon needs to do something about it. I found a similar review on an Australian site as well as Amazon's website. I reckon most people have returned the device for this reason too. So as even as lending might be an appealing move, the device has a lil more mileage to go. IMHO tho

Re: Amazon to add "lending" feature to Kindle

#57

Post by htsh »

ceejayoz wrote: post #49
htsh wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Speaking tours make money. Conferences make money, etc. 2. Fame, recognition, i.e. non-monetary benefits to being a good writer. 3. At least some people write because they believe what they have to say is important and/or helpful. 4. People will always want to own physical books. This is different than music or a dvd as a book can be passed-on/gifted much easier than a DVD or a CD, which will be obsolete. I can se…

Speaking tours and the like make money if you're an established author, and it's about as likely as it is for your garage band to make millions on tour. Sure, it happens, but it's hardly a good career for the other 99.999% of folks who yearn to do that.

Agreed, but is it now possible get established relatively easier by simply writing a better book than the other guy? I mean the ease of distribution brings the harm of piracy but aren't there also some gains?

As examples, I'd offer both Why's poignant guide to Ruby and 2 pretty good books I've recently checked out, Learn Python the Hard Way & A Byte of Python.

Re: Amazon to add "lending" feature to Kindle

#58

Post by _delirium »

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…

The vast majority of books from academic presses are basically written for free. Even books that sell fairly well from relatively well-known presses like MIT Press make their authors very little money. They do it because publishing your book through MIT Press is a great way to get your ideas out there (and get paid indirectly in academic cred / CV lines). True to some extent with other nonfiction publishers too, e.g. I believe HN user lsc gets "paid" for his Xen book primarily in publicity driving sales to his VPS business, not because the royalties are something to live on.

Re: Amazon to add "lending" feature to Kindle

#60

Post by robryan »

michaelchisari wrote: post #21
jules wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If an author can't afford to put all their time towards writing a book though, because they no longer make any significant amount of money out them, wouldn't it be a net loss for society.

I agree that creativity isn't bound, but it will certainly happen less when a person who is exceptional doesn't have the opportunity to full devote themselves to their craft.

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