Amazon to lend Kindle books at 11,000 US libraries Amazon is preparing a new service called Kindle Lending Library that will allow users of its popular e-reader to check out Amazonian ebooks from 11,000 neighborhood and educational libraries. "We're excited that millions of Kindle customers will be able to borrow Kindle books from their local libraries," said Amazon Kindle …
Does this have anything to do with HarperCollins saying libraries have to purchase a new digital copy every time they lend the old one out 26 times? Introducing an artificial "tattering" to prop up their business model? What does this cost the libraries?
http://www.reghardware.com/2011/03/02/library_e_books_get_time_limit/
"and which provides ebook library-lending services to owners of the Sony Reader, a petite and superior device but less successful than Amazon's Kindle."
I have been using library lending in the UK, for free on my EPUB reader for the last year, whilst braindead Kindle owners have been buying their copies....
... oh yes it is - easy enough to do with a quick google and then running it through Calibre. I have no qualms about doing this as my taxes go to the library and I delete the book after.
What trolls like the above do not tell you is it is not instant lending. You have to go in to a queue until the book is free, and as this can be up to 3 weeks per person in the queue before you, prepare to wait a month or two before you actually get the book.
Seeing as digital copies are, to all intents and purpose, infinitely durable and infinitely abundant, there is no reason -- other than mean-spiritedness -- for the borrower to have to "return" them after the loan period.
(The local council-run, paper book library don't know that I'm not photocopying everything I borrow, apart from that that would be insanely expensive compared to just buying my own copies of the books.)
I don't understand this announcement and haven't found any coverage adequately explaining it. My local library already has ePub books, for which I assume they paid the publishers. Will Kindle now accept them? Or is Amazon thinking that libraries will now happily buy the same books again in Kindle format?
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