Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon to add "lending" feature to Kindle

amazon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 92 posts

Re: Amazon to add "lending" feature to Kindle

#61

Post by kklimonda »

jonhendry wrote: post #29
xiongchiamiov wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bor…

I don't think the lend feature is going to work "offline", i.e. without participation of Amazon. So Amazon would have a full control over who has lend, what books and to which people. So they can easily deauthorize them.

But that wouldn't work if there were no time limit at all - you could lend a book and disable all wireless connectivity. So why not make Kindle users who have lent book reauthorize every 14 days with Amazon's servers to extend the lease.. Sure, some people would abuse this system but it's not like you can't download more and more ebooks from various not-so-legal places anyway.

But then the whole thing is useless - seriously, I can lend some books, for two weeks and only once? No, thanks.

Re: Amazon to add "lending" feature to Kindle

#64

Post by Elepsis »

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…

The Zune store also sells straight-up, no DRM mp3s for about the same price Amazon does.

Re: Amazon to add "lending" feature to Kindle

#65

Post by ceejayoz »

htsh wrote: post #57
ceejayoz wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> [Is] it now possible get established relatively easier by simply writing a better book than the other guy?

Sure, just like Britney Spears gets all her sales by having good music.

Writing a good book means little if you can't find a way to get lots of people to read it.

Re: Amazon to add "lending" feature to Kindle

#66

Post by angstrom »

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 think there's another more obvious outcome. Unlimitted lending of digital content has a lower physical restriction barrier. A secondary marketplace could easily spring up matching people with licenses to those without.

Re: Amazon to add "lending" feature to Kindle

#68

Post by tyng »

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…

"Planned scarcity" is the term. But I still think "lending" is a step forward to enable booking sharing, while preserving the incentive for writers to keep writing.

Needless to say Amazon will take a cut in this feature, perhaps some to the book publisher and author too. Kind of works out for everyone.

Re: Amazon to add "lending" feature to Kindle

#69

Post by hyperbovine »

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.

He can sell support contracts, documentation for it.

Re: Amazon to add "lending" feature to Kindle

#70

Post by tzs »

htsh wrote: post #36
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.

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…

So if you have someone who is a great writer, they need to take time away from writing to do things that aren't writing, in order to make money?

If writing is something we value as a society, then there should be a good way for good writers to make money by writing, instead of having to find ancillary things they may not be particularly good at.

Post reply on HN