Amazon Kindle book lending quietly goes live

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_200549320_receive?nodeId=200549320

by eng • 16 years ago

80 63 16 years ago

And as usual, people outside of the United States get a sub-par experience.

"At this time, Kindle book lending can only be initiated by customers residing in the United States. If a loan is initiated to a customer outside the United States, the borrower may not be able to accept the loan if the title is not available in their country due to publisher geographical rights."

I'm confident ebooks will become DRM-free in the near future, and when that happens we won't have to worry about all of these nonsensical limitations.

BBonifield• 16 years ago

It's really too bad that Amazon dropped the ball on this. You get to loan a book once, and the recipient only gets two weeks to read it. What a ridiculous implementation of such a great concept.

One of the major things that's kept me away from eBooks is that I can't share them with friends. In the office, we often pass a book around from person to person when we like it, and online lending should be just as simple and straightforward. Instead, we get a restrictive and janky process. Well played Amazon.

weej• 16 years ago

I couldn't agree more. Being a Kindle owner, I was really excited with this proposal when it was initially pitched. Amazon took a great idea and implemented it horribly.

It's not clear if this is the publishers or Amazon (out of fear from pubs) imposing such limitations on the lending process.

It really pisses me off that in the digital world with DMCA and DRM you don't have fair use of a product/art you purchase legally. You should be able to disseminate it freely. If I want to loan a friend a music album or book, it should be my right.

Lastly, has Amazon or anyone thought of modifying the DRM to allow ownership transfer? For instance after reading a DRM Amazon book I could transfer ownership to my local library.

allwein9• 16 years ago

I'm toying with the idea of getting another Kindle just to user borrowed books from friends.

1. Give them my "Lending Kindle"

2. Have them register it against their account

3. Download the book(s) I want to borrow

4. Turn off wireless

5. They can deregister my Kindle right away and I take my good old time reading the books I borrowed.

spicyj• 16 years ago

In fact, you don't need to turn off wireless. You can even deregister from the device's Settings menu and it'll keep your downloaded books. (Even if those span multiple accounts!)

davidw2• 16 years ago

> I can't share them with friends

Friends? I still don't see a good way of sharing them with my wife without either physically giving her the Kindle or registering her with my Amazon credentials.

That's more than a minor annoyance. I like the device a lot, but mostly because I live in Italy and getting English language books is a Major Hassle and not that cheap, either. With the Kindle, it's both instantaneous, and cheap to boot. If I lived somewhere with a decent used books store, though, I don't think I would have bothered.

fletchowns• 16 years ago

Is Amazon really to blame for the less than ideal lending system? Or is it the book publishers that are responsible for the rules of the lending system?

allwein9• 16 years ago

Considering that it's the exact same identical terms as the B&N Nook lending feature, I think that it's the book publishers who are responsible.

allwein9• 16 years ago

I think that it's ridiculous that the lent book is unavailable to the original purchaser while it's loaned out. That completely defeats the purpose of an e-book.

Edit: Do the downvoters disagree on the benefits of having a book in electronic form? Or do they think that the restrictions are not unreasonable/ridiculous?

bbatsell• 16 years ago

The whole point of this feature is to make e-books behave slightly more like real books. As it stands normally, you can't share your purchased e-book with anyone — it's prohibited by the terms of use you signed and enforced by DRM. This allows you to share your e-book like you would share a real book (well, once), wherein you can't read the book after you've loaned it out because...you don't have the book.

allwein9• 16 years ago

I realize the point of the feature, but it really is an anti-feature.

It's like if you weren't allowed to skip tracks on a CD, but had to fast-forward through each individual song so that it would be more like a cassette tape.

allwein9• 16 years ago

I've already confirmed that there is a "work-around" for this. Load the book up on your Kindle (or other device). Disable wireless (or other networking). Then perform the loan from your computer.

This way the book will be available on your device (since it doesn't know it's been lent out) and on your friend's device. Just don't re-enable wireless until you're done with the book or the loan has expired.

This way, at least, I was able to share a book with a friend and we could both read it at the same time to discuss it.

rdl3• 16 years ago

Once you're willing to violate the license and terms of service, there are much more thorough solutions: just get a bunch of kindles on a single account and share books (although if you read at the same time, the "read location" syncing could be annoying), or download to computer, rip the copy protection off, and manually load onto kindles, desktops, etc. (and optionally upload to torrent sites, Swedish FTP servers, wikileaks, etc.).

I am personally still at the "I buy books I am interested in even if I won't read them for a while, as long as they're available for Kindle and not more expensive than the paperback, to reward the publisher for making them available on Kindle" stage, but if I were angry at publishers (as I am at the RIAA), the above would seem like a better solution.

anamax• 16 years ago

How would you suggest that book sellers handle lending.

Note the word "sellers" - they don't make any money from lending, just from selling.

They're really scared that they'll sell one copy and everyone will read that copy (or copies of it).

Note - "they should make less money" isn't an answer.

tejaswiy• 16 years ago

The same way that they've been handling it till now. Book lending isn't really a new invention. Even with the turn off the wireless hack, you can have a max of two copies of the book at once. I don't think it's that big a deal.

ceejayoz• 16 years ago

> Note - "they should make less money" isn't an answer.

They should make more money isn't a very good answer, either.

eBooks are massively cheaper to distribute, yet we see a minimal discount. Add in the fact that they're limiting lending to once per book when I can lend a physical book infinitely many times and you're looking at higher profits for eBooks than normal books.

rit5• 16 years ago

Why? Otherwise it's piracy. I can't read my copy of the physical book while my friend is borrowing it.

It is a reasonable compromise between amazon and the publishers that will hopefully become better as time goes by. As the publishers become more and more comfortable with it and less concerned that it will destroy their business (e.g. they'll need to adapt) the restrictions will get lighter, much like they did with iTunes.

allwein9• 16 years ago

How is it piracy? They would still have the restriction of a single lending for a single 14-day period.

Right now, my girlfriend and I are reading the same physical book. I read it at work over my lunch break and she reads it at night before going to bed. Is this piracy too?

jonhendry2• 16 years ago

IMHO, you have an odd notion of what the purpose of an e-book is.

I don't buy or use ebooks because of how convenient it is to copy them and give the copies to other people. I use them because they're more convenient for me.

dave1619• 16 years ago

Can you really loan out a book just once in its lifetime? Or just once every 14 days?

rit5• 16 years ago

It looks like it depends on the book. The publishers get to set that restriction. If I recall, the same obnoxious restriction was enabled on Nook lending as well.

Hopefully this will lighten as time goes by and the publishers stop being so short sighted. I think they're worried about the loopholes involved such as the turning off wireless with another poster already confirmed works.

allwein9• 16 years ago

Can you point out somewhere that it says the number of lends is set by the publisher? I only saw that the publisher's were in charge of whether it was lendable or not, and not the individual terms of the lend.

pedanticfreak• 16 years ago

For some reason, my brain finds the former to be worse than being unable to lend the book at all.

If I can't lend it, it's more like seeing a movie or going to a concert. I paid for the experience and now it's gone. Being only able to lend it once is really less of a lend and more of a "comes with one free trial for a friend." I think it might be the abuse of the word 'lend' that bothers me more than anything.

rit5• 16 years ago

A lot of people are speculating if Amazon came up with these terms or not.

From everything I can find (esp. this article - http://gizmodo.com/5388168/dont-get-too-excited-about-the-no...) the restrictions on Kindle lending are identical to the ones the Nook has (at least when it rolled out).

The B&N site for Nook currently states:

Exclusive LendMe™ Technology NOOK's exclusive LendMe™ technology lets you share favorite books with friends. LendMe™ books can be lent for up to 14 days. Just choose the book you want to share and send it to your friend's NOOK, computer, or handheld device enabled with NOOK software.

It sounds like the publishers are the ones setting the terms.

rdamico• 16 years ago

"Exclusive LendMe™ Technology"

Looks like Marketing really had fun with this one :)

c2• 16 years ago

Doesn't matter to customers though - most will not do this research themselves (as evidenced by comments in this thread).

Companies like Amazon basically are caught between a rock and a hard place. Either implement the sub-par experience which is what publishers let them (the Nook experience) and have customers complain about your draconian DRM - or don't implement it and have customers complain about not having the features of the Nook.

Considering the Kindle is the market leader in this space, I'm not sure it was the right choice to follow Nook into this space with a sub-par experience. Now the feature and it's limitations are more highly visible, and DRM is front and center on people's minds again.

JunkDNA• 16 years ago

I have recently observed that buying and using ebooks is like being put into a time machine and being forced to re-live the early days of digital music downloads. Do we seriously have to re-learn all those lessons in every single industry that starts to shift to digital content?

DanielBMarkham2• 16 years ago

I think the answer is yes -- because people who grew up with one business model find it very, very hard to give it up, logic be damned.

I'm at the point now where I have a lot of money invested in my kindle e-books. E-books that Amazon says that they really own and won't let me share with folks (until now)

Wonder how much abuse the average user is going to take before they decide that a book is a book. You buy a book, you read a book, then you give or loan it to somebody else. No amount of DRM and legal contracts in the world is going to change that. It's the common sense and natural way of doing things by billions of people versus the state, custom-made laws, and digital jails.

Same game, different channel.

So yes, we're still going to go down that road.

CWuestefeld2• 16 years ago

Daniel, while I agree with what you said, I must in the interest of fairness say that I still see a flaw in the argument.

people who grew up with one business model find it very, very hard to give it up, logic be damned ... Wonder how much abuse the average user is going to take before they decide that a book is a book

You're assuming (as am I) that e-books are the same as dead trees, and it's the publishers holding their heads in the sand.

But why must that be the answer? Why can't it be that we're wrong, that this is a brave new world that we need to adjust to?

anonymoushn• 16 years ago

I have found pirating and using ebooks to be perfectly reasonable as there are no hurdles to jump over and there is no possibility that your books will disappear from your Kindle without your permission. In fact, as far as Amazon is concerned, I've never put anything on my Kindle. My main problem is that many books I want to read cannot be found in this form for as much as a year after they are published.

VB6_Forever2• 16 years ago

I'm no advocate of piracy but having twice been effectively ripped off by DRM I can see where you're coming from

w1ntermute3• 16 years ago

Anyone know why it takes so long? Shouldn't it be possible to crack the DRM on Kindle (or other) ebooks and pirate them? I thought the reason it was so hard to pirate books in the past was because they had to be scanned (and preferably OCRed).

myth_drannon• 16 years ago

Another side effect of ebooks is that public libraries now increasingly rely on the electronic versions of the books to save space,money and they started to unload physical books by thousands. Although it applies mostly to fiction, but no need to pirate these books , you can get them for $1.

InclinedPlane• 16 years ago

Yes.

You do not realize how arrogant and powerful the corporations that have been in control of these industries are. Historically they have had their way and raked in enormous profits for so little effort to such a degree that the idea that they have to bend to the will of customers or to technological innovation is completely foreign to them.

rit5• 16 years ago

The sad part of the only lend once restriction that seems to be prevalent is that the most likely side effect of the 14 day loan is using it to get your friends or family hooked on a series.

I just sent my sister a trial loan for the first book in a series I enjoyed and think she will, and I don't really forsee her calling or emailing me to ask for the second book. If she likes it she'll just buy it herself and keep reading.

Being able to loan the book out repeatedly for a good series is likely to generate a LOT of sales for the publishers. But most of them likely don't or won't see that.

allwein9• 16 years ago

At some point, Kindles are going to get cheap enough (~$50) that I'm not going to mind lending one out indiscriminately. I'll just load one up with the ebook I want to lend and then let my friend borrow it for however long it takes him to read it.

lwhi• 16 years ago

I think the idea of 'buying' an ebook is a ridiculous concept in itself.

I think it would be more sensible to employ a model where books are provided via a rental service.

Charge for the service, not the IP.

diego_moita2• 16 years ago

If your ebook reader is a Sony, Nook, Literati or Kobo you can lend ebooks from hundreds of North American public libraries: http://www.overdrive.com

username3• 16 years ago

Amazon, please make a digital bookshelf or digital public library so people can borrow e-books without asking me and I can take them back whenever I want.

rdl3• 16 years ago

I've just purchased multiple Kindle devices over the years and loan a physical device to someone who wants something to read at my house, on a trip, etc. I usually travel with an iPhone 4, iPad, Kindle DX, and MBP17, so it's pretty easy to loan the iPad or the DX to someone for a day or two. (especially useful when on a diving trip, since a lot of people don't seem to bring computers at all, wtf?)

I really wish iOS had a "guest mode" so I could easily restrict access to my personal information, browser cookies, etc. As it is, the DX is my preferred device to loan, or "I'll make you an account on my laptop."

rdl3• 16 years ago

There is of course the classic GNU/FSF essay: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

aelaguiz• 16 years ago

I wish I had read a bit more before I went on a lending spree :( I wonder if I can de-lend a book ...

VB6_Forever2• 16 years ago

Amazon already has the infrastructure in place to allow people to sell physical books secondhand

And now you can lend a kindle book and it becomes unavailable to you for the duration of the loan.

So everything is in place to allow a secondhand market for kindle books.

Although isn't Audible an Amazon company (shudder)

diego_moita2• 16 years ago

As a Sony eReader owner I find all of this pathetic: all my ebooks are either (unlocked) epub or pdf. "Sharing" is an irrelevant concept for me.

But I must confess that, as a programmer, I feel envy for the Kindle owners that can program & hack their devices.

rmc• 16 years ago

Piracy is good for the customer.

A pirated ebook has none of this restrictions. It's simply a better product.

phamilton• 16 years ago

Restrictions like requiring payment?

sleight42• 16 years ago

(1) Can someone, perhaps an Amazon employee, clarify if "loan once" means exactly what it says? Can we only loan a kindle book to one person one time only? The book cannot be loaned again to anyone? Or cannot be loaned again to the same person?

(2) As an early adopter of Kindle, It's particularly sad that, as I peruse my Kindle collection, the vast majority of our books are not loanable. I can't say that I'm surprised. But I am annoyed by it. This is perhaps a large factor in the soft launch of the loaning feature.

brockhaywood• 16 years ago

Given that i have read this on just about every tech site, did it really go live, quietly?

coffeedrinker• 16 years ago

Wow, a lot of comments about taking and reading without actually paying. I expect that at slashdot, but I guess I expected more from Hacker News readers.

Some of us write books and do expect to be remunerated for them. If you do not like the system, or the price, then do not purchase them. If you want to read something, then give a little back to the author. What makes you think that your work deserves pay and someone else's doesn't?

kmfrk• 16 years ago

If it really is the case that you can only let an acquaintance read the book once - for a total of 14 days - it's not lending; it's a friggin' coupon.

It reminds me of StarCraft 2's Guest Passes that let players have StarCraft 2 for x amount of days or play it y amount of hours, whichever is exhausted first. Except that there is a finite number of people you can give the passes.

They should really reframe the feature so it doesn't become a parody of lending. Think of all the jokes that are bound to follow from this.

Lending is one of the biggest advantages of owning physical media. This obviously does not solve that problem. Come to think of it, it almost exacerbates it. I had sort of forgot about the problem, but now it's out there, and I know Amazon is likely to be a bad place to get books from if I want to hang on to a sliver of hope that lending will be possible.

In my mind, they should have put the "lending" feature on ice and see if anything better came along; it makes them look bad and their competitors better by comparison. iBooks already supports highlighting and highlight sync, which is one of my most important features, believe it or not.

Added: I was just reminded of the time we had to use Adobe Flash in college. The university couldn't care less about the students, so we were just told to get it. This, to the righteous paragon that is yours truly, meant getting the trial. Unfortunately for my like-minded friends and I, the trial period barely lasted the entire duration of the course, and woe unto the good student who installed it early to test it out and play around with it. At the very least, it was going to expire before the oral exams.

In Amazon's case, this means that textbooks will be rendered completely useless in terms of lending. It would have been an interesting market, but I'm sure the textbook mafia doesn't mind. Used books is supposedly its biggest threat according to another Hacker News thread.

Should Apple manage to twist the arm of the publishers, I wonder how the synced highlighting would work, seeing that your copy is removed after the lending duration, should they use the same model. They obviously can't prevent you from lending textbooks and allow other book categories, so the road is fraught with challenges. None of these have been solved very well by Amazon, though.

parfe• 16 years ago

I think the concept of lending someone an ebook is ridiculous and is a serious detriment to an increasingly digital society.

I want to be able to give my books away. Same as I can with a physical book. But the idiotic idea that I'm somehow licensing the digital version prevents that. When I'm done with an ebook it has zero value to me. These publishers are saving money selling ebooks and then taking away what rights consumers used to have.

If I license content for my kindle I am not a book owner.

Amazon Kindle book lending quietly goes live

Related Stories