We have still to address ebooks for free from your armchair via your public library versus ebooks to buy, or licence from the internet. The challenge is real and continues to demonstrate that digital is different.
We saw Barnes and Noble and Amazon open up their respective doors to book lending and although this is still on a small scale. We have seen Amazon forging a relationship with Overdrive and providing ebooks alongside Overdrive into libraries. It is also easy to envisage that together with Google’s cloud approach books on demand, for individual rental or subscription may not too is not far away and it is easy to see Apple ticking all the boxes. It is also easy to envisage this being the way to create effective reselling or licensing of used ebooks.
Now we read that the other albeit smaller aggregator Kobo, has also an eBook lending program planned this year! Although Kobo has not divulged all of their plans for lending program it is defiantly coming and probably a must if they are to keep up with the bigger competition.
The challenge for all these new initiatives is to get Publishers to agree to it and although the bigger ones may be cautious and slow to adopt, independents are more likely to adopt a more adventurous and early adopter approach.
In order for Kobo to be on par with the biggest companies in the e-reader and ebook market, they have to implement ebook lending and also a self-publishing program.
1 comment:
To me the big deal is that books never needed a player until now. Your old 78 records had to have a player with a big horn speaker to hear Robert Johnson, for example.
You accepted that. I know coz I'm 187 years old. Same with 45s and 33s. Then tapes and CDs. And now MP3s.
But books, you think Good Christ, can't we just get on with it, read the damn thing! And a lotta people don't wanna pay out $200 for some player. Gadget people love it, and there's a lot of them....but it's not the same as book lovers.
But to me the big transition is that books have to have a player.
And with loaning, well, I guess you gotta pay for a player...unless the library offers one as part of the loan.
I've read books on my phone. It's ok. But it still looks part of the BIG devaluing of information that seems to be coming.
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