Perhaps we should pause and consider an aspect of the Nook no one is talking about -
- The LendMe Feature on the Nook can be turned off by Publishers.
- A lot of Publishers haven’t yet said yes. Some are even surprised by the Feature.
Allowing Lending would be a Big backwards step for Publishers who are happy to kill off used book sales and book lending. We all know why readers want it – However, there has to be some benefit for Publishers and Authors.
Is there? Let’s dig deeper into Barnes & Noble Sharing.
What exactly does the Lending Feature enable?
This is my understanding (B&N – please correct me if I’m mistaken) -
- Lend your eBook to a friend for 14 days.
- Alternate versions say you can lend an ebook unlimited times or just once.
Here’s what Nook LendMe would enable -
- Person 1 buys an eBook and reads it in say 10 days.
- Person 1 lends it to his Friend who reads it in 10 days.
At that point you’ve only lost 1 sale that may or may not have happened. You may or may not have created one additional customer.
If, however, the number of loans is unlimited, we have a problem. Why?
The Nook to Nook lending is too easy.
You can read books on the Nook, the iPhone, the PC, the BlackBerry.
You can share via email between any devices making it even easier.
With unlimited B&N lending we would get -
- Person 1 gets book back, and lends it to Person 3.
- Then Person 1 gets it back and lends it to Person 4.
- And so on.
An eBook that is sold once and read by 10 or 20 people in a year.
One Sale translates to 20 people reading a book. Sounds dreamy 
unless you’re an author or a publisher.
It Gets Worse
The Internet connects everyone and it encourages the concept of ‘free’.
Do you really think there won’t be online sites that let a single ebook get read by 20 people who normally would buy it?
NookShare – Where Nook owners come together and read one ebook copy hundreds of times.
You could literally go online, find a book that’s available for the next two days, email the owner, and read the ebook for free. Later, an ebook you’ve bought gets handed out free for 1 (or perhaps 100) people.
Instead of solving the used book problem you’ve made it worse because there’s no shipping or storage needed.
Pre-LendMe and Post-LendMe
If there are, for a particular ebook -
- 10,000 readers who would buy the book.
- Another 20,000 who would read it for free if they had the option.
- 10,000 of those 20,000 would become fans of the author and buy books in the future.
Pre-LoanMe You Would Have
- 10,000 readers buy the ebook.
- No one else gets to check them out.
Post-LoanMe You Would Have
Best Case Scenario:
- 10,000 people buy the ebook.
- 20,000 lend it and 10,000 become fans.
A net result of 10,000 sales and 20,000 fans and future buyers.
Worst Case Scenario:
- 1,000 people buy the ebook. 10,000 original buyers read it.
- 20,000 more read it and 10,000 become fans.
A net result of 1,000 sales and 20,000 total fans – of whom, only 2,000 would buy future books and they would then share it with the other 18,000.
The only viable LendMe is one that limits Sharing to Just One or Two Times
If there is a limit of 1 to 2 times (total, not at the same time) per ebook then you limit the downside and the upside i.e.
- You only get to access 1 or 2 potential people who may or may not become future readers.
- You only lose 1 or 2 sales.
Anytime you make it anything like unlimited you will greatly increase your downside risk.
There are Better Options than LendMe for Publishers
Why would Publishers want to give away their books for free?
Instead of letting people read ebooks for free and seeing if they will pay you out of the goodness of their hearts, there are other dimensions to explore -
- Lower Prices to see if Volumes make up for it – It makes more sense to lower prices and reward people who are actually buying ebooks than to increase lending and reward people who are paying you nothing.
- First Book in a series Free – Hook users to the Series.
- Offers, Deals, Coupons – Give customers of good intent a reward like a 20% discount or a free book or bonus content. It’s better than rewarding people who’re paying you nothing.
LendMe is a win for customers – However, there’s no guarantee it’s a win for Publishers.
Publishers already have $10 ebook prices to contend with – Why add on a half dozen free rentals for the book buyer’s friends?
Prediction: Publishers will kill the feature and introduce a 1 or 2 rentals limit.
B&N have made the mistake of making this their big plank on which to sell their eReader.
- However, it’s a feature that’s good for them to compete against Amazon and it’s good for customers.
- It might very well be a very bad feature for Publishers.
- We all know that letting Publishers disable Read To Me has taken some of the shine off of it.
- B&N Lending could easily be construed as much more dangerous than Read To Me.
Which means that Publishers may very well decide they have no reason to bring back the shared book/used book market that eBooks promise to eliminate. A promise that is part of the reason we have lower $10 ebook prices.
Nook’s #1 feature is Lending. Publishers decide whether it’s enabled. Wonder what’s going to happen in the 5 weeks until release .
Filed under: kindle
This is really bizarre math. Not all people who buy the book are going to lend it to someone else. First, how many Nook owners do you know? How many does the second guy know, who can’t lend the book because he didn’t buy it. When the 2 weeks is up it reverts to the original buyer. If this feature caused the buyer to buy the book in the first place knowing that he can share it with another, then the seller has gained a sale, not lost a sale. I think this scenario is way overblown. MOST buyers will never share the book with anybody. I have over a thousand books on my computer. Many of those are legally lendable. I have not lent any, because I don’t know anyone who reads the same stuff that I do. My mate and I do share books occasionally. Those are not lost sales, they are gained sales. They are books that I would not have purchased for myself but which I bought for her as a gift and then later read for myself just because they were there. Same as a hard cover book, except I can change the font to a Large Print Book. If libraries did not exist, many authors would be left in obscurity because they spread the word. We don’t buy on the recommendation of some pundit writing a review, we buy on the recommendation of an enthusiastic friend… one that probably doesn’t have the same device that I do.
[...] in LendMe. They’re thinking how do we do this without killing revenues and ourselves? One Nook reviewer outlines a few different lending scenarios book publishers might consider. Everyone’s [...]
I’m also concerned for B&N about the LendMe feature. Not all Kindle books are shareable, despite one of Kindle’s features being the ability to share books on devices attached to the same account. This ability to share books with users that are a) not attached to the same account, and b) potentially not even Nook owners, is probably not going to sit well with publishers.
It will be interesting to see just how many books have the LendMe function activated upon Nook’s launch.
[...] view of the Nook Sharing feature was that there is no way it makes sense for [...]
Aah, fuzzy math.
What’s stopping this doomsday you’re predicting from happening today? Baen.com sells their ebooks with no DRM, allowing you to make unlimited simultaneous “lends” and those people can do the same. How does Baen sell more than 1 of any of their ebooks?
They also give away hundreds of their ebooks for free! The end times are here! Oh no! Astonishingly, they see very good ebook sales numbers, and their free books increase paper sales for those and others of that authors books.
Your “worst case” scenario is already available, and it hasn’t resulted in the implosion of those books sales. I really doubt the nook would change that if they allowed unlimited lending.
The only problem is – If the ideal situation doesn’t come about and Baen’s magic doesn’t replicate for other publishers, publishers are done.
It easy for readers to say – do it because it works for Baen.
It’s Publishers livelihood and earnings and everything else that’s at stake. For readers – it’s next to nothing.
Absolutely ridiculous article by switch11. You’re such an alarmist. Shame on you.
First of all, I can buy a book at the store and then loan any book I own to others any time I choose to do so. With the nook, I can only lend a book out to one person at a time also, so what is the difference?
Secondly, do you really believe anyone is going to lend a book out to 1,000 people? That’s nuts.
Let me add something. Any publisher that chooses not to have their books availabel in nook format will be losing out. The nook is a wonderful product that I couldn’t be happier with, and it will be the only source of book purchasing & reading for myself and many others. I have already purchased 6 books on my nook since I received it mid December. That’s far more books than I’ve ever read & purchased in only 2 weeks time ever before. It’s so enjoyable to read on & to take with me everywhere, & extremely convenient for me to immediately buy a new book when I finish one.
I’m reading more, & buying more books.