Woah

[quivo]

Apparently, you can loan some Kindle books now:

From an Amazon Help page:
Eligible Kindle books can be loaned once for a period of 14 days. The borrower does not need to own a Kindle -- Kindle books can also be read using our free Kindle reading applications for PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android devices. Not all books are lendable -- it is up to the publisher or rights holder to determine which titles are eligible for lending. The lender will not be able to read the book during the loan period.

And there are directions on that page for doing this. Anyone feel like testing this feature and giving us a trip report?

Edit: Okay, I found a couple books that had the "Loan This Book" button, and it looks like anything that can be loaned will use the Nook model. I.e. lend it once for 14 days, and that's it. This included a book that I know that the author published on his own through Amazon, which makes me think that the feature is more or less an item they're putting in so that Barnes and Noble can't say they're the only ones that do it.

I do wonder if self-publishers will eventually be able to make it so their book can be loaned more than once, but I also doubt that Amazon has made provisions for that straight off.

Comments

[elf]

Small, indie publishers & authors will realize that treating customers like criminals is bad for business. Big publishers aren't used to thinking about book *readers* at all; for decades, their customers have been distributors, not end users.

For most of that time, big publishers have ignored little publishers--niche genre presses couldn't get space in mainstream bookstores, so they sold to markets that big publishers couldn't be bothered to research enough to find out what they wanted. (Scifi, romance & erotica, LGBT...) It's fascinating to watch them not admit that they're suddenly in direct competition with lines of books they never wanted to acknowledge existed.

(OT: There's a link to my DW in my MR sig. Which, as far as I know, nobody's ever followed. I switched my default userpic to this one after starting an ebook review comm for the MR crowd; it's currently got absolutely nothing in it 'cos none of us can figure out how to start.)

[nashira]

Which is a shame about the big houses, really, because without readers of some variety, they simply wouldn't exist. Authors would be writing to themselves. Hell I don't even think $15 for an ebook is that bad, but then here DTB's even paper backs are often $20-$50 - an expensive habit, if one buys new often.

I love the little houses, though. And I've discovered a lot of the people who run them are excellent, decent people. And I've stopped reading as much from "mainstream" publishers as I might have before. There's more variety, more writing voices that aren't all the same and I can often afford a whole series at a time if I like it. To me, this is brilliant even though I have to read them on my laptop or iPod (saving for a 650. Ugh. Money.) they're just as enjoyable, sometimes more than a paperbook - for one they don't keep letting the bookmarks fall out, like the most recent paper book I was reading did. -.-

(OT: I think I actually have clicked it, but New Years and Christmas drained me and it took the icon to make me go OH RIGHT. Braindead am I. I also saw that when I was flicking through MR this morning, I wish I was better at reviewing stuff or I'd pitch in. Some reason I can rec fanfics, but working out how to write a book review makes me go '...Erm.')