Amazon Shuts Down Lendle?
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Amazon Kindle fans had to wait a long time to get book lending capability on their favorite e-book reader. Since Amazon brought e-book lending to Kindle platform, many ebook lending clubs have been launched on the Internet to help Kindle users connect with others and lend/borrow books. Lendle was one of those services. It was developed to allow Kindle owners to lend their unused e-books to others. Unfortunately, the services seems to have been shut down by Amazon:
Amazon has revoked Lendle’s API access. Unfortunately, Lendle is unavailable indefinitely. We will do everything we can to restore service soon.
When we first heard this, we assumed the issue could be over trademark or other serious issues. We were mistaken. Apparently, Amazon does like people lending books as long as those actions lead to more sales (but how do we know it does not?).
Jeff Croft and his team have done a wonderful job developing Lendle to what it was before Amazon took action against it. The Lendle team is promising not to give up:
Over the six weeks or so that Lendle has been running, we’ve been thrilled to engage with a passionate, loyal, and vocal community many, many thousands of book-lovers strong. We intend to do everything in our power to continue to serve our amazing community. Part of that, of course, is doing whatever we can do get our API access back. Failing that, it’s still very possible for us to run a lending site without relying on Amazon’s APIs. It may take us a bit of time to rebuild, but one way or another, we’ll continue lending eBooks.
It is quite astounding to see so many smart folks make stupid decisions on a consistent basis. Lending and borrowing books does lead to more sales. These are moves that lead to more e-book piracy. Not that it is always a bad thing for authors…
