#e-lending

[awesometeennews]

A stress test awaits e-lending firms as bounce rate triples

A stress test awaits e-lending firms as bounce rate triples

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MUMBAI/NEW DELHI: Bounce rates at fintech lenders have nearly tripled in April, in an early indication of financial stress among consumers and small businesses.

The trend is worrying at a time when job losses and disruptions to cash flow are likely to set off defaults, shrink demand for credit and sober valuations for most fintech players. It also comes amid concerns over capital raising…

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[rockgametheorist]

Jack Ma's Bank Deepens Push for Business Big Lenders Won't Touch

[uniquely-portable-magic-blog1]

The first UK e-lending trial involving major UK publishers has been positive, according toSociety of Chief Librarians (SCL) president Janene Cox, because “people who loan books, buy books”.

Cox was speaking at a panel on digital projects in public libraries at the London Book Fair this week.

[crayonworks]

E-lending could be the future of libraries

A government-commissioned report has allayed fears that digital lending could damage the book industry.

Click here to find out more.

[kingly-blog]

The e-lending question.

Photo Credit: goXunuReviews (Cretive Commons)

Library, Publisher and Book, three old school friends, know their tricks, strengths and weaknesses. Needless to say much, a glance is enough between them. One day, a 'new kid' comes to school. Ebook sits in the front desk and literally changes the relationship.

Publisher and Book are clearly threatened. Library still have a chance to make friends with Ebook.

For the reader who wants to borrow a book, the virtues of the ‘new kid’ seem obvious. Clearly it is not the same to borrow an ebook through a virtual library -comfortably seated on a couch at home with an e-reader in hand, than if you have to go to the library to borrow a book and then have to return it after a few days. A better alternative, although more expensive, would be going to a bookstore and buy the book so you can keep it at home after reading it; you could even resell it later if the book does not justify a place in your home library.

But when you want to lend the ebook to a friend, Book still leads. E-lending is not easy yet due to formats incompatibilities. Yet….

And what happens with an ebook? Why should I prefer to buy it instead of borrowing from a virtual library? How many copies of each ebook should be lent? 

According to The Economist, “owners of e-readers are exactly the customers they need: book-lovers with money (neither the devices nor broadband connections come cheap). If these wonderful people switch to borrowing e-books instead of buying them, what then?”

What then?

Then… marketing! If you liked the ebook, you will surely buy another ebook of the same author. If the ebook is on the waiting list at the library, you will surely prefer to buy it. If you liked it, you will certainly recommend it to a friend who will probably buy it.

Virtual libraries are beginning to take shape. Amazon created the Owners’ Lending Library for its Prime members, and teamed up with OverDrive, global leader in digital distribution. A Kindle reader who wants to borrow ebooks from libraries, must use their Amazon account. What for? To be advised that he can buy that book when the loan is ended? Of course Penguin terminated its deal with OverDrive , but it will try a pilot with public libraries.

Smashwords announced Library Direct to allow libraries to acquire their ebook collection. Up to now, it is “available to libraries that host and manage their own ebook checkout systems and that are capable of acquiring a large opening collection”, as they said.

Unglue.it is not a library but has introduced a new concept in the landing universe. “unglue (v. t.) 1. To pay an author or publisher in full, up front, for publishing a Creative Commons ebook.” To resume, they promote a ‘crowdfunding’ to acquire the rights of an ebook to give it to the world. “We work with rights holders to decide on fair compensation for releasing a free, legal edition of their already-published books, under Creative Commons licensing. Then everyone pledges toward that sum.” And just like Kickstarter (a great inspiration for them), only if the goal is reached they collect the pledged funds and pay the right holder. Since then, everyone is free to read and share a legal edition of the ebook, on any device, worldwide.

It is not clear yet what will happen between Ebook and Library, but Library will have to find a way to get along with his new partner if he does not want to get lost along the way.

[mulberryroad]

I once wrote “Treating the digital like the physical is insanity of the highest order.” I think that’s true, but in this case (as in the one that I laid out in the article) it’s libraries that are expecting the digital to act like the physical. We want the benefits of the physical (straightforward circulation, first sale rights, etc) but also the benefits of the digital (unlimited checkouts, easy and fast ILL, infinite storage). Eric Hellman has done an amazing job over at Go To Hellman talking about the economic side of ebook lending. You should go read it, because here’s the truth: We don’t get to have both. Either we deal in containers, which we know and understand and have solid economic models for, or we find a way to deal with content, which we don’t fully understand and is hard and messy and doesn’t work inside the same economic models. The economic models for content are still shaking out, and if the history of other media types is any indication, the middle-men of the process end up being the losers. Back in the Library Journal article from August, I also wrote: Let’s assume that there is and will be no First Sale rights for digital media and, further, that copyright law continues to be written by lobbyists… It also means that we need to stop looking at our current, print-based models and seriously examine what the model for the distribution of digital information should be. We need to determine where the library fits in that ecosystem…

Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal | Library Renewal

This was posted last week, during which time the whole thing has gone pear-shaped and I have dropped out of the loop. But it is interesting reading (the Hellman link can be found at the post.)