19 ms·

Amazon to add "lending" feature to Kindle

143 points by ajg1977 16y ago

chollida1 16y ago
> 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.
- gcheong 16y ago
  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."
- Pyrodogg 16y ago
  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.
dlsspy 16y ago
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.
- xiongchiamiov 16y ago
  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.
  - jonhendry 16y ago
    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.
    - kklimonda 16y ago
      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.
  - angstrom 16y ago
    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.
  - ghshephard 16y ago
- sliverstorm 16y ago
  It'd be a pain in the ass trying to get your book back?
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - danudey 16y ago
    They could fairly easily add a 'take back' feature for those cases where you've lent a book to a deadbeat who can't be bothered to dig it out of his digital bookshelf and explain why there are virtual coffee stains on the pages.
  - docgnome 16y ago
    More of a pain than with physical books? I've lost books I've lent... real bummer but it happens.
- yellowbkpk 16y ago
  Because the current model makes them more money? If you can't sell your eBook to your neighbor then your neighbor will (probably) buy it for full eBook price. Boom two sales. (Hey I don't believe it'll work, it's only what I think the publisher execs are thinking.)
michaelchisari 16y ago
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 and hardware that is purposely crippled in order to manufacture an artificial scarcity. http://www.cracked.com/article_18817_5-reasons-future-will-be-ruled-by-b.s..html http://www.cracked.com/article_18817_5-reasons-future-will-b... -- #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?
- jules 16y ago
  F. Waaaaaaaaait a second. Why would the author write a book of which he can only sell 1 copy? There is no book.
  - secretasiandan 16y ago
    G. Waaaaaaaaaaaait a second. People currently write books and software and distribute them free.
    - glhaynes 16y ago
      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 others.
seancron 16y ago
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.
- slashclee 16y ago
  My kingdom for proper ePub support!
- stevenbedrick 16y ago
  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 whether and which eBook reader to get. I ended up going with one of the new Sony models, in part because I knew it would work with my library's eBook system. For whatever it's worth, though, breaking Adobe's DRM is trivial, as is converting the resulting unencrypted ePub file to a MOBI file, which, if I'm not mistaken, can be read on a Kindle. Your personal legal or moral mileage may vary, but from a technical standpoint it's pretty easy.
  - jonhendry 16y ago
    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.
- smackfu 16y ago
  Yeah, but Amazon wants to make the Kindle enormously useful to go to their web site and buy books from them.
zck 16y ago
>Each book can be lent once for a loan period of 14-days... Only once? People won't enjoy that.
- ditoa 16y ago
  Little steps and all that. I know it comes as a shock to a lot of the internet generation but most business have a hell of a hard time changing their business model and surviving it, the bigger the company the harder it becomes as with everything in life. This is a little step but it is down the right path. As much as we would all love to have the same abilities as we do with physical copies of books going the full wack of unlimited lending for unlimited timeframes is most likely too big of a shock for publishers to deal with. Hell we don't even have a legal way to do this with iTunes, Amazon MP3, and other online media services (at least not that I am aware of? please correct me if I am wrong, note I said legal, technically it is possible as there is no DRM but legally there is no way, it could be argued this is true for physical media too due to the "license" on the inside of the CD, DVD, or whatever it is you bought but no court would ever actually follow thru on that however sharing MP3s online doesn't get the same treatment, go figure). Anyway back to my point, I am pretty sure in time limitations will be lifted, maybe not to the same as you get with physical media but pretty close. One thing that is the same, if you lend a friend a book you certainly can't keep reading! It would have been pretty cool (and a much bigger deal IMHO) if the publishers used this as a marketing tool for word of mouth advertising by letting you "lend" the book to a friend while you can still read it but limit the lending limit to 14 days (or N number of chapters, which is better in IMHO as people read at different speeds, only at the weekends, etc. Time limits are a pain in the ass whereas content limits make it a lot more user friendly, at least to me it does, it is also much easier to manage, no clever ways to check when it has been 14 days (dealing with users who never connect to wifi and just set the date back, etc), no hacks to have to patch in the next firmware update, etc. just lend the friend 50% of the book, not 100% but with a digital lock around it that will be broken before even 1% of the user base upgrades their firmware) That way they can probably exploit the "omg I just got this amazing book you should sooo buy it" factor when someone first gets a book but hasn't finished it yet so won't lend it to a friend, then they forget or it is crap and they just dump it in a book store and the publisher never gets to sell that friend a copy. Just my 2c
cobralibre 16y ago
It 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.
ecaron 16y ago
As long as the publishers have a say, this feature doesn't matter. Don't believe me? Look at the Nook. I've bought over 30 books on it, 2 of them have the LendMe feature. For books I expect to share and re-read, I'm back to the physical copy. The only new ebooks I'm getting are the disposable fiction stories; which is probably the business model Amazon/BN have in mind and why we're still years away from a reasonable digital reader solution.
- jonhendry 16y ago
  It's a feature list checkbox. Now Amazon can say they also have a lending feature, and the Nook loses that advantage. The more important news, to me, is that they're now going to let you get subscribed magazines and newspapers in the kindle apps. Right now those only work with kindle hardware.
patio11 16y ago
Lending ebooks is a feature demanded mostly by people who don't pay money for ebooks (and don't pay money for movies, music, or videogames if they can possibly avoid it) and will not be induced to pay money by the feature.
- netcan 16y ago
  Sounds right to me. Do you have any evidence that this is true or does it just sound right?
- emmett 16y ago
  This is patently false. My girlfriend owns a Kindle, she buys books at a very good rate (among other media), and she wants to be able to lend her ebooks. Lending books is part of book culture! I don't own a Kindle yet specifically because half the reason I buy books is to lend or give them to friends. Sharing books is one of the greatest joys of reading. Everyone who shares is not a pirate. I generally agree with you that people who complain about media costing money are not useful as customers. But there is a world of difference between not wanting to pay and wanting to be able to lend and give what you buy.
  - potatolicious 16y ago
    I agree with patio11 but with a caveat: lending, in the way it is to be implemented on the Kindle, and is already implemented on the Nook, is a feature demanded by pirates more than customers. Why? Because books can only be lent once. Ever. This makes the feature almost useless for legitimate consumers, but for non-DRMed files (on the Nook anyways) the lending feature is non-crippled, and (rightly) can occur as many times as the user pleases. Personally I think it's a load of crap that the lending feature is crippled in such a way, but the fact of the matter is, the only people happy with the existing way lending works are the people who aren't encumbered by it - i.e., the people who never actually deal in purchased/DRMed ebook material.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
rwhitman 16y ago
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...
- sliverstorm 16y ago
  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.
  - rwhitman 16y ago
    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 MP3 albums could cost $2 and still be profitable... Not to mention that I can't resell or exchange the digital copies like I could physical media, so there's no longterm value. If you consume as much media as I do you'll quickly go broke if you were to pay what they wanted, and not be able to at least recoup some of the value in tradeins. $9.00+ for digital DRMed media is a total ripoff.
    - potatolicious 16y ago
      > "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 of the labels does seem to prevent the market from reaching a natural equilibrium price for music; that being said, the notion that digital things should be almost-free because they're almost-free to produce IMHO is BS. > "$9.00+ for digital DRMed media is a total ripoff." None of the major digital music stores have been DRMed for a long time. Both iTunes and Amazon MP3 are DRM free, and in fact the only real place you'll find DRM on music these days is the Zune Store - but that's more because you're on a all-you-can-listen subscription plan, there's no confusion about whether or not you own your files.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
itiztv 16y ago
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
jhgfdsahgf 16y ago
I forget - can we still read bedtime stories to children or is that an un-authorised use?
- irons 16y ago
  Sure you can, but only once per story.
WalterBright 16y ago
I wish Amazon would adopt the Netflix model for books. I'd certainly sign up for that.
- alexknight 16y ago
  Unlike movies, books can't be read within a 90 minute time frame. I can't see Amazon introducing an unlimited eBook model.
leif 16y ago
Sounds ripe for a marketplace where people can offer to and request lending from other users.
- riffraff 16y ago
  ah! I was thinking the same :) thisbookwillselfdistructin15days.com seems free ;)
alexyoung 16y ago
Non-technical friends were impressed by my Kindle but it was hard to explain not being able to lend books. However, the restrictions sound like they're designed to make the recipient end up buying the book, rather than really facilitate the type of lending people will expect.
dpapathanasiou 16y ago
We were going to offer this at Fifobooks.com. In fact, we were going to offer a feature whereby any ebook you bought on any device could be made to work on any other device. Unfortunately, we found out from a legal review that the DMCA makes that a criminal offense (we thought we would be covered by a consumer's right to make personal archival copies of media they'd purchased, but that common-sense right is not part of the DMCA). Anyway, the lend feature is really a step behind what AMZ should be doing: portability of ebooks from device to device.

143 points by ajg1977 16y ago

> 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.

gcheong 16y ago
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."
Pyrodogg 16y ago
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.

dlsspy 16y ago

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.

xiongchiamiov 16y ago
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.
- jonhendry 16y ago
  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.
  - kklimonda 16y ago
    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.
- angstrom 16y ago
  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.
- ghshephard 16y ago
sliverstorm 16y ago
It'd be a pain in the ass trying to get your book back?
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- danudey 16y ago
  They could fairly easily add a 'take back' feature for those cases where you've lent a book to a deadbeat who can't be bothered to dig it out of his digital bookshelf and explain why there are virtual coffee stains on the pages.
- docgnome 16y ago
  More of a pain than with physical books? I've lost books I've lent... real bummer but it happens.
yellowbkpk 16y ago
Because the current model makes them more money? If you can't sell your eBook to your neighbor then your neighbor will (probably) buy it for full eBook price. Boom two sales. (Hey I don't believe it'll work, it's only what I think the publisher execs are thinking.)

michaelchisari 16y ago

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 and hardware that is purposely crippled in order to manufacture an artificial scarcity. http://www.cracked.com/article_18817_5-reasons-future-will-be-ruled-by-b.s..html http://www.cracked.com/article_18817_5-reasons-future-will-b... -- #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?

jules 16y ago
F. Waaaaaaaaait a second. Why would the author write a book of which he can only sell 1 copy? There is no book.
- secretasiandan 16y ago
  G. Waaaaaaaaaaaait a second. People currently write books and software and distribute them free.
  - glhaynes 16y ago
    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 others.

seancron 16y ago

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.

slashclee 16y ago
My kingdom for proper ePub support!
stevenbedrick 16y ago
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 whether and which eBook reader to get. I ended up going with one of the new Sony models, in part because I knew it would work with my library's eBook system. For whatever it's worth, though, breaking Adobe's DRM is trivial, as is converting the resulting unencrypted ePub file to a MOBI file, which, if I'm not mistaken, can be read on a Kindle. Your personal legal or moral mileage may vary, but from a technical standpoint it's pretty easy.
- jonhendry 16y ago
  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.
smackfu 16y ago
Yeah, but Amazon wants to make the Kindle enormously useful to go to their web site and buy books from them.

zck 16y ago

>Each book can be lent once for a loan period of 14-days... Only once? People won't enjoy that.

ditoa 16y ago
Little steps and all that. I know it comes as a shock to a lot of the internet generation but most business have a hell of a hard time changing their business model and surviving it, the bigger the company the harder it becomes as with everything in life. This is a little step but it is down the right path. As much as we would all love to have the same abilities as we do with physical copies of books going the full wack of unlimited lending for unlimited timeframes is most likely too big of a shock for publishers to deal with. Hell we don't even have a legal way to do this with iTunes, Amazon MP3, and other online media services (at least not that I am aware of? please correct me if I am wrong, note I said legal, technically it is possible as there is no DRM but legally there is no way, it could be argued this is true for physical media too due to the "license" on the inside of the CD, DVD, or whatever it is you bought but no court would ever actually follow thru on that however sharing MP3s online doesn't get the same treatment, go figure). Anyway back to my point, I am pretty sure in time limitations will be lifted, maybe not to the same as you get with physical media but pretty close. One thing that is the same, if you lend a friend a book you certainly can't keep reading! It would have been pretty cool (and a much bigger deal IMHO) if the publishers used this as a marketing tool for word of mouth advertising by letting you "lend" the book to a friend while you can still read it but limit the lending limit to 14 days (or N number of chapters, which is better in IMHO as people read at different speeds, only at the weekends, etc. Time limits are a pain in the ass whereas content limits make it a lot more user friendly, at least to me it does, it is also much easier to manage, no clever ways to check when it has been 14 days (dealing with users who never connect to wifi and just set the date back, etc), no hacks to have to patch in the next firmware update, etc. just lend the friend 50% of the book, not 100% but with a digital lock around it that will be broken before even 1% of the user base upgrades their firmware) That way they can probably exploit the "omg I just got this amazing book you should sooo buy it" factor when someone first gets a book but hasn't finished it yet so won't lend it to a friend, then they forget or it is crap and they just dump it in a book store and the publisher never gets to sell that friend a copy. Just my 2c

cobralibre 16y ago

It 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.

ecaron 16y ago

As long as the publishers have a say, this feature doesn't matter. Don't believe me? Look at the Nook. I've bought over 30 books on it, 2 of them have the LendMe feature. For books I expect to share and re-read, I'm back to the physical copy. The only new ebooks I'm getting are the disposable fiction stories; which is probably the business model Amazon/BN have in mind and why we're still years away from a reasonable digital reader solution.

jonhendry 16y ago
It's a feature list checkbox. Now Amazon can say they also have a lending feature, and the Nook loses that advantage. The more important news, to me, is that they're now going to let you get subscribed magazines and newspapers in the kindle apps. Right now those only work with kindle hardware.

patio11 16y ago

Lending ebooks is a feature demanded mostly by people who don't pay money for ebooks (and don't pay money for movies, music, or videogames if they can possibly avoid it) and will not be induced to pay money by the feature.

netcan 16y ago
Sounds right to me. Do you have any evidence that this is true or does it just sound right?
emmett 16y ago
This is patently false. My girlfriend owns a Kindle, she buys books at a very good rate (among other media), and she wants to be able to lend her ebooks. Lending books is part of book culture! I don't own a Kindle yet specifically because half the reason I buy books is to lend or give them to friends. Sharing books is one of the greatest joys of reading. Everyone who shares is not a pirate. I generally agree with you that people who complain about media costing money are not useful as customers. But there is a world of difference between not wanting to pay and wanting to be able to lend and give what you buy.
- potatolicious 16y ago
  I agree with patio11 but with a caveat: lending, in the way it is to be implemented on the Kindle, and is already implemented on the Nook, is a feature demanded by pirates more than customers. Why? Because books can only be lent once. Ever. This makes the feature almost useless for legitimate consumers, but for non-DRMed files (on the Nook anyways) the lending feature is non-crippled, and (rightly) can occur as many times as the user pleases. Personally I think it's a load of crap that the lending feature is crippled in such a way, but the fact of the matter is, the only people happy with the existing way lending works are the people who aren't encumbered by it - i.e., the people who never actually deal in purchased/DRMed ebook material.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

rwhitman 16y ago

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...

sliverstorm 16y ago
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.
- rwhitman 16y ago
  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 MP3 albums could cost $2 and still be profitable... Not to mention that I can't resell or exchange the digital copies like I could physical media, so there's no longterm value. If you consume as much media as I do you'll quickly go broke if you were to pay what they wanted, and not be able to at least recoup some of the value in tradeins. $9.00+ for digital DRMed media is a total ripoff.
  - potatolicious 16y ago
    > "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 of the labels does seem to prevent the market from reaching a natural equilibrium price for music; that being said, the notion that digital things should be almost-free because they're almost-free to produce IMHO is BS. > "$9.00+ for digital DRMed media is a total ripoff." None of the major digital music stores have been DRMed for a long time. Both iTunes and Amazon MP3 are DRM free, and in fact the only real place you'll find DRM on music these days is the Zune Store - but that's more because you're on a all-you-can-listen subscription plan, there's no confusion about whether or not you own your files.

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itiztv 16y ago

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

jhgfdsahgf 16y ago

I forget - can we still read bedtime stories to children or is that an un-authorised use?

irons 16y ago
Sure you can, but only once per story.

WalterBright 16y ago

I wish Amazon would adopt the Netflix model for books. I'd certainly sign up for that.

alexknight 16y ago
Unlike movies, books can't be read within a 90 minute time frame. I can't see Amazon introducing an unlimited eBook model.

leif 16y ago

Sounds ripe for a marketplace where people can offer to and request lending from other users.

riffraff 16y ago
ah! I was thinking the same :) thisbookwillselfdistructin15days.com seems free ;)

alexyoung 16y ago

Non-technical friends were impressed by my Kindle but it was hard to explain not being able to lend books. However, the restrictions sound like they're designed to make the recipient end up buying the book, rather than really facilitate the type of lending people will expect.

dpapathanasiou 16y ago

We were going to offer this at Fifobooks.com. In fact, we were going to offer a feature whereby any ebook you bought on any device could be made to work on any other device. Unfortunately, we found out from a legal review that the DMCA makes that a criminal offense (we thought we would be covered by a consumer's right to make personal archival copies of media they'd purchased, but that common-sense right is not part of the DMCA). Anyway, the lend feature is really a step behind what AMZ should be doing: portability of ebooks from device to device.