Amazon has just started lending Harry Potter books to their Prime members via Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.

In this interesting video from The Wall Street Journal we can learn more on why Amazon decided to go into this deal with Pottermore, despite the fact, that they probably have to pay the full price of the book each time it’s borrowed.

Via WSJDigitalNetwork – YouTube.

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1 COMMENT

  1. So the WSJ really doesn’t know how much Amazon is paying each time it lends out a Harry Potter volume. They guess that Amazon pays the full price of the book each time but we all know that Amazon is quite secretive about these things so there is no evidence supporting that guess. Perhaps they use the Harper Collins formula for libraries which is buy the book and loan it out 26 times.

    Regardless, this is much more than an Amazon Prime “doorbuster.” Amazon and many others in digital distribution have a very strong interest in conditioning the public to accept the concept of media rental over media ownership. Just as banks conditioned us to accept credit cards so will we also be conditioned to value rental over ownership. At first it will be a sweet deal but once hegemony is achieved, we’ll be swallowing pay per view in eBooks just as some of us now do with sports programming.

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