E-books are light weight, compact, and easy to carry.  Kindle uses eInk technology that allows the screen to display text like a paper page with minimal glare that makes reading easy even in strong sunlight.  E-readers use very less battery power.  The cost of publishing an e-book is much lesser than that of a printed book.  So, authors and publishers don’t need to sell copies in bulk to generate a sustainable profit margin.  All these aspects are making e-books more popular, prominent and widely acceptable today.  Publishing houses have also started giving weightage to e-books now.  But, the technological advancements have also imposed threats of digital book piracy and illegal downloading.

Literally thousands of pirated, unpaid for copies of e-books are being circulated around the Internet.  E-book piracy costs authors thousands of dollars in lost sales.  Most people don’t even realize that sharing or reselling an e-book is illegal and a violation of copyright law.  Mentioned below are some of the many reasons for piracy of e-books.

1.            Overpricing of books or e-books

2.            Lack of availability of e-book titles in certain countries

3.            High prices of academic and text books even though they are used for a small term only

4.            Difficulty in finding desired books on legitimate sites or in required formats

5.            Lack of assurance of expected quality

6.            Lack of options of sharing and reselling e-books

Normally, knowingly or un-knowingly people indulge in e-book piracy by freely downloading e-books without paying and purchasing an e-book and then illegally sharing it with all their friends, family, newsgroups, forums and book clubs etc.  The best way to prevent this piracy is to provide users with a huge eBook inventory, reasonable and affordable prices of e-books and easier and faster ways of purchasing and downloading an e-book.  The quality of the purchased e-book should be worth its price.  If people can find their desired e-books at reasonable prices in easier, legitimate and faster ways, they would prefer to buy them rather than steal them.

Amazon has always tried to deliver its best to its users in terms of gadgets, technology, and system or e-book inventory.  It has aimed to give safer, faster and high quality system of purchasing, downloading, sharing or borrowing e-books from libraries.  With advancements in technology and growing aspirations of people, Amazon will further innovate to prove itself on all criteria and will find adequate ways of dealing with e-book piracy.

The feature becomes more lucrative with following add on facilities provided by Amazon to its Kindle book account holders:

1.       Layout of e-book as per real page numbers that relates to the actual numbers in the printed version of the book.

2.       Highlight passages, add notes, and bookmark pages in the books.

3.       Integration with Facebook and Twitter that enables online sharing of passages and quotes from books.

4.       Viewing “Popular Highlights” of books.

5.       A forum for posting public notes to share opinions, reviews and analysis about a book.

The libraries have control over which titles are available for lending and for how long a book can be “lent out” to a user.  After the lending period has expired, the book will automatically be “checked in” at the library.  Currently, Kindle digital library doesn’t have many titles that are eligible for lending.  Amazon can enhance this collection by negotiating with publishers to allow best-sellers and new titles to be added to the Kindle Lending Library for the benefit of its customers.

In addition to loaning books from friends and borrowing books from libraries, there are some external e-book loan services available for sharing e-books like Booklending.com, BooksForMyKindle.com and eBookFling.com.  These services are mostly inexpensive, widely available, and offered without risk.  Kindle users can also deliberate on joining various book clubs for book readers available online through social networking websites.  For example, one of the popular book clubs “Kindle Landing Club” on Facebook enables a group of like-minded people to pool in and share their resources.  They can list the books they can lend, and send requests for loaning desired books.

The cost of publishing an e-book is drastically cheaper than its printed version.  For authors who prefer to self-publish e-books, the overall budget is very cost effective.  Similar costs when extended to users, makes Amazon e-books highly affordable for its customers. New releases and best-selling e-books on Kindle cost about ten dollars.  And now, e-book lending and sharing facility implemented by Amazon has made the subscriptions even more attractive for Amazon account holders.  The stepwise procedure for lending e-books is mentioned below:

1.       Lending the e-book: Log in to your Amazon account and go to the “Digital Content” tab from your account settings.  Select the link “Manage my Kindle”.  You will see a list of books in your own Kindle Library.  Each listed e-book will have a menu of actions associated with it. E-books eligible for lending will display “Lending: Enabled.”  Click on “loan this title” on the e-book that you need to lent out.  Enter the name and e-mail address of the intended recipient of the book.

2.       Receiving the loaned e-book: After receiving an e-mail notification, click on “Get your loaned book now” button from e-mail to download the book on Kindle device or Kindle reading application.  When directed to Amazon.com, log into your account, select the device that you would like the book delivered to from the drop-down menu and click the “Accept” button.

3.       Returning the loaned book: To return the loaned book, go to “Your Orders” section of “Manage Your Kindle”.  After clicking the “+” symbol next to the loaned title, click on “Delete this Title” button and “Yes” in the pop-over window to confirm the return.  After initiating a return, the reading rights will be restored to the owner of the book.  The owner will also receive an e-mail confirmation of the return.

4.       View loan status: You can view the status of a Kindle e-book loan from the “Manage Your Kindle” page.  Click on the “+” symbol next to any title to view more details about any book that you’ve loaned or borrowed.  You can see the loan date, expiration date of an accepted loan, or the returned date for a loaned book.  You can also see remaining time period of loan for borrowed books.

Amazon has associated a set of rules that govern the process of lending books.  They are briefly described below:

1.       All the books cannot be loaned.  Publishers and rights holders have full discretion to tag a title as eligible for lending or not.  Unfortunately, to maximize their profit, most of the popular e-books are not being entitled for lending by publishers.

2.       Only U.S. based customers can initiate lending of e-books and recipients in certain countries won’t have access to certain e-books.

3.       An e-book can be lent out only once.

4.       The recipient must accept the loan within 7 days or else it will be reverted back to the owner’s account.

5.       An e-book loan can last upto 14 days only.

6.       The owner of the e-book does not have access to it till the time it is lent out.  That means that the owner won’t be able to read that e-book on any of its devices for a loan period of 14 days.

7.       The recipient of loaned e-book must be a member of Amazon although owning a Kindle is not a necessary requirement.  The loaned e-books can also be read on other devices including the iPhone, iPad, Android, and the Blackberry.

8.       The annotations made on the e-book are not mutually visible to the owner or the recipient of the loaned e-book.

Amazon’s low priced e-book editions offer great value for its customers.  The current lending feature of e-books has made it even more attractive.  It gels in well with the natural human tendency of sharing books.  We wish that the above restrictions are relaxed further by Amazon to benefit its customer to take full advantage of current digital revolution in print media.  Please read on our next article to know how an e-book can be lent out.

An e-book or “electronic book” is normally an electronic version of a printed book in digital form that can be read on computers, smartphones, iPads and dedicated e-book readers like Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook and Sony Readers etc.   E-books are available on public domain and can be purchased, downloaded, borrowed and used on above mentioned electronic devices.  E-books are very easy to store, handle and read and allow users to search for key terms, find definitions, or highlight bookmarks and annotations.

Amazon Kindle is an e-book reader developed by Amazon.com that uses wireless connectivity to enable users to shop for, download, browse, and read e-books, newspapers, magazines, blogs, and other digital media.  Kindle e-reading application is also available for all major devices including the iPhone, iPad, Android, and Blackberry.  Kindle e-books can also be read on the Mac and PC.  Users can select reading material and can purchase and download e-books through the Kindle Store.  Magazines, newspapers and blogs via RSS can also be subscribed through Amazon on monthly subscription basis.  E-books can be simultaneously downloaded and used by a user on upto six Kindle devices or Kindle applications that are registered to users’ Amazon.com account.

Amazon uses Digital rights management or DRM that prevents copying and unauthorized access of its digital content and e-books.  With DRM, an e-book is tied to a specific computer or device that usually lets the purchasers move the e-book a limited number of times beyond which they cannot use it on any additional devices.  This feature does not allow users to share their books with their friends, family or colleagues unlike any other physical book that is free from such restrictions.  Users that wish to loan out and exchange their e-books sometimes resort to unethical ways of cheating and downloading e-books as Torrents in absence of any legal options.

To take care of the peoples desires, Barnes & Noble was the first one to allow books to be shared with its Nook.  Amazon followed the suit and updated its e-book system to support lending titles.  The idea as per Amazon’s motto gives flexibility of “Buy Once, Read Every Where” for digital content to its readers.  However, this sharing and loaning of e-books comes with many rules, regulations and restriction.  To know about the same, please read on our next article.