An open letter to Jeff Bezos

Hello, Mr. Bezos.

We’ve been building to this for some time now, but we thought it was high time that we introduce ourselves. We operate what we truly believe to be the most successful Kindle-centric social lending service: Lendle.

We hope we’re already on your radar.

Our Lendlers adore their Kindle devices, they love to read, and they’re buying books like crazy. We post these open letters as a way to let them know that we’re fighting for them, and doing everything we can to expand upon an already great service. With that said, we are truly interested in creating a dialogue with those in a position to drive change.

First and foremost, we’re really excited about the future of the publishing industry. It’s a great time to be involved, because — even with all of the uncertainty — something is happening. There’s actual change brewing. We believe that it’s impossible to make a difference without a willingness to make big moves, and the time is certainly ripe in the ebook industry for big, big moves.

Even so, we’re under the impression that many publishers are treading lightly, primarily because they’ve yet to see the profit in lending. The end result, as you know, is that many of the most popular books for sale in a digital format cannot be lent out. 

Here’s what we know: Social lending sites, including ours, are a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the total Kindle market. Part of this is because lending is still limited to the US, of course, but part of it is that we’re limited in our reach and exposure opportunities. 

Despite that, we think we’ve got some great data on the trends in lending, how it affects purchasing habits, and the lending community in general. We’ve also seen a ton of great press from incredibly influential media outlets, due to the fact that we’ve innovated our way to the front of the pack. 

We also think we’ve developed a really great model for driving sales back to Amazon, which has been a priority from the very start. One of our founders is an author, and we think it’s vital that lending lead to sales, rather than discourage them.

We hear over and over from our Lendlers that they’re reading — and buying — more than ever. We think part of that is your great Kindle device. We’re Kindle users, and we can’t begin to describe how much we enjoy reading on these things. We think another part of it is the choices we’ve made with our lending service, when it comes to encouraging purchases and discovery opportunities.

Lendle has been successful beyond our expectations. We’ve got a great community and we don’t think anyone else comes anywhere close to matching what we do. All of this, despite the fact that we could be doing so much more.

What we don’t have is unfettered access. The API has been great, but we think there are still some things that we don’t have access to that could drastically increase not only our reach, but also the amount of money we’re driving back to Amazon and, of course, publishers.

We also have some really forward thinking ideas that, if implemented, could go a long way in convincing wary publishers that lending and social services will increase their bottom line as well as their customer base.

We know how to build a really great website. We know social. We can’t help but envision the possibilities if we took what we know, and what we’ve accomplished, and multiplied it by the entire Kindle community.

We’d love to talk to you about it.

Sincerely,

Brian Ford