Amazon’s loving its Kindle owners. The retail giant is letting Kindle owners who sign up for its US$79 Prime service borrow an ebook each month for no extra fee. Prime is a premium service for Amazon customers that started as an offer of unlimited shipping for a one-time annual payment. That US$79 fee now includes [...]

[Read more →]

In the last couple of weeks, we’ve seen New Zealand public libraries announcing plans for the imminent launch of ebook lending services. What’s great to see is that there will be two initiatives, each with a different approach.  Between them, they will let libraries, their patrons, and the publisher and author rights holders try out [...]

[Read more →]

HarperCollins’ US unit has just changed its long-standing ebook policy for library sales. Instead of selling ebooks for a one-time cost and allowing libraries to lend these ebooks in perpetuity, HarperCollins amended its terms to limit a purchase to 26 loans. For an average 2-week lending term, libraries would get a full year of lending [...]

[Read more →]

The UK Publishers Association last week announced a set of “minimum terms” for ebook lending by libraries, a move that could finally see this complex and important issue getting some serious public debate. Unfortunately, it ended up as a clumsy attempt to avoid speaking about the real elephant in the room, paid ebook lending, and [...]

[Read more →]

The following article was published in the latest Australian Booksellers Association magazine. I wrote it a couple of months ago and some of the UK moves have been affected by the change of government. (The Digital Economy Act 2010 passed by the previous government did include Section 43 which amends copyright for some public library [...]

[Read more →]