Action/Adventure Aficionados discussion
Recommendations
>
Kindle or Nook Lending Thread
date
newest »

If you are not familiar with Kindle lending and you want to find out if a book is available for lending or not...go to the amazon webpage for the kindle edition of the book and scroll down to the Product Details section. If the book is lendable you will see "Lending: enabled". Here is an example for the Wool Omnibus that is lendable: http://www.amazon.com/Wool-Omnibus-Ed...
If the book is not lendable you will see "Lending: Not Enabled"
Amazon allows books to be loaned out one time only and for a period of 14 days.
If the book is not lendable you will see "Lending: Not Enabled"
Amazon allows books to be loaned out one time only and for a period of 14 days.
Here is the Kindle Lending Instructions link from the Amazon website:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custome...
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custome...

That part really pisses me off about the ebook's rights. If I order it with the BUY NOW button (per Bruce Willis' lawsuit) I own it and should be able to loan it to whoever I want. Just like a paper copy. But Amazon claims they are "licensing" the book to us, so they can allow us to loan it or not depending on the capricious whim of their overlords.
Melissa wrote: "I, Curmudgeon wrote: "And..some books on kindle do not allow borrowing ....like "Rook"."
That part really pisses me off about the ebook's rights. If I order it with the BUY NOW button (per Bruce W..."
Yes, if I "buy" a DvD, I don't have to go back to Block Buster or Best Buy to see if I have permission to let my brother in Texas watch it. Why do I have to with a book I paid for?
That part really pisses me off about the ebook's rights. If I order it with the BUY NOW button (per Bruce W..."
Yes, if I "buy" a DvD, I don't have to go back to Block Buster or Best Buy to see if I have permission to let my brother in Texas watch it. Why do I have to with a book I paid for?

There are plenty of books I would like to read.

I hate that you can only lend a book once. It's ridiculous. I can lend a paper book as many times as I want to. Why not an ebook?

We've seen this in the music industry. LP's, 8 tracks & cassettes wore out. CD's took a bit longer & could be copied, so the pressure was on, so prices went up & packaging stretched profits (One decent song on a CD). It got really ugly with irresponsible sharing & worse DRM.
Finally, iTunes made the breakthrough & dropped DRM & let us buy what we wanted & use it how we wanted. They created a price point that worked. It was cheap & easy enough that jumping through any hoops to get the song for free just wasn't worth it.
I think ebooks & such will evolve a similar method, but publishers are still stuck in the past & have to overcome their industry inertia. They have a lot to overcome, too. They made some bad moves back in the Depression that have come home to roost - the ability for stores to return just book covers & other idiocies they never corrected. Now there's another crunch & their profits can't support it & they're making things worse by all the mergers which are killing their quality.
We do need to remember that part of iTunes dropping DRM was busting "Napster" for giving away songs that they were selling. We've known for a long time that we should be able to go to a music store peck at a touch screen for a few minutes and have it kick out a CD with any music you want on it...for a price.
Books are now where you almost can go to a kiosk and say, "The Rook" and hear the question "Will that be e-book, paper copy, hard cover or audio book.
There are still some legal maneuvering by the "PTB" (Powers That Be) before e-books steady out. Like the law suit settled by Amazon that the Narrators Union (or guild?) brought because of "Text to Speech." That's why we can't find that feature on any Kindle except for the original one (3/4G with a Keyboard).
Seeley James posted a good article on his blog that suggested one possibility is that the heavy publishers would start using e-books and the indie market like farm league baseball teams, drafting the best sellers to their stables as they become popular.
I think the "counter" publishing industry (by that I don't mean Indie-writers but the staff and experts that make books, books that used to work for publishers) get together and figure out a way to offers services to polish books to professional quality (not that all indie writers and indie pubs need it) for either a percentage of royalties or a flat rate.
I just don't think that the "die is cast" yet. It's got a few fluctuations to go through.
Books are now where you almost can go to a kiosk and say, "The Rook" and hear the question "Will that be e-book, paper copy, hard cover or audio book.
There are still some legal maneuvering by the "PTB" (Powers That Be) before e-books steady out. Like the law suit settled by Amazon that the Narrators Union (or guild?) brought because of "Text to Speech." That's why we can't find that feature on any Kindle except for the original one (3/4G with a Keyboard).
Seeley James posted a good article on his blog that suggested one possibility is that the heavy publishers would start using e-books and the indie market like farm league baseball teams, drafting the best sellers to their stables as they become popular.
I think the "counter" publishing industry (by that I don't mean Indie-writers but the staff and experts that make books, books that used to work for publishers) get together and figure out a way to offers services to polish books to professional quality (not that all indie writers and indie pubs need it) for either a percentage of royalties or a flat rate.
I just don't think that the "die is cast" yet. It's got a few fluctuations to go through.

Another issue is the big business model that treats books like any other product. Books aren't. Yes, they're a product overall, but they're also art & require a personal touch that the big businesses aren't taking care of. Editors are swapped out as if they're interchangeable. That doesn't always work with authors who are artists. It certainly doesn't work for series where story & style continuity must be maintained.
And I don't think even the gods understand their marketing strategy. They'll push some books by pouring money into them until I'm sick to death of the ads, but we never hear of the majority, quite a few which I think are better.
DRM, proprietary formats & such will all likely go away. They don't play well in the long run. It's an immature market. Give it a decade & things will change. At least I hope so.

http://talkingwriting.com/how-much-sh...

http://talkingwriting.com/how-much-sh..."
Nice article Jim, thanks.

http://talkingwriting.com/how-much-sh..."
This is an outstanding article. A real level-set on how you value your work. All writers should read this one.

At the end of the day, here's my own personal take on it: It costs me a minimum of four months to write and edit a story. How many times do I want to do that, just for a chance to earn .30 cents a book?
I'm down with the idea that it's smart to have one book out of the oeuvre priced at free/.99 cents to help build a readership base, but the rest of mine are at $2.99 or higher and always will be.

Thankfully, I earn my living at the daily grind. I'll never be rich, but I don't think I could stand the excitement of surviving as an artist.
;-)

I'm a musician and have spent all of my twenty's and early thirties grinding it out at clubs all over the Chicago and Milwaukee area. Everyone had a promise but nobody had a deal. I would imagine an author faces the same obstacles as a musician, it's hard hocking your product with so much competition all around you.
What should you do?
Post which book(s) you are looking for and what format of ereader you use.
A member who has the book can reply. You can communicate through private messages with your email information and set up lending the books to each other. It will be first come, first serve.
This forum does not support illegal lending of ebooks, so please do not post requests for books that cannot be legally lended, or websites which facilitate illegal selling/downloading of books.