May 2011
13 posts
5 tags
Sound off in 100 characters or less...
Last week, we rolled out a new review feature and, in typical Lendle fashion, our version of reviews comes with a twist.
All book detail pages now include a SOUND OFF tab. Soundbites (reviews) can be up to 100 characters and are posted to book timelines. We’ll also feature a handful of random soundbites on the SOUND OFF tab so that everyone has an equal shot at visibility.
My soundbite...
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An Open Letter to Sara Lloyd at Pan MacMillan
Hi, Sara.
Lendle here. We’re a web-app devoted to creating a culture of reading around the ability to lend and borrow Kindle books. Maybe you’ve heard of us?
You might be interested to know that thousands and thousands of Lendlers are super excited to purchase books (including books from MacMillan) in order to read them, yes, but also to share the experience with others who will, in...
3 tags
What could we be doing better?
It’s easy enough to pat ourselves on the back and feel as though we’re offering a great lending experience. (Cough. We do, in fact, think that. Ahem.)
We also have a pretty good idea about areas in which we need to constantly improve: Speed (both in borrowing and in overall site performance) and in growing our user-base and catalog.
What we don’t know, necessarily, is what...
6 tags
Are publishers now opting out of ebook lending?
One of the reasons we’ve been so keen on tracking statistics surrounding the number of lendable books in our catalogue is that it means we’re harvesting information about an industry in its formative stages. Almost no one else has this information — and if they do, they’re not sharing it.
One of our most prominently featured stats is “available titles”. As...
8 tags
New Features and three major giveaways
We’ve been teasing a new feature launch for a couple weeks now, and it’s finally time to pull back the curtain. This is by far the biggest series of changes that we’ve made since Lendle’s launch and we couldn’t be more excited.
Last week, we made some aesthetic improvements to your activity feeds. First and foremost, we think the new layout looks nicer, but many of...
April 2011
9 posts
7 tags
Sampling, in addition to lending?
We’ve written pretty extensively about Amazon’s current lending model, but there’s an interesting conversation unfolding on Twitter which centers around whether the industry is too focused on an outdated model.
Mike Davidson prompted the discussion:
The whole concept of lending electronic books seems totally unnatural to me, in its current form.
That form being: Someone...
6 tags
Amazon's OverDrive Announcement
Kindle owners rejoice! Amazon has announced that “later this year” they’ll be working with OverDrive to provide library lending to Kindle owners:
Amazon is working with OverDrive, the leading provider of digital content solutions for over 11,000 public and educational libraries in the United States, to bring a seamless library borrowing experience to Kindle customers. “We...
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5 tags
New feature: Average wait for lend
Over the weekend, in keeping with our goal of being as transparent as possible with our numbers, we went ahead and added another statistic to the book detail pages: Average wait for lend.
That is, how long is it going to take for a Lendler to get a particular book, once it has been requested? These are the numbers that we care about, and that we suspect our users care about.
Of course, we could...
3 tags
Borrow Requests: Behind the Scenes
Ever wonder what really happens when you click the “borrow” button? That one little click fires off a sequence of several events, all of which are ultimately designed to get you your book as quickly as possible.
When you initiate a borrow request, the first thing we do is check to see if the you are allowed to borrow books or not. You must have a borrow request remaining to be used,...
3 tags
Lendle by the Numbers
Here at Lendle, we love stats. We’ve learned a lot just by looking at the numbers, and one of our earliest goals was to provide information to our users that would convey useful and honest information about our site and the books that have been made available.
For instance, we make a point to tell our users that we only have one copy of a book if we only have one copy. We also tell users...
4 tags
Harry Potter, Unfashionably Late to the Party →
The topic of this article doesn’t really have anything to do with lending (at least not yet) but the hint that Harry Potter “might” be coming soon to an e-reader near you is making waves in the news, today.
Some of what is being said in the article warrants derision comment:
And publishing industry experts said they will transform the electronic market and easily net the...
7 tags
April showers bring new features!
We’ve been introducing new features faster than we can blog them, so here’s a rundown of what’s changed over the last several days:
Search
We’ve implemented a blazing fast search engine. Book searches should be noticeably faster.
We’ve also added the ability to refine searches by excluding terms, applying tags, etc:
...
March 2011
3 posts
3 tags
Tag, you're it!
Yesterday, we rolled out a feature which allows Lendlers to tag books. We’ve begun the process of pre-populating our catalogued books with basic tags, but only to get the ball rolling.
Long term, we think tags will open up a lot of possibilities when it comes to rolling out new features. (Stay tuned!) Most importantly, though, a well-tagged library of books will provide an easy way to...
5 tags
Amazon pulls a Lendle. →
Will the music industry pull an Amazon?
Amazon’s Cloud Player service is free and brings music streaming to the masses who shop Amazon’s web store. Amazon apparently launched the service without the blessing of the recording industry and is working on securing post-announcement licenses. The online retail giant is forcing the music industry to play its hand and either support the...
7 tags
Our stance on e-book lending restrictions
We knew when we started Lendle that there would be strong emotions arguing both sides of Amazon’s digital book lending restrictions. Black and white arguments are rarely productive (or interesting, if you ask us) and we find ourselves falling somewhere in the middle of two extremes:
Those who insist that our service is going to destroy the livelihood of authors.
Those who insist that...
