Amazon today announced Kindle Library Lending, a new feature launching later this year that will allow Kindle customers to borrow Kindle books from over 11,000 libraries in the United States. Kindle Library Lending will be available for all generations of Kindle devices and free Kindle reading apps. It’s not clear from today’s announcement how many titles will be available.
Customers will be able to check out a Kindle book from their local library and start reading on any Kindle device or free Kindle app for Android, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, PC, Mac, BlackBerry, or Windows Phone. If a Kindle book is checked out again or that book is purchased from Amazon, all of a customer’s annotations and bookmarks will be preserved.
According to Paid Content, the company wants people to see the Kindle as a reading device and the apps as a reading platform, not an Amazon-purchase-delivery system. That’s one reason it’s allowed sharing of some books (it’s up to the publisher whether a title can be part of the lending program) under controlled circumstances and why it’s allowed services making lending between strangers possible.
Amazon is working with OverDrive, the leading provider of digital content solutions for over 11,000 public and educational libraries in the United States. OverDrive offers DRM protection and download services for publishers, libraries, schools, and retailers. Kindle Library Lending will be available later this year for Kindle and free Kindle app users.
Overdrive’s Blog explains what can be expected when the program launches:
- The Lending program is only available for libraries, schools, and colleges in the United States.
- The program will support publishers’ existing lending models.
- Users’ confidential information will be protected.
- Kindle eBook titles borrowed from a library will carry the same rules and policies as all our other eBooks.
- A user will be able to browse for titles on any desktop or mobile operating system, check out a title with a library card, and then select Kindle as the delivery destination.
- A library’s existing collection of downloadable eBooks will be available to Kindle customers. As they add new eBooks, those titles will also be available in Kindle format for lending to Kindle and Kindle reading apps.
- Your library will not need to purchase any additional units to have Kindle compatibility. This will work for your existing copies and units.
Some publishers have placed arbitrary limits on the books they allow libraries to lend. HarperCollins, for example, recently capped its lending program at 26 loans, a limit many libraries and librarians were incensed about.
The way books are created, distributed and read is changing. Amazon, Borders, Barnes and Noble and independent booksellers like Powell’s Books in Portland are heading into unknown territory.
According to Forrester’s five-year forecast for eBooks in the U.S., 2010 will end with a total of $966 million in eBook sales. It’s expected to triple, with $3 billion in sales by 2015. At that point the industry will be forever altered, says the study’s author. Penguin Books sees ebooks hitting 10 percent of book sales next year (it’s currently four percent in the U.S.).
Forester says 14% of Americans — 27 million people – plan on purchasing a tablet device next year.
A similar study by the Magazine Publishers of America found that nearly 60 percent of U.S. consumers expect to purchase an e-reader or tablet within the next three years.
Today, just 7% of online adults who read books read e-books.
Publishers need to make ebooks the new default for publishing, says McQuivey of Forrester Research.
The e-book market is the fastest-growing segment of the bookselling industry. Goldman Sachs forecast in April that sales of e-books in the U.S. would rise by 47 percent each year sequentially until 2015. They forecast $3.2 billion in e-Book sales by 2015.
- Goldman forecasts Apple’s e-book market share to explode to a third of all e-books sold in 2015. Currently they have 10 percent of the market.
- Amazon’s has half the market share presently. Goldman expects Amazon sales to fall to 28 percent by 2015.
- Currently Barnes & Noble has just 5 percent market share. Goldman expects this to grow to 15 percent of e-book sales by 2010.
Amazon says magazine and newspaper publishers can earn 70-percent royalty on each title they sell in the Kindle Store. Amazon also introduced a self-service publishing tool for magazines and newspapers, similar to its Digital Text tool for books.
Related e-book articles on Dailywireless include; Amanda Hocking: e-Book Sensation, Pagination comes to Google Docs, Adobe: Tablet Publishing for Android, Google Editions: Web eBooks Readied , Bookstores: Preparing for E-Books?, e-Publishing: The New Normal, iPad Publishing Model: It’s People!, Here Come the Tablets, 2010: 11 Million Tablets, Google: King of all Media?, WiFi Nook: $149, Free Download for iOS 4 Ready , Starbucks: Free WiFi + Free Content, Scribd Does HTML 5 Magazines, Kindle Announces 70% Royalty Option, Media’s Primordial Soup: Tablets, Scribd Does HTML 5 Magazines, Tablets, Tablets, Tablets, E-Magazines: Pay Once, Play Anywhere, The $99 Android Tablet, Barnes & Noble: Self Publishing this Summer, Apple Sells 1M iPads, Google Editions: World’s Largest Virtual Bookstore?, Google Tablet for Verizon?, Android Outsells Apple, Flash Support in Android 2.2, Battle of the eBooks, Dell Android Tablet for AT&T/T-Mobile?, Google Tablet: Android or What?, and Tablet Revolution!
