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Amazon To Offer Kindle ebooks Via Public Libraries
destinyland writes "Amazon announced this morning that they're making Kindle ebooks available for free in America through 11,000 local public libraries. 'We're thrilled that Amazon is offering such a new approach to library ebook...' said one Seattle librarian, and one Kindle blog listed out the top advantages to having them available in libraries."
That's very nice. Sadly I'm not in the US, so I can't get the ebooks from a public library and have all those advantages :(
I presume the service will automatically delete the books a week after borrowing?
With tech tools, the better way to create envy for something you're selling is to give a try to your futurs consumers.
I would be curious to see if my library system is on it. And I know damn well that they don't update their website except maybe once a year.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
So, libraries having limited resources will buy titles in one maybe two formats. And considering the popularity of ereaders, I'm guessing that Kindle versions of titles will be purchased with the books on tape version - no expensive printed books. Which means, if I want to read some of those titles, I'll have to buy a Kindle. It's not like they'll buy Kindles for patrons use and if they do, they'll have to be kept on the premises.
So, this is just a way for Amazon to sell more Kindles.
None of you thought they were doing this for the public good, did you?
Congratulations Amazon! You now offer a service that ALL OF THE OTHER ereader sellers have been able to take advantage of for years! B&N, Sony, Kobo, Bookeen, etc...
Nothing exposes the primitive nature of profit quite like the arbitrary rules that govern the copying of easily copied information.
As an aside: Somebody is getting paid; library books are by no means free. That is the great deception propagated by social programs: "The benefits are free."
I don't really understand why this system should work long term. What benifet does the local library add to a website where you borrow books? I would think you could cut the libraries out of the equation and not lose anything.
Speaking as someone in the last stages of preparing content for publication, I'm seriously leaning towards dropping plans for a Kindle edition because of this.
Letting libraries check out books is certainly a useful thing. The mere fact that a library is interested enough in your title to buy a copy is an indication of its quality, and has the potential to drive future sales by exposing more people to your book. However, unless there's a part of the equation that Amazon isn't telling us, this new policy completely destroys the value part of that equation from an author or publisher's perspective.
Previously, if those 11,000 libraries wanted to be able to lend my book, I would have gotten 11,000 sales. Now, if I interpret this correctly, all those people checking out the book translate into zero sales. In effect, Amazon is declaring that it has the right to loan copies of your book to anyone for free without you seeing a penny. This not only cuts the legs right out from under your current book sales, but also all future book sales unless you refuse to publish a Kindle version of your next book.
Worse, for those of us who are anti-DRM, we're completely screwed. I don't want DRM on my books, period, because it limits my readers' options for viewing content that they paid for. However, if my readers aren't paying for it, and are instead using a gratis lending model, a DRM-free book basically means that there's nothing stopping someone from checking it out, copying it to a new file, checking it back in, and basically getting the book for free. And unlike downloading it through bittorrent or whatever, because they obtained it through a legal channel, there is no way to track that behavior, no way to police it, and it isn't even all that easy to explain to users why it is wrong, or under what circumstances it is wrong. So books would have to be DRM-encumbered for lending purposes, and it's not clear if Amazon provides any such distinction, nor is it clear if it is even technically feasible for them to make such a distinction within their current model.
And finally, for the ultimate kick in the teeth, the Kindle edition of any book is inherently a substandard experience compared with the EPUB version because Kindle's support for HTML and CSS is utterly abysmal. This means that if I produce a Kindle edition, the vast majority of the readers of my books are likely to be able to freeload without me seeing a penny, and they will be disinclined to buy future content because the current content won't look as good as it should.
So explain to me again why I should support Kindle at all. At this point, despite the fact that I've wasted a week hacking a copy of my EPUB books to look marginally acceptable on Kindle, I'm strongly leaning towards writing off those extra hours as an unfortunate mistake unless Amazon provides clarification of their policy in a way that assuages these concerns. I will, of course, release EPUB versions for more functional readers like iPad, and (if Adobe fixes the four or five major CSS bugs I filed, including one potential security hole/crasher) possibly Nook.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
FYI for Canadians waiting to borrow eBooks for the Kindle from their local library, I received the following response from the Kindle feedback team:
Barnes and Nobles has been doing this for some time now. In fact BN has used this in their advertising.
If they are using Overdrive, you don't need a reader. The app works on your PC, smart phone, notebook, whatever.
The knowledge of a civilization now in the hands of a corporation(s) thanks to DRM and a society that sold freedom for convenience.
Its nice that amazon has decided to offer this feature, but I have been reading library books on my nook since I bought it over a year ago.
Overdrive, which has been licensing books to public libraries for quite awhile now, now offers Kindle format, too.
one Kindle blog listed out the top advantages to having them available in libraries.
It is an interesting blog entry, that points out a bunch of the selfish little things that blogger gets out of it, but he missed one advantage:
It is in the long-term best interests of society to make works of science and the useful arts available for borrowing to all. In fact, broadening the reach of such information is the only reason we suffer copyright to exist in the first place. The profit creators are granted through the right of first sale is just a means to that end.
The amazing part of this story is not the wondrous new opportunity we have to borrow published materials from others after the first sale -- it is the chutzpah of the kleptocracy that kept it from happening on day one. And that selfish little kleptocrat blogger is no better. The point of this is not what it does for you, little man, it is what it does for society.
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My local library has been offering ebook lending for several years. They recommend Overdrive but the drm is just Adobe so you can use any ebook reader which supports adobe drm. You download the book in encrypted format and you get a time limited license which allows you to read it. After the 3 week lending period expires you cannot read the book anymore. There also seems to be a lockout in place so that only a one person can read a given ebook at a time. That sounds pretty silly but I guess it is a requirement of the publisher.
Its a pretty good system and I like being able to browse from home but the selection is still fairly poor.
Yep. It works pretty well , too. The only real problem is that the libraries are stupidly limited to a certain quantity of each book. So if someone else has "checked out" the e-book you want, you can't have it. What was a real limitation of physical books being loaned, has become a gimped feature of electronic books. Of course, it's not B&N's fault... the publishers simply don't know what to do with e-books at all. That's why you see them priced higher than physical hardcovers a lot of the time.
I'll take my Nook over the Kindle any day. ;)
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
To see if your library is included, click on your country/state/province at: http://search.overdrive.com/classic/
Go fuck yourself. (This goes for you blind people, too)
-- Amazon
But do you expect the publishers to let the library have an unlimited number of copies for one flat fee? (Flat fee, regardless of the # of copies read.)
Or do you expect the library (and thus me, the taxpayer) to pay per e-book checkout? I don't expect that there are always N checkouts, regardless of what titles are available. If some new title becomes available, I suspect there are/would be a lot more checkouts of that particular title, compared to total checkouts in an average time period... That would make the library run out of money sooner.
There is such an incredible degree of irony in all this. Libraries were created with the idea that information should be free, but due to the physical cost of the book, we could only check books out for a small time. Now ebooks can be created for free, and we are doing the best we can to make sure they don't get too free. Its time to deal with the practically unbounded copy-write law, and make our libraries just websites that let you download public domain books.
Ok, and that is a problem how? That is part of their business model, selling the 'portal' to more sales.
As long as they don't pull anything funny with the libraries its a good thing.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I absolutely expect that libraries be granted an unlimited amount of time-sensitive loans for a reasonable fee. Sadly that [i]obvious[/i] and very doable solution is hampered by greed on the publisher's behalf. The publishers wouldn't loose any money. People don't go out and buy books because they're not available at the library at that exact moment. If anything, it would promote sales through both the library itself and people generally being more inclined to buy and use e-readers.
There is no reason, at all, to put a theoretical limit on a public service such as this. It's just another example of middle-men and distributors kicking and screaming as they are made obsolete in the wake of an emerging digital alternative.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
How do you know that?
Again, "a reasonable fee" for unlimited amount means they get less money per book for more downloads.
I know because most people don't even bother to go to the library (or read for that matter) in the first place. :P
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune