Mass Hysteria in the Digital Age: LendInk, Lending, and Author’s Rights

The first DMCA notice came in almost a week ago. Then a second, and a third.

In total, we heard from about five authors who were confused about Lendle’s role in the lending process. It was clear that someone, somewhere, was talking about services like ours, with the thought that we were somehow lending actual copies of books without permission.

The first notice we received contained a reference to LendInk, so it became clear that the author had sent out multiple takedown notices.

In each case we sent out the same response, usually within minutes of receiving the notice:

Hi, [author].

We are not lendink. I’ll assume you sent this same email to lendink and that, as such, the reference to lendink here is a typo in that you simply and understandably forgot to change the email address when you sent us the same takedown notice.

With that said, we cannot agree that we are infringing on your copyright as we are simply displaying materials that are part of Amazon’s public API, operating in compliance of Amazon’s guidelines. You presumably agreed to be a part of this API when you agreed to sell your book via Amazon. If not, this is an issue you will want to take up there.

We do not sell or license or give out any content from your book. We merely display materials which are part of Amazon’s public API (title, description, cover, etc.) at which point customers are directed to Amazon to purchase a copy of your book or they are able to state that they have already purchased the book from Amazon. If a customer has paid for a copy of a book and that book comes with a lending license (a decision that is between an author/publisher and amazon) those customers are then able to use that lending license by utilizing Amazon’s lending service. We do not facilitate loans, nor do we condone or facilitate illegal sharing of books. If anything, we are driving and encouraging sales of your books through the official channel you chose to sell them.

Unfortunately, the only way we can prevent information about your book (which, incidentally, is all fair use information) from appearing on our site is if you have your book removed from Amazon’s API. This is not something we can accomplish as you control the contract you signed with Amazon.

Sincerely, 

Brian Ford

Lendle

In almost every instance, that email alone was sufficient to calm the concerns of the authors in question. In fact, one of the authors engaged in a nice back and forth about lending rights, her confusion, our service, and the role that lending might be able to play in promoting her books. 

GENESIS

Still, I was curious, and working off the hunch that LendInk was somehow at the center of the storm I discovered that dozens of authors over the course of two or three days had descended on the LendInk Facebook page to demand answers.

Many were claiming to have sent out multiple takedown notices, and threats of class action lawsuits were already being bandied about, but one thing was clear: The owner of LendInk hadn’t yet responded to any of the posts or concerns or notices — either via email or by posting an explanation on the Facebook page. 

Further digging revealed that LendInk had been running on autopilot for several months due to health issues suffered by the current owner.

Eventually, the authors focused their fire on LendInk’s hosting service and because LendInk wasn’t responding to notices, the host made the understandable decision to pull the plug.

That brings us to today.

Beyond comments on a couple of the articles that covered the takedown, we’ve been content to sit in the nosebleed section and observe.

For one thing, we suspected that the situation would blow over fairly quickly, given LendInk’s “all but officially dead” status prior to the dustup. 

Instead, the snowball is now a snowboulder, and it’s still rolling down the mountain.

TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE

CNET was one of the first major sites to take a crack at covering the controversy. The Verge weighed in. GIGAOM has a take. Even the EFF has gotten involved.

Something that I’ve been pondering is “why LendInk” when there are at least three other sites that have seen more press, are arguably more popular, and which all operate in the same manner?

I can’t speak for any other site, but I think it helped that we were very quick to respond as the notices came in. As I said in the comment I posted on the CNET article, no matter how misguided the attacks were, it can’t have been comforting to go two or three days without a response to a serious infringement concern.

I have no doubt in my mind that the vast majority of the authors who sent notices did so in good faith, even if that good faith was rooted in an easily cured misunderstanding and a subsequent rush to judgement.

I think we’ve also built up a very active userbase that would have been quick to come to our defense.

We don’t participate in every Amazon forum thread in which we’re mentioned, but we’re definitely aware that our users are actively educating authors and skeptics about the process when they talk up our service. (Thanks for that!)

If Lendle — or one of the other major lending sites — had been the focus of the controversy, the forum discussions might have been more balanced and the fallout probably would have been avoided.

The other major issue is that (most of) the media didn’t take notice until days after LendInk was shut down.

The sad truth of the matter is that the publishing industry has never seemed quite as sexy as the music industry or the movie industry, and that’s reflected in the dearth of coverage.

Unfortunately, this means mainstream media outlets and influential tech blogs tend to ignore digital lending issues unless there’s a controversy. 

It takes a lot of dedication to stay in the spotlight.

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

The fallout has been nothing if not predictable: Some authors have expressed regret, others have dug in their heels — one person is even justifying the takedown of a legal site as a “warning” to actual pirate sites — and consumer outrage has led to calls for boycotts and negative reviews.

Some people are even encouraging LendInk to file lawsuits.

What good will any of that do? If consumers are angry that something like this could happen, the best possible outcome is to write rational, positive letters to Amazon (or Barnes and Noble) letting them know how awesome and useful their lending service is.  

Send that same letter to publishers even if they don’t currently support a lending program.

Most importantly, go buy a book from an author that does currently support lending.

Maybe lending programs don’t work quite as well as they could or maybe you think they should do even more. The best way to make that happen is to show authors and publishers that you’re willing to put your money where you mouth is: Apple convinced the music industry to go DRM-free only after consumers opened their wallets to support digital music. 

If LendInk is to come back — if it’s even feasible for the owner to bring LendInk back — the best possible result is that they come back to a groundswell of support for lending and a positive campaign to raise awareness about the programs offered by Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Encouraging a lawsuit without even understanding the chances of success or the costs involved is knee-jerk reactionism, at best.

Attacking authors — even those that are actively and intentionally spreading misinformation — serves no useful purpose.

Encouraging retaliatory piracy certainly isn’t going to help, either.

Revenge may sound good on paper but it’s not going to solve any problems and will likely make the situation even worse. 

We’ve spent the better part of our existence trying to raise awareness — through blog posts and tweets and responsive customer service — and we’ve done our best to talk up the benefits of social sharing when approached by concerned authors, all with the goal of creating a productive dialogue.

Clearly, there’s still work to be done.

Lending Rights (and Wrongs)

Given all the chatter surrounding the (now on indefinite hiatus) SOPA bill, I’ve been meaning to post something about lending rights and Kindle books. We’ve published on this topic before, but as library lending via OverDrive and Amazon’s Kindle Owners Lending Library (KOLL) — not to mention sites like Lendle — become more and more popular, we’re starting to see the discussion surrounding copyright bleed into Amazon’s forums.

The end user is finally seeing (and scrutinizing) the impact of DRM on their reading habits.

The discussion, sadly, feels pretty black or white: On the one hand, some people feel as though more books should be free, that the KOLL’s “one free book per month” (for Prime subscribers) isn’t good enough. The sentiment seems to be that publishers are being greedy: “I can read more than one book a month, so why can’t I borrow more than one?”

The other side of the coin is the argument that Amazon and publishers don’t owe anyone anything: If people want books, they should always be willing to pay for them — no matter the cost — and it’s little more than consumer greed to expect otherwise. “Free” isn’t in the publisher’s best interests, so why should they offer anything for free, let alone one book per month?

Here’s a pretty typical argument regarding the first view:

Publishers and retailers are pulling a similar switch with ebooks and hoping that nobody will notice. When you buy an ebook you don’t actually buy it the same way you buy a print book. You buy a license to read it on a certain device, or number of devices. Most of these licenses do not give readers the legal right to share their ebooks, even though people have shared print books for as long as they have existed. As a librarian it bothers me that this basic feature of print books might disappear entirely as more people read ebooks over print books. While I understand the concerns publishers have about ebook piracy, the use of DRM and the criminalizing of sharing goes to far (at the same time it is not very effective). They would never get away with trying to restrict the sharing of print books, yet somehow they have convinced readers they don’t have the right to share ebooks.

SOURCE

It’s a bit surprising to see this logic coming from a librarian. Whether you’re talking about an ebook, or a printed book, the license is pretty much the same, at least when it comes to sharing: You don’t own the content of the book you’re reading, even if you own the shell it’s printed/rendered on.

(Note that I’m limiting this analysis to the topic of sharing/lending. The right to resell used ebooks is a whole argument unto itself.)

It’s true that if you want to loan someone a printed book, you can simply hand them that book and, eventually, you either get it back, or you don’t. In any case, while the other person is reading the book, you’re not able to read it, because you don’t have it.

I like to think of this as a built-in form of rights management, inherent to the method of delivery. There’s an inconvenience factor that has, historically, obviated the need for strict oversight by the publishing industry.

The argument, then, is that there should be no DRM on Kindle books, because DRM restricts our “right” to share with others the books we’ve purchased. Moreover, it’s different than anything we’ve had to deal with before and, well, change sucks!

Two problems, here:

If you want to share a Kindle book with someone “like you’ve always shared your regular books” you can always hand that someone your Kindle. (And risk never seeing it again.) My wife (also a librarian) did just that when she loaned her Kindle to my mother-in-law last week.

I’ve yet to see someone explain why they can’t do this, just as they’ve always done, if they feel compelled to lend a Kindle book to someone they know.

In some ways, lending “the old fashioned way” with a Kindle is actually more open, because you can still read those books on a 2nd Kindle, or on an iPad, or on your computer.

More importantly, in this hypothetical, sharing a DRM-free digital file isn’t anything at all like lending someone a copy of a printed book: If I’ve got a digital file, and I “share” it with someone, I’ve still got my copy of that file. (Certainly, no one is arguing that they’d temporarily delete their own copy, in good faith?)

Meanwhile, my friend also has a copy of that file. Before long, his friend has a copy of that file. And then her friend has a copy of that file. As the original lender, nothing ever stopped me from reading my copy, nor do I risk losing my copy if my friend decides to keep his, and there’s no end to the chain.

The argument that we’ve always been able to lend our printed books as many times as we want, to whoever we want, simply doesn’t scale to digital books.

It’s easy to argue, I suppose, that this is the way it “should” be, but whether DRM exists or not, that sort of sharing isn’t legal. If all Kindle books went DRM-free tomorrow, that turn of events wouldn’t wipe out existing copyright law and you wouldn’t suddenly have the right to distribute copies of books to your friends, let alone to complete strangers.

Similarly, you can hand someone a printed book, but you can’t make a word-for-word copy of that book and give it away, or sell it. Copyright limits how we can distribute the books we buy, DRM or no.

Sans DRM, you’re not “sharing” or “lending” books — you’ve become part of a peer-to-peer distribution network, with almost no incentive for anyone to buy books.

I’d love to think that we live in a perfect world and we’d pay for all our books out of the goodness of our hearts, or maybe at the very least we’d eventually throw a few dollars toward one of our favorite authors (most likely an established name who doesn’t really need it) but let’s face it: This scenario wouldn’t be sustainable for authors below a certain threshold of popularity.

On a more personal level, the loss of DRM would also mean the loss of social sites like Lendle.

Again, DRM-free does not and would not mean “all bets are off” when it comes to copyright and sharing.

Without the inclusion of DRM on Kindle books, Lendle would be nothing more than a network for pirating ebooks, and we’d eventually suffer the same fate as the now defunct sharing site “Megaupload” if in fact we attempted to operate as a lending network in a DRM-free world.

DRM makes Lendle possible.

There’s an argument to be made that the current restrictions on ebooks go too far, or that they’re too restrictive, but it’s hard for me to envision a future in which social lending can exist without some level of restriction, at least.

It also seems absurd to ignore the obvious differences of scope between physical objects and their digital counterparts. I can’t realistically mass produce a printed copy of The Catcher in the Rye, after all.

With all that said, I can’t really agree with the argument that we should just accept whatever publishers feed us when it comes to what we can and can’t do with our digital content, either — and Lendle certainly rejects the idea that lending and/or “free” (as a promotion) is bad for publishers and authors.

The publishing industry is facing a crisis: There’s a new model crashing up against an old model, and too many are reluctant to let go of that old model. In a lot of cases, this is bolstered by the crowd that refuses to go digital because they “love the feel of a book in the hand, the crack of the spine, the smell of old paper…” 

There’s a distinct whiff of hipster pride, there — and it’s a sentiment that is disastrous for the future of the industry.

I’m convinced that “old school” crowd doesn’t read and/or buy nearly as many books as those who bought-in to Kindle because it facilitates their passion for reading, and find that having access to hundreds of books on one easy-to-carry device means that they can read more than ever before.

Reading should be about “what” you’re reading, not “how” you’re reading it, and people who genuinely love to read seem to get that.

Some people love to read, and some people love the idea of loving to read.

The former is the Lendle community, summed up. We’re not going to say that no one joins Lendle to avoid paying for books, but by and large, our active community buys more than they borrow, and they probably buy far more in any given month than most buy in an entire year.

They signed up because they love to read and, in turn, they love that Lendle provides a fun method to discover new books and authors. 

Maybe we need to rethink whether we want to identify as a “social lending” site and focus more on our strengths (and our real benefit to the publishing industry) which is that our users are, essentially, a community driven advertisement for the consumption of books.

We’re fostering a culture of reading, and that’s an endangered concept that every author and every publisher should gladly support.

Amazon is stat-happy these days, and what they’re saying has been nothing but good news for publishers who embrace lending: The Hunger Games allows for lending but it nevertheless topped Amazon’s holiday sales charts. Authors who participate in Amazon’s KDP Select (which includes a lending component) saw an average sales increase of 26%.

The mounting evidence is that lending leads to sales. 

I’ve no doubt in my mind that “lending = good” is the mindset that publishers need to embrace, and soon, in order to seize the momentum of a rapidly changing business model. The fact of the matter is, those who sign up for Lendle are buying books, and they’re choosing to make the best of a limited license to share their love of books with others, when they could instead be spending time on sites like the Pirate Bay.

And, of course, they’re buying books despite the fact that lending licenses could be more consumer friendly, books (often) cost more than they’d like to spend, and in a down economy. Imagine what might happen if publishers were to go all in?

As always, consumers are looking for a convenient and fun way to do the right thing.

With millions of Kindle devices in the hands of consumers and the unfulfilled promise of a sanctioned and legal social environment, there’s billions of untapped dollars to be made from increased exposure alone, and the very best kind of advertising — enthusiastic and viral word of mouth from rabid fans — is waiting to be harnessed and focused in a positive direction.

The only buy-in is a little trust and forward thinking from some of our major publishers.

As always, if you support Lendle, please consider signing on as a Patron.

Lendle Year in Review 2011

Everyone? Meet everyone else.

We went ahead and rolled out the new version of Lendle, last Thursday, and the response has been really positive, thus far. We wanted to provide a bit more detail about some of the new features, and some of what it still to come, and the thinking behind our redesign.

First and foremost, we hope everyone has noticed some speed improvements. Both the book lists (what we’re now calling carousels) and the timelines have been optimized to load faster, and with less lag. Timelines now start loading new content before you get to the end of the list, which should make for a more seamless scrolling experience. Search results should now be faster and much more accurate, as well.

Book covers are now bigger, and we’ve reintroduced Amazon’s editorial reviews. These are available by clicking on any book cover or by visiting any book detail page on Lendle. We’ve also made it easier to submit soundbites by featuring the form more prominently on book detail pages. (Don’t forget that adding soundbites is another way to earn extra borrow credits!)

BOOK CLUBS

The big new feature we’ve added is a Book Club implementation. As of right now, anyone can join an existing club, if it’s public, or request to join an existing club, if it’s private. New clubs can only be created by our Patrons. As they exist today, clubs are a great way to engage in discussions with other Lendlers. We realize that there’s a lot we can still do to make this feature even better, but we wanted to provide a playground and then add features that will fit the way you play.  

There are some obvious additions coming: Moderation tools, a notification system, and the ability to associate specific books to clubs and discussions are all around the corner. And, of course, we’ve already taken note of some excellent suggestions that we’ll likely implement. One of the groups we started, Sci-Fi and Fantasy, has already pointed us in the direction of some great books that we’d not heard of and there are also clubs centered around Christian books, Erotica books, and Young Adult books, to name just a few.

Book Clubs will evolve over time, as more and more are added. For now, we just hope everyone enjoys our first giant leap into social territory. 

MORE TO COME 

We have a few other features that we’ll be launching that didn’t quite make it into the new version of Lendle, and we’ll be taking all of your suggestions into account for overall usability improvements.  

WIN A KINDLE FIRE! 

There’s still time to refer new Lendlers for a chance to win a Kindle Fire or a Kindle Touch 3G. Get your unique referral code and tweet it, shout it, text it, email it – however you want to get it out there – and both you and the person you refer will have a shot to win! There’s no limit on entries, so the more new Lendlers you refer, the better your shot of winning.

You’ve got until the end of the month to enter and you can see all the details and contest rules over on our FAQ.

PATRONS 

Patrons remain our primary source of revenue. All the money we pay out via Amazon gift cards, the ability to keep the servers running, our giveaways – all of this is tied to the generosity of our Patrons. As more Lendlers sign up, we can afford to pay out more for lends, we can come up with new contests and, most importantly, Lendle is more likely to be around for the long haul.

We think Lendle is a great free service, unmatched by any of our competitors. We have a bigger selection of unique titles than Amazon’s Kindle Owners’ Lending Library (10,000 vs. our 14,000 – and Amazon’s newest service only allows for one lend a month!) and it’s often faster to get books through Lendle than it is via OverDrive and your local library. We also think that $25 for all of the great Patron features we offer – and all the new features you’ll automatically get as they are added in the future – is an amazing value. 

Lendle was recently the subject of a comprehensive review by the team over at the Bookwi.se blog, and we doubt there’s a better endorsement of our Patron upgrade than this:

Is Patron worth it? Yes, for Book It: Patron level is worth it for one reason, the ability to ‘book’ and not ‘reserve’ books. Everything else is nice, but extra… The ability to ‘book it’ reserves you a place in line. And once you move to the front of the line, you have to option to get the book, or wait until you are ready to read it. I currently have over 100 books ‘booked’. Many of these books are books that no member now has ready to lend. But I am booking for the point when someone joins with that book. I am essentially treating these books as a future wish-list. If I have any interest, I book a place in line and make a decision to actually read the book later.

We agree: Book My Spot is worth $25, alone. We’ve also changed up the way we display advertisements, so it’s worth noting that, as a Patron, you’ll never see any ad, anywhere on the site. These are just two of several great Patron-only features…

Support Lendle: Click here to sign up today!

It’s not in our DNA to give up or despair.

Startups can react to unforeseen obstacles in one of two ways:

• Oh, S**T! How does this hurt us? or…
• How does this help us?

Today, Amazon announced that Prime subscribers would be able to instantly borrow (with limitations) from a selection of new titles — even those on the NYT bestsellers list.

Pretty amazing.

Predictably, our inboxes are flooded with questions about how we’re reacting to the news.

First, this isn’t an unforeseen development. We’ve been hearing rumors for some time now that Amazon might do something like this and, frankly, even if we hadn’t heard rumors, we’ve known all along how lending can lead to sales, and we don’t think we’re any smarter than the folks at Amazon.

So, what’s our reaction?

We’re signing up for Amazon Prime. So should you.

More importantly, we immediately thought of several ways that this could make Lendle even better. Better for us, better for Amazon, and — most importantly — better for our Lendlers.

Fortunately, we’re built for this sort of situation. Everything we do, we do in house. That means any code we have to push out can happen relatively quickly.

We’re ready.

A month or so ago, we got in touch with Jeff Bezos, and we said:

What [we were] hoping to see, though, was news about lending rights. Specifically, any indication at all that there’s some sort of effort on Amazon’s part to convince publishers that lending can be a key component in driving ebook sales. You once said that the Barnes & Noble model was a joke — you were right — yet Amazon adopted that model for the Kindle. Since that time, publishers have been more likely to opt out than in. The big names are all but absent. The titles people want to read and share aren’t lending enabled.

Is lending still on the radar? (Specifically lending rights appended to the ebooks we purchase from Amazon. [We’re] aware that library lending via OverDrive is now a go.) Has Amazon given up on this front?

The answer we got was hopeful:

Thanks for writing about your desire to see more Kindle books eligible for lending. We know this is important to our customers, and we’ll continue to work with publishers directly and ask that they enable their content for lending on Kindle. I’ve also shared your comments with the Kindle team.

We responded with, in part:

While many of our competitors are billing themselves as ebook “rental” services — selling a service that Amazon gives away, essentially — we’ve gone to great lengths to build a service that compliments and strengthens your offering without undermining your credibility with publishers. We’ve no interest in selling access to a license you already give away; we love books, we think publishing is ripe for a sea change, and we set out to build a service that could help make the case for that change.

We can only do so much, though. Publishers need to be educated. My wife is a librarian — Lendle was her idea — so we know first hand what we’re up against. The publishing industry is protecting an old model. Change doesn’t come by sitting around and waiting for old models to die.

Recently, on Twitter, someone said that Amazon had already won — and the ever-cynical undercurrent was that this was somehow a bad thing, that Amazon was growing too large.

We disagree. We think Amazon is winning because they’re making smart moves, because they’re the best, because they’re looking out for their customers. Indeed, they’re not waiting for change, they’re moving forward with their own publishing imprints — lending enabled — and they’re using the money they make to offer innovative and forward-thinking new features.

We can relate. We’ve always said that this was about being part of an exciting new chapter in the publishing industry — the first new chapter in a long, long time.

The plot just thickened.

We think that one of the best things about being a reader, and we suspect most book lovers will agree, is spontaneous discovery. It’s finding “that book” on someone’s bookshelf and becoming obsessed with a whole new world in print. 

That sort of love translates to sales, even if it didn’t start with one. 

Lendle’s never been (primarily) about money — we just need it to survive. Still. If money were all we cared about, we’d not be giving away most of our profit in order to offer our Lendlers a way to earn Amazon gift cards by lending.

This is why our first thought wasn’t to dwell on how this could hurt us.

Instead, we realized that we offer something that Amazon does not: A growing community that is dedicated almost exclusively to spontaneous discovery.

With the new version of Lendle that is just around the corner, our community is going to become even stronger.

And, in the end, Amazon’s big announcement is all about a button. 

Which means we just need that button.

We don’t know exactly what that means, yet. But you can bet we’re on top of it.

If you’re smart, you’re signing up for Amazon prime so that you’ll be ready just as soon as we are.

The future is bright.

Our thoughts on Kindle library lending via OverDrive

After an incredibly brief (1 day!) beta period, it looks as though library lending for the Kindle is now live in 11,000 libraries across the nation.

Sorry, other countries. You lose again.

Read Amazon’s press release here.

We’ve not really had a chance to try this out, yet, so we can’t say whether the experience is good, great, or awful. We suspect your mileage may vary, depending on your local library’s specific OverDrive implementation. (Let us know your experiences.)

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