[Kindle image by Tim Spalding, thanks Tim!]
I went to a staff meeting on Friday at the local library where I sometimes work. We did some strategic planning, some walking around the building looking at stuff that could be improved, and some “how to download various digital media format” exercises. We use Overdrive via Listen Up Vermont which gives us access to audiobooks and ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats. I’m pretty okay at this sort of thing so we clicked around and saw how stuff worked and had a few little glitches but basically stuff was okay. I’ve been following the Amazon book lending story through the blogs the past few weeks and I’ve been skeptical but more curious than anything. I don’t have a Kindle but I’ve seen how popular they are and I was curious how this would all work. Well, as some bloggers have pointed out, it sort of doesn’t. Or, rather, it seems to require compromises to our systems and more importantly to our professional values. I’m hoping these issues can be resolved, but honestly if we can’t lend with some modicum of patron privacy, we shouldn’t be lending.
This is all leading up to an email exchange I had with a reader who was wondering the best way to raise concerns with his librarian about the user experience of borrowing a Kindle book from his library to use with the Kindle app on a non-Kindle device. Apparently, while the process to obtain the book wasn’t too difficult, the process to actually get RID of the book once returned [without a lot of pesky "hey maybe you should BUY this" cajoling] was actually fairly difficult. The default settings are, not surprisingly, strongly urging that the patron purchase (not renewal, not some sort of overdue notification) the book that they have just “returned.” I’ll let the patron speak for himself on this process. His name is Dan Smith and this is reprinted with his express permission.
______
My first experience at “borrowing a Kindle book from the library” has left me with a bad taste in my mouth. It did not feel like borrowing a book from a library. It felt like a salesperson had sold me a book with a “no-risk free home trial” and was pestering me to buy it at the end of the trial period.
I feel that Amazon’s commercial promotion is excessive, and imposes inappropriately on public library patrons. Would you allow distributor’s rep to stand in the hall, grabbing people on their way to the return slot, saying “Stop! Why RETURN it when you can BUY it instantly for just $12.95?”
Yes, some of the irritations can be sidestepped, and as a savvy user I now know how. But Amazon took advantage of my innocence.
FIrst, the book was all marked up! Dotted underlines here and there on almost every page. It was like taking out a library book and finding someone had gone over it with a highlighter! Amazon allow “library” ebooks to be marked and annotated. Instead of cleaning them up for the next patron, it leaves them in place, and encourages you make your own marks for other people to see. I thought this was just some misguided idea about social networking, but it’s more sinister than that.
I turns out that there is a global setting, “Popular Highlights,” which controls whether you see these marks. B
I haven’t had the same experience as this patron with the pushing to buy a borrowed Kindle item. I checked out a Kindle book about six weeks ago, and I’ve yet to receive anything from Amazon urging me to buy it. I’m not sure why, but just offering up a different experience.
This is why I bought a Nook instead. Well, that and Kindle didn’t have ANY lending support when I got my Nook. Both my Nook and the wife’s new Nook touch can sideload ePubs via the USB cable. Consequently, using Overdrive at our local library and downloading the borrowed ebook is simple and unbranded.
B&N (and other ereader options, of course) is much more friendly, as they let you sideload and upload more formats… Amazon has so far been adopting the Apple model of a completely closed infrastructure. I understand their reasoning, but it’s not what I want.
I’ve had a similar experience to Melissa. I’ve checked out a couple of e-books on Kindle from the library, and I haven’t noticed any pushy sales tactics. It sounds to me like this user, Dan, isn’t too familiar with the Kindle’s features and is frustrated with the machine itself. It’s really simple to delete the book after it has been returned (it’s the same as deleting any other e-book from your Kindle). Maybe he’ll like it better after using it a few more times, but I had a good experience from the start. I’m not sure what is going on with the e-mails though.
Amazon’s entire reason for creating the Kindle is for marketing “content.” I heard a news story today on NPR about the release of Kindle Fire. Supposedly it actually costs more to make than they sell it for, by about 10 or 11 dollars. But they know they’ll get it back in spades. The comparative marketing model is that of cellular network providers giving away phones. And they brought up the model of printers and proprietary ink cartridges, in which the printer costs under $100, but over the lifetime of the unit, a consumer could spend thousands of dollars on ink.
Those with actual Kindle devices: are you saying you did NOT end up with a phony book jacket image–either in your Library or in your Archived Items list–that prompts you to buy the book when you open it? Or that you were able to delete it without having to go to the Amazon website and use the “Manage Your Kindle” page?
1) The experience on a Kindle device may be different from that on the Kindle iPod application, which is what I am using.
2) The experience may be different depending on how things are accessed; Overdrive is somehow involved in the purchase process at my library. I don’t know if that’s always the case.
3) The experience may be different depending on whether or not you have an Amazon account, assuming it is possible to borrow a Kindle title without one, which I don’t know.
4) I have received two emails, so far, one on November 9th and one on November 13th. This is how they are worded:
Your public library book will expire in 3 days. If you purchase The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms from the Kindle Store or borrow it again from your local library, all of your notes and highlights will be preserved.
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms
(Author) Nassim Nicholas Taleb
(and similarly on November 13th but using the words “has expired.”)
5) I loved Nassim Nichalas Taleb’s “Fooled by Randomness” and “The Black Swan” but hated “The Bed of Procrustes.” I mention this because it seems unbalanced to be talking about eBook technology without ever touching on books!
P. S. Those who were happy with your experience, with regard to marked up books, which is it: Have you long ago turned off “Popular Highlights?” Or do physical Kindles ship with it turned off? Or have you not yet encountered a book that had them? Or do you like seeing other peoples’ marks in the books you’re reading?
In the Kindle app, while on the home screen where all of your books are listed, tap Edit. Each book will now have a red circle with a while line in it (universal iPhone symbol for delete). If you tap the circle next to the book title you want to delete, it will delete it permanently. I don’t have a library book to try it with at the moment, because I have already deleted them from my device, but I believe it worked exactly the same way.
As for the markings, I’ve never noticed it on my actual Kindle, but ran into it on my phone recently. I don’t know if that is due to a difference in the default settings, or if I’ve just been lucky! I agree that that feature is annoying.
Dan: Thanks for the clarifications. I am using a Kindle device, so my experience was probably different than your Kindle iPod app. When the book is returned is automatically returned to the library, it still shows up in the list of books, but it has a note that says “returned” next to it (if I’m remembering correctly). Then I can press the button on my Kindle that leads to the menu, and it asks if I want to add to collection, go to a part of the book, or remove from the device. And then it’s gone. It is true that when you go to try to read the book after it has been returned, there is only a page with a link to buy the book.
Overdrive is not involved in my library’s Kindle e-book checkout process. You do need an Amazon account to check out books at the library I use. I received one e-mail, 3 days before the book was due, with the same wording that you posted. I suppose I don’t see this as pushy, but if I received multiple e-mails I might feel differently. With that said, I use a secondary e-mail address to receive all of my Amazon communications, due to their large volume of mail, so I generally ignore their sales tactics.
Lastly, I turned off the highlights shortly after I bought my Kindle.
I have a Wi-Fi Kindle with special offers. One of the first things I did was turn off the “popular highlights” option. It only took me a minute or two to figure out but I’m a long time Kindle owner, having owned more than one generation, so perhaps I just knew intuitively where to go.
I haven’t found Amazon’s selling tactics to be over the top or pushy. Yes, their emails regarding a soon to expire and expired loan include an option to buy but it isn’t as they are being deceptive-I don’t find them inappropriate or intrusive.
I am a longtime Amazon customer and, as a result, perhaps I am desensitized or am used to seeing ads and having Amazon provide recommendations but I find it wonderful that I can borrow library ebooks for my Kindle now. I had a Nook for that reason and was not a fan of either the device or the manner in which transfer occurred so, for me, having them try to sell me a book is well worth being able to use my Kindle with library books.
Privacy, of course, is another issue that has deeper ramifications and more widespread involvement, so I won’t get into it here.
When I am interacting with Amazon _as an Amazon customer,_ i.e. buying a book, it is a commercial transaction with all that goes along with it. I’ve been buying books from Amazon happily since about 1997; my first purchases were made by looking up the book using the Lynx character-oriented web browser and calling in my order. I like their recommendations. I write Amazon reader reviews.
When I am borrowing something from the public library, that is NOT A COMMERCIAL TRANSACTION. Just because the book was published by McGraw Hill does not mean I implicitly authorize McGraw Hill the right to send me junk mail. Just because I play the DVD on a Samsung DVD player does not mean I am implicitly giving Samsung a foot in the door to sell me DVDs.
Amazon is overstepping the bounds. They’re using their status as creator of an ebook technology to insert themselves into a noncommercial relationship between me and my library, and pervert a public “borrowing” transaction into a private “purchasing” transaction.
I’m not a Luddite and I didn’t expect a bad experience. I bought my first eBook device in the year 2000, a NuvoMedia Rocket eBook, and I’d be very curious to know if anyone reading this has been using eBook devices longer than that. Frankly, I’ve been poking and prodding Kindles and Nooks in stores, and “borrow library books on your Kindle” looked like the sweetener that might decide me, so I was giving it a spin.
“The law locks up the man or woman/Who steal the goose from off the common/But leaves the greater villain loose/Who steals the common from the goose.”
[...] who always has some interesting story or conference or library issue to write about. I think today’s post is particularly worth reading, as I have been stuggling wrapping my head around libraries lending [...]
Somer: The red circle with the line in the Kindle app archives the book, not deletes it. I don’t know if that’s different for library books, but I’ve only been able to archive books in the app, not delete them.
I had no communication from Amazon after getting an ebook through the library system. I finished it in 3 days and never had any problems. I think it’s a great way to get books to read.
So there seem to be three complaints:
(1) Popular highlights feature – Not specific to library books, user-controlled setting. Some people like it others don’t, turn it off once per device and move on
(2) Emails about library books expiring – I personally found the emails to be helpful gentle reminders, your milage may vary (YMMV). I too only got 2 messages, one ~3 days before and one on expiration. I don’t think the explanation of what happens if you buy is holding your notes ransom, it is explaining that _if_ you did make annotations you will get to keep them. For someone who marked up a non-fiction book with notes/highlights and is deciding to buy it now, this could be quite helpful to know.
(3) Deleting the book – I use a Kindle device so I just toggle the rocker left and “Remove from my Device” from the home screen for my Mac Kindle App, I right click and “Delete”. May be a different set of steps to remove from an iPad, but with due respect to the OP it seems like they need to read the manual to learn how to delete books. I’ve done it on my Mac Kindle App and on my Kindle with library books with minimum fuss, and I’m sure there is an incantation for the iPad.
Anyhow, for 3 complaints, 2 of them relate to basic use of the Kindle and the other is a personal taste issue of how Amazon sends messages about this.
I think the original post calling this a threat to professional values seems a bit overblown. Perhaps an FAQ printed at the library or mailed to patrons about how Kindle library lending works could smoothly address all of these issues.
[...] the Kindle lending experience from a patron’s perspective “a wolf in book’s clothing” I don’t have a Kindle but I’ve seen how popular they are and I was curious how this would all work. Well, as some bloggers have pointed out, it sort of doesn’t. Or, rather, it seems to require compromises to our systems and more importantly to our professional values. I’m hoping these issues can be resolved, but honestly if we can’t lend with some modicum of patron privacy, we shouldn’t be lending. [...]