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

Amazon Kindle book lending quietly goes live

amazon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 66 posts

Re: Amazon Kindle book lending quietly goes live

#31

Post by rdl »

I've just purchased multiple Kindle devices over the years and loan a physical device to someone who wants something to read at my house, on a trip, etc. I usually travel with an iPhone 4, iPad, Kindle DX, and MBP17, so it's pretty easy to loan the iPad or the DX to someone for a day or two. (especially useful when on a diving trip, since a lot of people don't seem to bring computers at all, wtf?)

I really wish iOS had a "guest mode" so I could easily restrict access to my personal information, browser cookies, etc. As it is, the DX is my preferred device to loan, or "I'll make you an account on my laptop."

Re: Amazon Kindle book lending quietly goes live

#32

Post by rdl »

allwein wrote: post #11
allwein wrote: post #7

I think that it's ridiculous that the lent book is unavailable to the original purchaser while it's loaned out. That completely defeats the purpose of an e-book. Edit: Do the downvoters disagree on the benefits of having a book in electronic form? Or do they think that the restrictions are not unreasonable/ridiculous?

I've already confirmed that there is a "work-around" for this. Load the book up on your Kindle (or other device). Disable wireless (or other networking). Then perform the loan from your computer. This way the book will be available on your device (since it doesn't know it's been lent out) and on your friend's device. Just don't re-enable wireless until you're done with the book or the loan has expired. This way, at l…

Once you're willing to violate the license and terms of service, there are much more thorough solutions: just get a bunch of kindles on a single account and share books (although if you read at the same time, the "read location" syncing could be annoying), or download to computer, rip the copy protection off, and manually load onto kindles, desktops, etc. (and optionally upload to torrent sites, Swedish FTP servers, wikileaks, etc.).

I am personally still at the "I buy books I am interested in even if I won't read them for a while, as long as they're available for Kindle and not more expensive than the paperback, to reward the publisher for making them available on Kindle" stage, but if I were angry at publishers (as I am at the RIAA), the above would seem like a better solution.

Re: Amazon Kindle book lending quietly goes live

#35

Post by anonymoushn »

JunkDNA wrote: post #17

I have recently observed that buying and using ebooks is like being put into a time machine and being forced to re-live the early days of digital music downloads. Do we seriously have to re-learn all those lessons in every single industry that starts to shift to digital content?

I have found pirating and using ebooks to be perfectly reasonable as there are no hurdles to jump over and there is no possibility that your books will disappear from your Kindle without your permission. In fact, as far as Amazon is concerned, I've never put anything on my Kindle. My main problem is that many books I want to read cannot be found in this form for as much as a year after they are published.

Re: Amazon Kindle book lending quietly goes live

#36

Post by VB6_Forever »

Amazon already has the infrastructure in place to allow people to sell physical books secondhand

And now you can lend a kindle book and it becomes unavailable to you for the duration of the loan.

So everything is in place to allow a secondhand market for kindle books.

Although isn't Audible an Amazon company (shudder)

Re: Amazon Kindle book lending quietly goes live

#37

Post by ceejayoz »

anamax wrote: post #12
allwein wrote: post #7

I think that it's ridiculous that the lent book is unavailable to the original purchaser while it's loaned out. That completely defeats the purpose of an e-book. Edit: Do the downvoters disagree on the benefits of having a book in electronic form? Or do they think that the restrictions are not unreasonable/ridiculous?

How would you suggest that book sellers handle lending. Note the word "sellers" - they don't make any money from lending, just from selling. They're really scared that they'll sell one copy and everyone will read that copy (or copies of it). Note - "they should make less money" isn't an answer.

> Note - "they should make less money" isn't an answer.

They should make more money isn't a very good answer, either.

eBooks are massively cheaper to distribute, yet we see a minimal discount. Add in the fact that they're limiting lending to once per book when I can lend a physical book infinitely many times and you're looking at higher profits for eBooks than normal books.

Re: Amazon Kindle book lending quietly goes live

#38

Post by VB6_Forever »

anonymoushn wrote: post #35
JunkDNA wrote: post #17

I have recently observed that buying and using ebooks is like being put into a time machine and being forced to re-live the early days of digital music downloads. Do we seriously have to re-learn all those lessons in every single industry that starts to shift to digital content?

I have found pirating and using ebooks to be perfectly reasonable as there are no hurdles to jump over and there is no possibility that your books will disappear from your Kindle without your permission. In fact, as far as Amazon is concerned, I've never put anything on my Kindle. My main problem is that many books I want to read cannot be found in this form for as much as a year after they are published.

I'm no advocate of piracy but having twice been effectively ripped off by DRM I can see where you're coming from

Re: Amazon Kindle book lending quietly goes live

#39

Post by spicyj »

allwein wrote: post #28
BBonifield wrote: post #3

It's really too bad that Amazon dropped the ball on this. You get to loan a book once, and the recipient only gets two weeks to read it. What a ridiculous implementation of such a great concept. One of the major things that's kept me away from eBooks is that I can't share them with friends. In the office, we often pass a book around from person to person when we like it, and online lending should be just as simple an…

I'm toying with the idea of getting another Kindle just to user borrowed books from friends. 1. Give them my "Lending Kindle" 2. Have them register it against their account 3. Download the book(s) I want to borrow 4. Turn off wireless 5. They can deregister my Kindle right away and I take my good old time reading the books I borrowed.

In fact, you don't need to turn off wireless. You can even deregister from the device's Settings menu and it'll keep your downloaded books. (Even if those span multiple accounts!)

Re: Amazon Kindle book lending quietly goes live

#40

Post by pedanticfreak »

dave1619 wrote: post #9

Can you really loan out a book just once in its lifetime? Or just once every 14 days?

For some reason, my brain finds the former to be worse than being unable to lend the book at all.

If I can't lend it, it's more like seeing a movie or going to a concert. I paid for the experience and now it's gone. Being only able to lend it once is really less of a lend and more of a "comes with one free trial for a friend." I think it might be the abuse of the word 'lend' that bothers me more than anything.

Post reply on HN