Quote:
Originally Posted by 4691mls
why would they care whether someone downloaded the book directly onto a Kindle vs PC/USB?
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Big publishers call it "friction". Although Penguin was the only one to do this the big pubs in general (I remember John Sargent from MacMillan talking about friction too) don't want borrowing eBooks to be "to easy".
With paper books you have the "friction" of having to actually go to the library and get the book, with ePub's you have the "friction" of having to download and transfer the eBook via ADE (with the exception of some Sony models), with Kindle loans you don't have that "friction". I don't know if pubs ever bitched about the Sony's direct dl ability, but there were/are a much smaller number of Sony's out there than Kindle's and Sony didn't have the same type of relationship with pubs that Amazon has.
I don't know if pubs still feel this way (now that some are charging 3ish times cover for library eBooks or limiting the number of times a book can be lent), but they did at one time. Note this wasn't Penguin's only complaint about Kindle lending or even primary AFAIK it was just a way for them to do
something to the process I guess.