Quote:
Originally Posted by ottdmk
Oddly though, Amazon has shown no interest whatsoever in working with Overdrive to give Canadian Kindle owners access to library loans.
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Perhaps the American Library Association has just a little more clout than the Canadian Library Association. Ditto for equivalents in all the other countries Overdrive serves. This may sound factious, but I think it's plausible.
Overdrive has every incentive to include Amazon titles. More platform availability means long borrowing waits, and those lead to libraries buying or leasing more titles. Amazon, by contrast, must offset the benefits of Overdrive cooperation against the negatives:
The benefits to Amazon, of Overdrive cooperation, are more eInk Kindle sales and positive publicity (or at least avoidance of negative publicity) for working with libraries.
The harm to Amazon is eBook sales lost to library borrowing, and lost Fire sales (where eInk won't work for library borrowing, that gives more reason to buy a Fire).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Synamon
Since Kindle format is only available in the US that question doesn't apply universally, but the Overdrive/Amazon deal that makes that possible isn't written in stone and it wouldn't surprise me if Amazon were to pull the plug, not Kobo.
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I hope you are wrong that Amazon would pull the US Overdrive Kindle plug. It I'm right that they started working with Overdrive to mute criticisms from librarians, the same consideration could cause them to stick with the current system until such time as eInk is all but forgotten. That's good for Americans like me, but not for the rest of the world.