Amazon To Offer Kindle ebooks Via Public Libraries 126
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."
What about 1984? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What about 1984? (Score:5, Informative)
Considering it's just Overdrive, which has been around for a while now, yes, libraries have set lending periods. Mine is a choice of 7, 14, or 21 days. Yes, they do automatically get "deleted" (actually they just stop working, at least for ePub titles), but you can re-borrow them if you'd like. The bigger issue is with publishers imposing artificial scarcity on digital titles, forcing libraries to purchase a new copy after it's been borrowed a certain number of times (in order to maintain the same revenue stream they have with dead-tree books, which actually degrade).
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Huh? Why not?
If you're just talking about it being an epub file (which I'd be slightly surprised if the books you can borrow on Kindle are DRM'd epub's, but maybe they are - I'm too lazy to research that):
Calibre.
If you're already going through the trouble of running something to strip DRM, pumping that through an format conversion is almost zero extra work by comparison. You don't even need to install anything if you use one of the many online services to do it.
Not sure why you said "But not Kindle". They
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And there are scripts (and calibre plugins) to do that as well. So it's no different than before.
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Yup. In fact if I want to borrow a library book I can already do it on epub and use the Adobe equivalents to scrub it and Calibre to convert to mobi.
If people could get this stuff working with audio doing it with text is pretty trivial.
Re:What about 1984? (Score:4, Insightful)
On another note: would you rather they didn't expire so you can pay exorbitant late fees?
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You do realize that 1984 was zapped because Amazon found out the publisher wasn't authorized to distribute it, and thus Amazon was not authorized to distribute it?
(something about it being out of copyright in some countries)
It could have been any random book, and they apologized and (supposedly) took measures so that such mass deletions will not occur again if a similar situation presents itself.
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And that makes it OK ?
B&N can't break into my house and take a book back because they didn't have the rights to distribute it. Neither should Amazon be able to.
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See, you're forgetting the fact that the book resides on their servers. So removing their copy took it out of the database. This idea doesn't apply to dead-tree. There's simply no physical analog.
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This ^
That's my real problem with it. People bought it and had it on their hardware. It was then remotely deleted.
How is deleting something that I've bought from hardware that I own different than coming into my home and reclaiming a physical object that I bought ?
The IP industries can't have it both ways. If they want to treat bytes as property when it comes to infringement, they have to accept their own world view when it comes to trying to take products back.
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See, you're forgetting the fact that the book resides on their servers. So removing their copy took it out of the database. This idea doesn't apply to dead-tree.
And I think you can kiss my ass about my FSF membership. I pay my dues. I'm allowed to have my own ideas even still.
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Either two or four weeks, depending on which option the user selects. (The reason someone might pick two weeks is because you can only have so many ebooks checked out at once, typically ten, although that depends on the library.)
That hasn't been already done ? (Score:1)
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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 tak
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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 che
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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 al
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How do you know that?
Again, "a reasonable fee" for unlimited amount means they get less money per book for more downloads.
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I know because most people don't even bother to go to the library (or read for that matter) in the first place. :P
Is there a list of the libraries? (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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This would be through the Overdrive Media Service... and yes there is a list of participating libraries http://www.overdrive.com/About/Partners.aspx#Libraries . I work for a Public Library that does participate and it is a very useful service. OMS has had compatibility with all but Kindle up until now.
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Re:Is there a list of the libraries? (Score:4, Informative)
I've found that the classic search is much better: http://search.overdrive.com/classic/ [overdrive.com]
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Congratulations Amazon (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Congratulations Amazon (Score:4, Interesting)
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...
Of course, we don't know what was going on behind the scenes. It could've been analogous to how other digital music retailers (e.g. Amazon) were able to offer DRM-free music before Apple did, because the powers-that-be behind the scenes were trying to weaken Apple's hold on the market.
I wouldn't be surprised if the big publishers were holding out on Amazon for as long as they could because they felt Amazon has too much sway in the current ebook market.
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Control (Score:1)
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."
Why Local Libraries? (Score:2)
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The local libraries are the ones footing the bill.
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I support the concept of libraries. However, I do agree that in the modern age they could be consolidated tremendously with technology. There is no reason to have stacks of books that need to be sorted every day when you could just download them. I'm sure for the cost of maintaining the local libraries a state could just buy an e-book reader for every citizen...
For Canadian customers (Score:2)
FYI for Canadians waiting to borrow eBooks for the Kindle from their local library, I received the following response from the Kindle feedback team:
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If you are near the US border, cross over and find a library with Overdrive that will allow you to get a card (many rural libraries will--we need registered users). Sign up for your Overdrive account on one of the library's computers, and through the magic of the internet, you should be able to reserve and check them out from your computer at home.
Interesting idea! If a little fraudulent.. I would first want to make sure there was no way this could come back and affect my existing purchased items. In an ideal world this would be a no-brainer, but this is Amazon we're talking about =/
-Aikon
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The existing system is set up to accommodate snowbird
control ot knowledge... (Score:1)
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It was a society that had no choice; capital must find new places to invest and it sure won't stand by and watch the book market disappear. Indefinite 3% compound growth doesn't occur without some effort, after all.
Assuming that history has not ceased, we can shape a new system without many of these twisted behaviors, but we'll have to stand up and dismantle the old one first.
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I'm tempted to post as an AC just in case Amazon come knocking on my door....
Missed One Advantage (Score:4, Interesting)
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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$114 is an "expensive electronic gadget"? (Yes, that's for the ad-supported one.)
See the recent stories about what "the poor" actually have: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/07/what-is-poverty [heritage.org]
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I have no interest in the Heritage Foundation. That just seemed like the best link to the story that I found in a quick search.
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Even if you're poor like a stick $114 is much cheaper than 2000 books made out of dead trees.
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If your point is that the Kindle is, itself, a restricted medium and therefore a threat to increasing the breadth of information distribution, I can see your point. And I think we are fundamentally thinking in the same context; that the question is not how it affects any person or group of people, or even all people in the short run, but how it affects society in the long run. Since it creates a fiat restriction on the private actions of citizens, it must be justified by bedrock societal benefits.
If that is
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I like your perspective. It is an important angle worth considering.
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Been Using A Similar System for a While (Score:2)
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 requirem
Preserving 'Almost Free' (Score:1)
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The thing I like about the Kindle is that it's software as well as the hardware device. I have a Kindle app on my phone, desktop, laptop, and tablet, but no hardware from Amazon.
I think they're more interested in the part where you can press a button and buy the book from Amazon and keep your bookmarks and annotations.
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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?
Except that isn't what's happening. That one copy (or two, or however many for popular novels) the library buys will, as I understand it, be available in any format, but only one of them checked out at a time, of course. If the book's in, you can choose your format and go. There's no "I'll have to buy a kindle" or "I'll have to buy X e-reader".
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Amazon provides Kindle client apps on practically all platforms today - even WP7 and webOS have them. And now they also have a "cloud reader" [amazon.com] that works in any WebKit browser.
Amazon's business model with respect to Kindle and associated services seems to be about making money on book sales, not making money on Kindles. Which also explains why they keep pushing the price on the device down steadily over the last few years. With this program, I'd imagine that library books would automatically expire after a s
No reader needed (Score:2)
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Amazon doesn't particularly care if you buy a Kindle. At the prices they're charging, it's doubtful that their profit margin is very high.
They want you to *have* an Kindle, or Kindle software, so that you will buy Kindle books. *That* they care about.
just a way for Amazon to sell more Kindles (Score:2)
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.
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This is a service called Overdrive which has been around for quite a while. My understanding is that each library has to "buy" the eBooks, and can only lend out each of their "copies" that they "purchased". They can't lend out 2000 copies of a book if they only bought 3. It's basically setup to mirror the physical book model.
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I have borrowed books from the library that I went on to buy.
And honestly most people do not take advantage of the library. You wont be losing many sales. If any.
I sort of feel like I should have just called you a dick and been done with it. Any author who would essentially say F the Library is a dick.
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And honestly most people do not take advantage of the library. You wont be losing many sales.
That is because libraries are inconvenient --- there is a physical location you actually have to go to to find your books, and even once you know where it is, you still have to walk down the stacks to actually get it, assuming they are at the branch you visit. Otherwise you have to wait for ILL to ship it over.
And also because library books are a little gross. It's not their fault, they're just trying to preserve the books so they can lend them to a lot of people, but they have these disgusting cellophane
Re:So Amazon is violating copyrights en masse? (Score:4, Insightful)
You should have spent the time typing your long-winded response to actually researching the topic.
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Hes just an idiot.
Tho, don't libraries still get a discount on what they purchase? "oh no, i wont publish in print either beacuse its not fair"
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11 thousand views of your book is 11 thousand more people who know of it versus zero who know about it at all or care.
All removing your book from kindle will do, is reduce your market, sadly. Amazon may have retarded DRM (and it does, and all ebooks do - Nook is just as horrid) - but at least it's an additional market to your book. 11 thousand now have access, somewhere in there is more than 0 sales for you - yes, amazon makes more money here. That is why you *never* rely on a publisher or 3rd party that h
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Thanks. See that's the sort of information that the Amazon press release should have contained. If it had said, "Local libraries can lend any book that they have on their shelves electronically in a Kindle edition", I wouldn't have jumped to a very wrong conclusion. Instead, the article said Amazon "is making Kindle ebooks available for free in America through 11,000 local public libraries." I'm not sure how to read that sentence other than the way I read it, and the Amazon press release did nothing to
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Hmm. Let's see. First line of the press release (which in this case is the article): "Amazon.com today announced that Kindle and Kindle app customers can now borrow Kindle books from more than 11,000 local libraries in the United States." I fail to see how "borrowing books from libraries" is substantially different from "libraries lending books" other than point of view.
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Amazon "is making Kindle ebooks available for free to the borrowers in America through 11,000 local public libraries." I'm not sure how to read that sentence other than the way I read it, and the Amazon press release did nothing to change my interpretation of that sentence.
That's how I read it. I don't think that's an unreasonable inference as it's how libraries currently work and Amazon wouldn't do well to go with a self-destructive lending model.
Call me an optimist, I guess.
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Where does this or any other article say that Overdrive isn't buying the books through payments to the publishers? Because this is through Overdrive and because of the description of the changes to Whispersync, I'm more inclined to think these books are provided from Overdrive themselves and Amazon has simply provided this already-existing library service to push their books to Kindles. Either way, the library of works available goes through Overdrive, not through Amazon. Overdrive has explicit, direct pa
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Where did this article mention overdrive? The summary says that Amazon is "making Kindle books available for free". Neither the Slashdot article nor the Amazon press release provided any indication that authors would get paid for this in any way. So my reaction is exactly what Amazon should expect from anyone who isn't already familiar with Overdrive and how they operate....
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It mentions Overdrive when you click the link contained within the press release. This is also one of several published within the past year related to this new feature. The other press releases were more explicit about how this would be through a partnership with Overdrive.
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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.
These two sentences don't go together. If a library wants a lending copy, it would buy it. There are your 11,000 sales. Then (whether dead tree or data) they lend out their copy. You wouldn't get sales from lent paper copies any more than you get them from data copies, so all those people checking it out would mean zero sales for hard copies as well. Only people who liked it enough to buy it after they got it from the library would pay for a hard copy, and those people can buy a Kindle copy as well.
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Furthermore, if someone is going to pirate an ebook, why would they bother going through their library's website? I'm sure a few people will do this, thinking that they are somehow doing something "more ethical" or whatever (I've heard this argument from people who check out CDs and rip MP3s as opposed to just torrenting the albums), but it's not going to be very many. Why put up with the extra hassles?
If I had to take a guess, I'd say that the vast majority of people borrowing ebooks through their local li
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Chill out. Seriously. I can't believe you produced such a huge rant on so little information.
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Yes, I did. Nowhere in the Slashdot article or the press release or the blog entry did Amazon say anything about teaming up with anyone, much less the name of the service. Go read it again.
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Slashdot doesn't have articles, it has summaries, which generally should not be relied on as the sole source of information. In addition, the press release has a link 'for more information' in the very first paragraph. And that page has a bullet which says "Visit the website of a U.S. library that offers digital services from OverDrive." I would think that as a writer you would know that summaries and press releases seldom contain all the information someone would like to know about a subject.
In the time
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So you were expecting me to:
All because Amazon couldn't be
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It's not that I'm picking on you, but I get tired of seeing rants going off half cocked like this. Some of the discussions on here are just ridiculous. I generally conside
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See Neil Gaiman's take on e-book piracy, then re-think your stance. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Qkyt1wXNlI
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This may seem like a minor nit, but as someone who has depended on it in the past, I have to mention that you're completely ignoring inter-library loans. The number of books paid for depends more on the borrowing load than on the number of institutions involved in the lending -- and I'm talking about paper, not etexts.
I'm pretty sure there will be some kind of compensation model here.
Also note that Ama
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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.
Maybe you could tell us the name of your book? You give the impression that it has been very thoroughly researched, and provides an insightful look at something or other.
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It's a work of fiction, though it is pedantically researched in a lot of areas.
If I took the time to research my Slashdot posts to the same degree that I research my novels, I wouldn't have time to post. Or write, for that matter. Or do my day job. Just saying. :-)
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Are you aware that the library lending program is administered through OverDrive, not directly through Amazon? Are you also aware that it is opt-in only on a per-title basis?
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People who like a book after reading it from library will buy it for themselves or as gift for someone. I've bought 3 books off Amazon as gifts for others in the past year because I was exposed to them in the library one of which had an $80 p
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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.
Good.
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Sounds like you have a nice oppurtunity. You have a known proven buisness with no competition.
That's the great thing about capitalism. I'm free to compete in this market with Amazon, just like I can compete in the desktop OS market with Microsoft or the shiny electronic toy market with Sony or Apple.
And everyone's free to dine at the Ritz.
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Well, I'd guess starting a business that complies with US laws would be difficult enough. I'm glad I don't have to build one that complies with 194 legal customs and intellectual property laws. So from that point it's understandable, albeit still sad. (I'm outside the US myself)