BookSwim, bills itself as a "Netflix for books", announced that it plans to launch eBookFling.com tomorrow, a site where users Exchange e-books. Press release from BookSwim makes obvious that managers of company wants to anticipate service not be warmly received by Amazon, Barnes & Noble and book publishers or are trying to gin up the release with a little controversy.
"The initial reaction may be a negative", the company said in its statement. "Publishers and authors will claim that the lending feature is being abused and cause unusual sales." The company breathlessly acknowledged that the service can force authors to worry about "doing just half of sales on new books too!" (The exclamation mark is theirs).
The service comes two weeks after a start-up called Kindle Lending Club has launched a service of digital-book sharing similar.
In the era of file sharing, it is difficult to see how services like these would be seen as a serious threat or for that matter, attracting much of an audience. For those who don't want to pay, there is no legal means to acquire them (library) and the illegal means (peer to peer). Meanwhile, gadget manufacturers are trying to streamline the arduous process of digitizing books and if they succeed, they will undoubtedly accelerate the digital-book sharing via P2P networks.
Still, Amazon launched the Kindle loans on December 30th, may want to risk any. My colleague Stephen Shankland wrote earlier this month "" is not Napster, but the Kindle probably has facilitated Lending Club loan over 1000 books between strangers. Under scale, it has the potential to automate the free book global loan when Amazon would rather see an actual sales. "
A representative of Amazon wasn't immediately available for comment.
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