Amazon Kindle to enable book lending

[akugami]

Amazon announcement link

Amazon will enable the "lending" of ebooks purchased under a Kindle account. The books can be lent to another Kindle user for up to two weeks. While the book is being lent to another user, the owner will be locked out of accessing the book. The negative is that a publisher or rights holder will be the ones to decide what books can or can't be lent.

I have not purchased any ebooks but am interested in doing so. I use Stanza and pretty much all of my books are downloaded from Project Gutenberg. One of the major complaints of ebooks is obviously the fact that you can't lend it to someone else to read as you can with physical books. The other fairly major complaint is the price of the ebooks themselves.

I think Amazon has a huge step up on Apple on the ebook front with the fact that Amazon's Kindle app is available on iOS and Android and presumably in the future it'll have a Kindle app for Windows Phone 7. The fact that you can lend books (pending publisher approval) to other users regardless of what phone/mobile device they have is a huge plus in my opinion.

 

[pm]

This will be nice. I have an iPad and I recently won a Kindle and I like them both. On the iPad, I tend to buy books using Amazon and the iPad Kindle app, but read Project Gutenberg books using iBooks. I like the screen on the Kindle but I think I'll end up eBaying it soon (but I've said that for a while now).

One of my complaints with Amazon is that they frequently price their ebooks more than their paperbacks which is just weird given that you can't lend or sell an ebook (nor can it become a collectors item, nor can you donate it). Now that you can lend some of them, it might start to even the equation a bit. Maybe. I still think ebooks should be 20-33% less than the paperbook version.

 

[gorcorps]

Sweet, the Nook has had the same thing for a while and I can see it being useful if a group of people all used ebooks and had similar tastes. Like families/couples and such.

 

[pm]

Well for couples, they should just share the same Amazon account. Or B&N account.

 

[QueBert]

Sweet, the Nook has had the same thing for a while and I can see it being useful if a group of people all used ebooks and had similar tastes. Like families/couples and such.

I'm sure it'll be just like B&N's Nook, you can only loan a book out a single time, while better than nothing I think it kind of sucks IMHO.

 

[zerogear]

I dunno, for as cheap as the Kindle and nooks are now, I would just get two or something and lend it out.

 

[dingster1]

Ok I think this just pushed me over the edge to buy!

 

[corkyg]

Still not there yet! We read paperbacks constantly - and then trade them with friends. No time limit or EULA BS. If it can be done with printed media, why not digital?

 

[Pliablemoose]

Quick heads up, the Kindle 2 is available for $109 refurbished right now on Amazon, it's the one with free 3G for life (web browsing looks pretty painful though)

 

[Deeko]

Quick heads up, the Kindle 2 is available for $109 refurbished right now on Amazon, it's the one with free 3G for life (web browsing looks pretty painful though)

I have a Kindle 2 and love it - while the new one is definitely better, this is a fantastic deal.

New lending feature is a nice touch too. I actually know quite a few people with Kindles, so it could prove useful.

 

[Pliablemoose]

I have a Kindle 2 and love it - while the new one is definitely better, this is a fantastic deal.

New lending feature is a nice touch too. I actually know quite a few people with Kindles, so it could prove useful.

How's the web browsing? Free 3G for life is pretty enticing...

 

[Deeko]

How's the web browsing? Free 3G for life is pretty enticing...

Not great, but not entirely useless. It works best with simple, wap-designed sites. I've used it to check gmail using their mobile site before.

 

[Pliablemoose]

Am really tempted, have it in my cart...

 

[Deeko]

Go for it. Hard to go wrong for $109. That thing was $299 until this past June.

 

[Dulanic]

Cool, good to hear. Tho like music companies there are plenty of greedy ass publishers that will block lending of books. It's stupid, they already make more money on ebooks /w no distribution costs. But I still love my K3.

 

[akugami]

I'm sure Amazon would love to give you a limits free lending of books. I bought it, I should be able to lend it to whoever I want, with the limit that I can only lend it to one person. However, publishers are asshats and will c*ckblock this for a lot of popular books I bet. If I had to bet, I'd say no best sellers at all.

The main issue for me is not even the lending, it's the damned price. One of the major costs for publishers is targeting how many books to print because book printing is pretty expensive. That cost is taken out of the equation for publishers and Amazon (or Apple, or another distributor) has to foot the bandwidth costs. This is very minimal for books because the few graphics likely are larger than the actual text of the books. Take all of that and then see the books for at the same price as the print versions or sometimes higher and you have a classic case of facepalm.

 

[corkyg]

Just curious. We can buy, sell, and trade audio books, printed books, DVD movies, VHS movies, music CDs, tapes, records, etc., etc. What is so different about a digital print book?

This is a big business here in Tucson: http://www.bookmans.com/

 

[pookie2132]

I think one big issue is if it is digital you could loan that 1 piece of media you purchased to millions of people at the same time. With physical media you are limited to loaning 1 person at a time.

 

[preslove]

Quick heads up, the Kindle 2 is available for $109 refurbished right now on Amazon, it's the one with free 3G for life (web browsing looks pretty painful though)

Is this gone? Anyone have a link?

 

[Pliablemoose]

Still available http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Wireles...8021734&sr=1-3

 

[preslove]

Still available http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Wireles...8021734&sr=1-3

Sweet.

So, kindle peeps, what does the newest one have that this one doesn't?

 

[Deeko]

Sweet.

So, kindle peeps, what does the newest one have that this one doesn't?

-Smaller, thinner, lighter
-Better contrast screen
-Slightly faster page turns
-Webkit based web browser

My girlfriend has the newest one, I have the Kindle 2. Hers is definitely better than mine - but I don't know that I'd pay nearly twice as much for it.

 

[roguerower]

A big question I have: Is 3G really that important? I have a wireless router set up at home for my netbook (desktop is thru a hardline) which would make it really easy to download books via that. I can't find myself justifying the 3G feature unless someone can say it's REALLY important.

 

[Deeko]

A big question I have: Is 3G really that important? I have a wireless router set up at home for my netbook (desktop is thru a hardline) which would make it really easy to download books via that. I can't find myself justifying the 3G feature unless someone can say it's REALLY important.

I use the 3G. I often buy books when I'm not at home - traveling, on the bus, on the tarmac of a runway waiting to take off. I've used the 3G for simple web browsing (like the email example I mentioned above) from time to time too.

If the price for the 3G add-on were high, or if you had to pay for the service, I would understand going with wifi - but for $50, its definitely worth the upgrade.

 

[pm]

I think one big issue is if it is digital you could loan that 1 piece of media you purchased to millions of people at the same time. With physical media you are limited to loaning 1 person at a time.

Well, no, I personally can't. I have absolutely no idea how to share a Kindle book with someone else off of my iPad. Even if I could email it to them, I'm fairly certain that they'd have little luck opening it.

But, even if that were true - that the reason that ebooks can't be shared and are priced higher than paperbacks is that the publishers are worried about privacy - the music industry (vs. bittorrent) proved that is you offer your digital offering through a convienent service at a reasonable price, that most people will buy it rather than download it. I could share all the MP3's on my iPhone with all my friends, but I can honestly say that I have never once done this. By making the reader formats incompatible, limiting the selection of ebooks and pricing the ebooks higher than their paper offerings, the publishers are not showing that they comprehend the lessons of the music industry.