#ebook lending

[amandasgreen57]

Check it out

The title of this post has two meanings. The first is that I would like you to check out the two pre-orders (soon to be three) I have available. I’ll link to those in a moment. The second is that, by going wide, I now have titles available to be checked out through various library-esque lending programs. More on that as well. Finally, I’ll be doing more work on my Books2Read page over the next…

View On WordPress

[ebookevangelist]

Daily Links and Deals: Europe rules that libraries can lend e-books like normal ones

Daily Links and Deals: Europe rules that libraries can lend e-books like normal ones

Daily Links for day, November 11,  2016:

Spotify is writing massive amounts of junk data to storage drives (Ars Technica) This bug can drastically shorten the life of your hard drive. A fix is promised in the next few days.

Europe rules that libraries can lend e-books like normal ones (Engadget) To be clear, this is only about Public Lending Rights and libraries. Publishers still hate the rulinga…

View On WordPress

[teleread]

Latest OverDrive Digital Library Trends report cites 30-40 percent library ebook boost

Latest OverDrive Digital Library Trends report cites 30-40 percent library ebook boost

America’s favorite ebook and audiobook distributor OverDrive has announced its 2016 Digital Library Trends report ahead of its airing at the 2016 Public Library Association (PLA) Conference. And OverDrive predicts that: “public libraries’ digital catalogs are on pace for another record-breaking year for lending digital titles.”

The predicted rate of ebook lending growth is in fact pretty…

View On WordPress

[librarianbyday]

Amazon testing “Kindle Unlimited,” an ebook subscription service for $9.99/month

Amazon is testing an ebook and audiobook subscription service called “Kindle Unlimited” that offers “unlimited access to over 600,000 titles and thousands of audiobooks on any device for just $9.99 a month.” 

No big-5 publisher appears to be participating yet, based on my preliminary glance through the test pages. 

Read More

[thehannahmachine]

By Christopher Harris:

"As the report notes, '[illegal] file sharing can allow consumers to sample specific songs or albums which can inform them on what to buy' and 'sampling of a specific song may stimulate individual demand for other songs by the same artist (Shapiro and Varian, 1999; Peitz and Waelbroeck, 2006; Belleflamme and Peitz, 2010).' In other words, no matter how the Big Six want to view library ebook lending, the evidence from a similar experience good suggests that our library programs are likely having a positive impact on ebook sales."

[darienlibrary]

Fewer shelves could open valuable space for other library programs, like computer centers, teen tutoring, and adult education classes. For customers, downloading e-books is just convenient. Gussie Young has been checking out books at the Queens Library since moving to New York in 1963. Now with e-readers, she doesn't have to come here to check out books.

Nice rundown for people who are not familiar with e-book lending models in libraries.

[cchelberg]

And to go along with the news about Penguin Books, here’s a couple scripts that you can use yourself, or can share to help express your displeasure with this decision to prevent libraries from lending books.

[ebfling-blog]

An Update on the Nook Lending/Email Issue!

eBookFling CEO George Burke reached out to Barnes & Noble earlier this week to find out why Barnes & Noble changed their LendMe system to require that loaned books be sent to the same email address the recipient uses for their bn.com account. We've already noted the privacy concerns this raises and the practical inconveniences that will result, particularly because B&N does not notify a lender if they've sent a book to an address that does not match up to a bn.com account.

Barnes & Noble requested that we not quote their response publicly, so we will summarize. They are now requiring that when you lend a book through BN.com, you enter the email address the recipient used to sign up for his or her Nook account so that the system can identify the friend's account and grant him or her the temporary license to the Nook book. They did not explain why this sync must now happen on the lending end rather than the receiving end, when a friend clicks the lend link from whatever email it is sent to and then logs into bn.com.

Here's George's response:

Hi, [redacted],

I appreciate the response.  I do understand that a nook user must be validated in order to be granted a license to borrow a copy of the book.  But prior to August 26th's website upgrade, validation of the B&N user would occur when a LendMe recipient clicked the loan offer in his email and logged into his account, at which point the loan would be paired with that user.  An example of this is sending a loan offer to John Doe's secondary email [email protected] could be redeemed by simply clicking the loan offer in his email and logging into his actual [email protected] B&N account.  Now, as of the 26th, that loan offer email offer sent to John can NEVER be redeemed because it wasn't sent to his B&N account email address.  I know I'd be angry to receive a loan offer notice in my email that I cannot actually redeem!

This change seems inconsistent with B&N policy because when giving a gift card to John, it could be sent to any email address and redeemed under his B&N account email address.

Not only is it problematic for the loan recipient, but also a headache for the lender. The lender is not given any notice prior to sending that there is no B&N account attached to that email address.  And during the 7-day loan acceptance period the lender can't cancel the loan offer and get the book back to try to send again; it will remain in limbo for 7 days.  Unless his friend contacts the lender about how the heck to borrow this book he's been sent, the lender will never even know there was an email address mismatch.

This change will cause plenty of unredeemable loan offers due to this error.  Should a LendMe recipient really endure an unredeemable loan offer staring him in the face for 7 days as a result of faulty authentication logic, when really the loan can simply be paired with the borrower's account at login, making a headache-free lending experience as it was pre-August 26th?

My belief is that this change did not occur as an effort to shut down a lending community like as eBookFling, but is rather an unanticipated glitch when upgrading the website.  Would you agree?  

And is it possible to recognize this glitch and revert to authenticating the B&N user upon clicking the loan offer and logging in?

 ****

We'll keep you updated as we know more.