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Originally Posted by carld
Sure there will be some, but given that this not going to be a cheap operation for Amazon (at least not any way that I can see), I don't think it's a viable marketing strategy. I think they're going to spend way more implementing this than they'll ever make back from directly increased sales. Plus you have to factor in all the people who will be borrowing books rather than buying them.
I think this is about selling Kindles, and eventually more ebooks, rather than a possible immediate gain in ebook sales.
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I'm not sure about that. I don't think that Amazon is actually buying the copies it lends out. I think that Amazon has simply reached and agreement with the publishers that one copy of the book may be lent out, either in epub or .azw, as long as only one copy of the book (or however many were purchased) is lent out at the same time.
While there are going to be some initial start up costs as well as ongoing costs (which may or may not be covered by a 22 cent fee), there will probably also be a lot of people who check out the first book or two in a series, and then buy the rest because of the wait. Or who give up waiting for a book and just buy it on the kindle. I think that is a pretty good business opportunity.