Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken Stuart
This can only mean one of two things:
1 - All Kindles and Kindle apps will be updated to read Epub files. This will still be separated out as "for Kindle", possibly for some minor technical differences, but mostly for Marketing reasons - to keep Average Joe blissfully ignorant of the concept of an open format.
OR
2 - The "checking out of a book that is available" will become 100% Accounting. Neither Publishers nor Libraries actually care about the text of the books, they only care about Authors and Titles (and sales). Much like Microsoft Windows, a library buying 3 copies of a Stephen King will actually be buying 3 licenses. Then Overdrive (or even Amazon themselves) can store and serve the actual physical books in whatever format is required by the Patron. Given how small ebooks are, relative to current hard drives and broadband speeds, the actual ebooks for all the Libraries could be stored on a web server in a Janitor's hall closet in Moscow...
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Amazon says:
Quote:
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If a Kindle book is checked out again or that book is purchased from Amazon, all of a customer's annotations and bookmarks will be preserved.
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The only way this works is if the lending library ebook is
exactly the same ebook that you get from the Kindle store. So this excludes your #1 and makes #2 very likely. For example, you might only get a
ticket from the library which is fulfilled by Amazon's servers. I think this is the most likely approach, with the only realistic alternative (although not very likely) the delivery of a time limited but otherwise not locked down AZW (or TOPAZ).