[eBook library] LendInk

VanessaNorth said:

clearly, lendink did a horrible job of introducing themselves to the publishing community and engaging them as partners in promoting literacy and the publisher-sanctioned lending of books.

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Almost everything you posted on this thread is wrong, but this particular paragraph stands-out more then the rest. Why? Because "Dale" of LendInk DID contact the publishing community and engage them as "partners". He is an AMAZON AFFILIATE which means he advertises books and offers them for sale (through Amazon's site). In order to gain permission to do this he had to SIGN A CONTRACT.

How do I know? Because I'm an Amazon Affiliate. I too signed a contract (i.e. introduced myself to the publishing community via agreeing to their terms) and set myself up as a partner that earns 6% of each sale. So basically Dale did EXACTLY what you asked him to do.

P.S. And no my business isn't great. I've sold about ten books in the last year, but that isn't your job to decide that I should have my website taken from me! That is AMAZON'S job to decide whether or not to revoke my affiliation. Not yours. Or an angry twittermob.

And after ten years, the contract is still there so Amazon must be happy. Furthermore: I do loan books (again through Amazon's site which handles it all). If any of ye authors start sending me DMCA takedown notices, not only will I respond "This does not infringe," I can and will call my college buddy the lawyer and file a claim in court. He's done probono work for me in the past and will likely do it again. It is a $500 fine to file false DMCA requests.

Final Thought: I've read almost 1000 posts from authors, which is why I'm so angry right now. A few of those posts were polite requests to have their books removed. That's good. Most of the requests were threats of legal action which Dale will have to spend thousands of dollars to defend himself against. That's bad. And then there were the 20% or so of Authors' Letters that I term "hate speech". Just a few random examples:

- "Pirate!"
- "Thief!"
- "Criminal!" and tons more juvenile name-calling. I consider such things to be as unacceptable as using the "n" word or "b" word. It is hate speech pure-and-simple and designed to demean the victim as if they were filth.

- "Take my book off your website or I will track you down and beat you [and your family]!" (there were many public posts like these)

- "I don't believe you are a disabled veteran Dale, and even if you are, you volunteered to go to Iraq. You got what you deserved. I am antiwar and despise all soldiers."

I could go on and on but why bother? You authors have demonstrated you care more about your 30 pieces of silver then acting like well-mannered, mature, decent human beings. You have legally-threatened, physically-threatened, spread hatespeech, and even accused a man who put his life on the line to defend your freedom of speech (expression, the press, et cetera) of being a liar.

Good job.

Way to demonstrate that it really isn't the Pen that is dangerous. It is the person that is holding the pen (or keyboard) and pulling the trigger to destroy other people's lives.

AnneMarble said:

As somebody who got hit with an erroneous (to put it politely) takedown notice, I'm not crying for authors who send out misinformed notices.

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Oh, I'm not sympathetic, but I wish people would read the screen more than they do.

theaveng said:

Because "Dale" of LendInk DID contact the publishing community and engage them as "partners". He is an AMAZON AFFILIATE which means he advertises books and offers them for sale (through Amazon's site)

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Being an Amazon Affiliate is in no way the same as "introducing yourself to the publishing community."

Really.

theaveng said:

I could go on and on but why bother? You authors have demonstrated you care more about your 30 pieces of silver then acting like well-mannered, mature, decent human beings.

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Why bother? Because if you have a case to make now might be the time to make it.

(How many of those authors, I wonder, were folks whose only experience with publishing was self-publishing through Amazon? There's a ton of them who, if they aren't genuinely fifteen years old, act as if they were.)

We have our own threads here about Authors Behaving Badly. You don't have to tell us that it's possible; we know.

I'm not going to talk about "all" of any group. I'm going to talk about one person. You, personally, could start acting like a well-mannered, mature, decent human being. You'd get more, and more sympathetic, listeners.

James D. Macdonald said:

Being an Amazon Affiliate is in no way the same as "introducing yourself to the publishing community."

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Amazon is Not a part of the publishing community?!?!? Have an award for dumbest comment of the year.

My contract is with Amazon to sell (and loan) books. Same as LendInk's was. Not directly because that would be copyright infringement, but through Amazon's servers & billing process. You and the other authors have NO right to sweep in and terminate that contract which exists between LenkInk and Amazon. (But that is exactly what you did. You owe LendInk an apology.)

theaveng said:

Amazon is Not a part of the publishing community?!?!? Have an award for dumbest comment of the year.

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No, Amazon is a retailer.

Random House is part of the publishing community. Fine Print is part of the publishing community.

James D. Macdonald as a respected writer, editor, and writing teacher is part of the publishing community.

He's also part of this community, and you will respect him and the other members of this community, or you won't be posting here.

Go read and think carefully about the basic principles expressed in the The Newbie Guide to Absolute Write.

I'm going to give you a time out while you go do that.

Torgo said:

Because you misunderstood the nature of the site, and the nature of the lending systems in place at Amazon and B&N, it appears you have contributed to a legit business getting itself shut down (temporarily, perhaps.) You have made many accusations of illegality which don't seem to be justified, and people have been firing off erroneous DMCA takedowns, which may leave them open to being sued.

Would you care to edit or rescind any of the statements - the very forceful and definitive statements - you have made in this thread?

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This isn't the first time I've seen authors and publishers woefully ignorant about how laws and digital rights management actually works. (mscelina once accused me of breaking the law by stripping the DRM from my own, legally-purchased ebooks). But I can understand why there was such confusion, because at first glance, it's hard to distinguish a legit sharing site like LendInk from something like eBookr. And I do think that ebook lending schemes, even through library systems like Overdrive, are kind of problematic for digital publishing.

I think eventually we'll have to move to some kind of pay-per-read scheme, similar to the fee authors get for library checkouts outside the U.S. But I also think implementing these schemes as anything other than voluntary opt-ins will also be difficult. However, that's for another thread...

theaveng said:

Amazon is Not a part of the publishing community?!?!? Have an award for dumbest comment of the year.

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Dude, you were done wrong here. That's clear, and I don't blame you for being angry. But this isn't the way to engage. You'd have gotten a lot more support if you entered the thread by saying, "Hey, you have really gotten the wrong idea here, let me explain," instead of "Grraaaar! You stupid meanie-heads ruined me!"

Amadan said:

Dude, you were done wrong here. That's clear, and I don't blame you for being angry. But this isn't the way to engage. You'd have gotten a lot more support if you entered the thread by saying, "Hey, you have really gotten the wrong idea here, let me explain," instead of "Grraaaar! You stupid meanie-heads ruined me!"

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Um, just to be clear, pretty sure this person isn't from Lendink... Correct me if I'm wrong.

LittleKiwi said:

Um, just to be clear, pretty sure this person isn't from Lendink... Correct me if I'm wrong.

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It's been observed before: people can be more incendiary, and less forgiving, when they're angry on behalf of someone else than they are on behalf of themselves.

LittleKiwi said:

Um, just to be clear, pretty sure this person isn't from Lendink... Correct me if I'm wrong.

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There's a lot of confusion in this thread anyway. I've seen "you" thrown around as if the people posting in this thread were those who sent takedown notices to Lendink's providers. Uhm... What? Where are people getting that? Are they actually reading the posts? When I read the posts, most of the posts defended Lendink. For the most part, even when people were critical of the site, they did not think it was a pirate site -- they were simply critical of the way the site presented itself. Yet some of those people have been blasted being part of the anti-Lendink mob.

Sorry, but I left my pitchforks and torches in storage.

In fact, as a result of this, I joined a couple of the other legit lending sites just to see how they worked. I had joined one when I first bought my original Nook (the first generation one), but didn't use it much because I didn't find it conveniently set up. I'm glad to see the lending sites have much better interfaces. And eBookfling just made a tiny bit of money from me because I decided it would be quicker to buy a book through them than to borrow it.

James D. Macdonald said:

(How many of those authors, I wonder, were folks whose only experience with publishing was self-publishing through Amazon? There's a ton of them who, if they aren't genuinely fifteen years old, act as if they were.)

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I looked at a long list of authors allegedly involved in taking down the sites. I did not recognize any of the names. That doesn't mean they were all unknown self-published authors. But it is a possibility. And I say that as someone who has bought some self-published books lately (mostly horror and Phantom of the Opera "phan fic"). In most cases, authors who had publishers, even small publishers, probably went to their publisher with their concerns. And the publisher looked into the site and said "No, don't worry. This site is OK." I read an e-mail one of those publishers had sent to their authors, and it was very reassuring, pointing out that people who join a lending site are just as likely to give up and just buy the book instead of waiting in line to borrow it.


The only name I recognized in the mass of tweets was an indie publisher -- Renaissance, I think. At least some of their titles are marked as "lendable" in Amazon's store, so either they really didn't understand what that part of their contract meant or they didn't read the FAQ at Lendink and completely misunderstood what was going on, or something along those lines.

James D. Macdonald said:

We have our own threads here about Authors Behaving Badly. You don't have to tell us that it's possible; we know.

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Like this one...
http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=230972

theaveng said:

Amazon is Not a part of the publishing community?!?!? Have an award for dumbest comment of the year.

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Look, I know you aren't part of the writing-and-publishing community. Being an Amazon Associate doesn't make you one. The purely stupid remarks you've made here prove that.

Amazon is a distributor and consignment retailer. They offer associate accounts to anyone and everyone, in an attempt to bribe people to link from various places on the web to Amazon -- whether what the Associate is linking is books or balloons or clock-radios.

So don't come off all blustery-proud when you don't know what you're talking about. I've given you several clues. See if you can follow them.

Also: I don't owe Lendink anything. Especially not an apology.

But you certainly owe me one.

So everyone can be on the same page: Lendink at the Internet Archive (Wayback Machine).

The FAQ doesn't seem to have been archived.

evilrooster said:

It's been observed before: people can be more incendiary, and less forgiving, when they're angry on behalf of someone else than they are on behalf of themselves.

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I know, I'm just making it clear because further up someone seemed to think this person and the owner of Lendink were one and the same.

LittleKiwi said:

I know, I'm just making it clear because further up someone seemed to think this person and the owner of Lendink were one and the same.

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I didn't think it was the owner. Here's a nice interview with the man himself:
http://www.digitalmediamachine.com/2012/08/what-happened-to-lendink-owner-explains.html

Okay - since this issue is still going strong on several other forums I'm on. . . .

I'm not sure how Nook lending works, but here's the scoop on Kindle (Please note that this is SEPARATE from Kindle lending library which has different rules).

1 - The book must be marked as 'lendable' by the publisher. Otherwise it is not eligible for lending.

2 - If you BUY a book that is lendable, you can loan it out ONCE for a period of 14 days. While the book is loaned out, you do not have access to it on your own Kindle.

3 - You loan by sending the invitation by email to the person who wants to borrow. Once they borrow the book, they have access to it for 14 days, then they lose their access and you regain it.

What Lendink purports to do is basically match up people who have lendable books with people who want to borrow them.

Frankly, I don't see the huge problem. This would have way less impact than buyers re-selling your print book endlessly through a used book store (of which Amazon is one). And *tremendously* less impact than an actual pirate site allowing unlimited free downloads.

My two cents.

Okay, just realized I responded to a post really far down while somehow missing the majority of the later posts - sorry if all that has been covered.

But, yeah, I wish everyone would stop the hysteria. I haven't seen this much angst and vitriol over legitimate pirate sites.

AW Admin said:

No, Amazon is a retailer.

Random House is part of the publishing community. Fine Print is part of the publishing community.

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I realize I'm nitpicking here, but I'd actually argue that Amazon is indisputably both at this point; they're a retailer and distributor (as Amazon.com), but they're a publisher (as Amazon Digital Services or Createspace).

In fact, I'd further posit that their Kindle Digital Publishing Select program was a large part of the problem. Many people who publish through Amazon sign up for the Select program, which offers better royalties in exchange for several things, I believe one of which is that books will be available for lending. Yet many don't seem aware or seem surprised that their book is lendable. Thus, when they stumbled across the existence of LendInk and heard other people going 'ZOMG PIRACY' they reacted poorly, because well of course they didn't say anyone could hand out their book for free!

None of which changes the fact that signing up as an affiliate doesn't remotely qualify as "introducing oneself to the community;" I'd say you're completely correct there! (And the poster was unquestionably out-of-line.) But I kind of feel that at this point, Amazon now is part of the publishing community regardless.

I honestly think there's a few morals in general to take away from the whole unfortunate incident:

1. If you're publishing something, read the whole contract before signing. In fact, let's just apply this to contract law in general, even when the contract is online. (I'm pretty sure we have entire forums here devoted to this.)
2. The Internet is an echo chamber; bad/erroneous information can be repeated loud enough and widely enough to gain a sheen of legitimacy. Look into things yourself before piling on in an outraged mob. This applies to a heck of a lot more than publishing, too. (Can we apply this to politics/news? Or, like, anything posted on Facebook ever? Please?)
3. Also, read your contract before signing it. No, really. The whole thing. It is a legally binding document, after all.
4. If you're going to build a site that can benefit from the goodwill of an existing community, reaching out to them is never a bad idea. LendInk didn't do anything wrong legally, but that doesn't mean they couldn't have also cultivated goodwill from the authors. For instance, provide a way that users could register to see when a new book came out by an author they liked and be emailed. Or a reminder mail after the lend expired saying, "Did you like this book? If so, remember go to review on Amazon and Goodreads; reviews help the authors you like." I imagine either of those would've been things that would've changed the perception of the site into a friend of authors, without changing the focus of the site at all.
5. Did I mention you should read any legally-binding contract before signing it?

C'est la vie. :/

Just FYI, Lendink is up and running again by the looks of it.

Lendink

The site seems to be favorable to authors. It lists my books and includes covers, descriptions, and links to borrow or buy the books. Yet another medium for exposure.

A few problems with the website:

1. The seach argument is case-sensitive, so it gets hits for "Al Stevens" but not "al stevens."
2. Text at the bottom of the screen is dim, tiny, and hard to read.
3. Even though the books aren't listed on B&N, the site includes links to borrow and buy from that store.

Al, what happens when you click on the B&N link? From what I understand, nothing should happen if you're not listed with B&N/Amazon and the links get clicked.

I think what started everyone freaking out to begin with was those links were there and they assumed that people could borrow their books illegally. When the truth was the links were on everybody's book and only worked if you were affiliated with the lending program/offered channel.

Those links go to a B&N search page that says the title wasn't found.