(From the Atlantic)
One of the complaints I hear a lot from people who are resistant to the Kindle is that they can’t borrow or lend the books they buy. It looks like that’s about to change: Amazon is now enabling lending, albeit with some restrictions:
The capability, which will be introduced later this year, will let buyers of Kindle e-books lend their Amazon e-book purchases just once, for a period of 14 days. (And just like an old-fashioned book, the lender cannot read their own book while it is virtually in the hands of a friend.) Sharing will work for both Kindle device owners and users of Kindle apps on other gadgets, like the iPad and iPhone. There’s a catch. Not all of the company’s 720,000 e-books will be lendable. “This is solely up to the publisher or rights holder, who determines which titles are enabled for lending,” said Amazon in its announcement.
I doubt that this is the final form that lending will take; new features like this are usually amended through a series of expansions and contractions before they settle into a stable set of rules.
It’s interesting to think through what this means. On the one hand, this will cut into sales a little bit–now two readers can enjoy each ebook, rather than one. On the other hand, the ability to lend vastly increases the network effects of e-readers–and Amazon, with the biggest selling model, is likely to benefit from this the most. Moreover, by breaking down one of the major objections to buying, this may encourage a wider audience to finally invest.
I’d expect to see some changes to support this: library licenses with special borrowing privileges, perhaps, while publishers withhold borrowing rights on hot new releases.
The thing I’d like most–though I admit this is highly unlikely–is the ability to give away one’s Kindle books permanently, with one’s notes in the
margins. One could envision centuries old ebooks with talmudic collections of notes–with the price of the book rising according to the quality of previous owners. I don’t say this is very likely, mind you. But it would be very neat.
armanzaman 