Amazon said available e-books will come from "a range of publishers under a variety of terms," though the Wall Street Journal said the six largest U.S. publishers are not participating due to concern over future sales. Users can borrow one e-book at a time, and any notes or bookmarks will be saved if you re-borrow the book down the road.
Amazon's library lending program went live last month. The company did not mention if the e-book lending program included participants from self-publishing platforms like Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) or Kindle Singles. Most e-books offered by major publishers in the Kindle store are generally priced much higher than books from self-publishers, who tend to offer their work for $0.99-$2.99 per book. Amazon (AMZN) is launching an e-book library today exclusively for Kindle and Kindle Fire users who are also Amazon Prime subscribers. As the e-reader and tablet wars heat up, Amazon.com Inc. is launching a digital-book lending library that will be available only to owners of its Kindle and Kindle Fire devices who are also subscribers to its Amazon Prime program.
A commuter, left, reads on a Kindle, an Amazon product. Amazon's new book-lending library cannot be accessed via apps on other devices. Several senior publishing executives said recently they were concerned that a digital-lending program of the sort contemplated by Amazon would harm future sales of their older titles or damage ties to other book retailers. Moreover, Amazon will restrict borrowers to one title at a time, one per month. Borrowers can keep a book for as long as they like, but when they borrow a new title, the previously borrowed book automatically disappears from their device.
The new program, called Kindle Owners' Lending Library, cannot be accessed via apps on other devices, which means it won't work on Apple Inc.'s iPad or iPhone, even though people can read Kindle books on both devices. This restriction is intended to drive Kindle device sales, says Amazon.
Amazon Prime began as a membership plan to offer package-shipping perks. Amazon, the market leader in e-readers, made Kindle titles available to libraries beginning in September and libraries said the impact already has been significant.
At the Seattle public-library system, e-book borrowing rose 32% in the month after Kindle books became available, said Seattle's electronic-resources librarian Kirk Blankenship. "There's a lot of people that can't afford Amazon Prime," he said. Russell Grandinetti, vice president for Kindle content, said "the vast majority" of participating publishers were receiving a flat fee for their titles, while a more limited group is being paid the wholesale price for each title that is borrowed. "For those publishers, we're treating each book borrowed as a sale," he said.
"All site promotion, especially of backlist titles, drives sales in the Kindle Store."
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