I guess many of you must know the eBook lending&borrowing service Lendle.
Amazon killed Lendle by shutting down its API, so if I build such an app, I won't make use of Amazon API.
The disadvantage of not using API is: this app can't scan your Amazon library and list lendable items out accurately and automatically.
This idea is still under planning stage, I need to imitate all the possible difficulties and figure out how to solve them. How to find the lendable books from each user is the most difficult issue at the moment.
My immature plan is:
- This app scans your Kindle's storage and read metadata, all the eBooks sold in Amazon has "ASIN" string in metadata, then I mark this kind of books as "Lendable".
- John searches "Becoming Steve Jobs" in our app, the app shows Jane and Janie both have this book, then John sends a request to Jane, Jane receives the request and manually mark this book as "Lend out" in our app.
- No matter when John returns this book back to Jane, this app marks the books as "Lendable" again after 15 days, because without API, I can't know if a book is already returned.
However, there are many bugs in this process, like the first step, if a book is downloaded from website and contains ASIN, the apps thinks this item is lendable.
My first thought is: this is better, downloaded book is DRM-free, users can just send this book to each other, even needn't to use Amazon's lending feature. But I'm afraid this will lead to piracy issue.
And there are too many manual operations in this process, which causes potential problems and not user-friendly, but without API, I can't figure out a better mechanism to achieve the goal.
So how do you think of this idea? Can you suggest a better process?
I need your advice.
Thank you all in advance