Quote:
Originally Posted by Joykins
Amazon is a retailer of Penguin books but it is also a competitor with Penguin in that Amazon publishes its own books, and Penguin is rightly afraid of Amazon's market dominance.
Interestingly enough, if you click to buy a book from an Overdrive listing, it sends you to a menu of Overdrives "retail partners" you can select from for the purchase (these are Amazon, B&N, and various indies as applicable). I assume Overdrive takes their affiliate commission from that. I don't know if they get their commission if Amazon solicits your purchase after the loan.
It may have seemed expedient to Overdrive at the time to piggyback Kindle lending off Amazon lending DRM and servers, but that decision appears to have come back to bite them.
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Honestly I think Penguin is using Amazon as an excuse. They don't like the way the program is working out (no recurring revenue in any format), it's probably cutting into sales of their best sellers and on top of that it might give Amazon an edge with some data.
I just came across another company that is just getting its foot in the door with libraries. Am investigating how popular it is so far and where it's available. Will report back when/if I figure it out...