Battles in the Book World

The age of the e-book is upon us. Amazon reports that they are selling more e-books than print right now. With the digitalized world we live in, that shouldn't be surprising, but for love-to-hold-a-book-in-the-hands person like me, it's kind of sad.

Amazon's Kindle and the Nook Reader put out by Barnes and Noble have changed the book industry tremendously. Add the newest link in this technology chain--the Lendle--and you have the beginning of a real book world battle.

Lendle is a digital way to lend a friend a book. It allows people to lend one of their, paid-for, e-books to a friend for up to 14 days. Sounds like a swell idea, doesn't it? After only six weeks, Amazon nixed it on the premise that it does not sell books or services, and it's only common sense that Amazon is in business to sell a product and make a profit.

The second book world battle I've been reading about is a massive undertaking by Google to build the worlds largest library by scanning millions of books to their site. It's a pet project of a Google executive, but this week a judge deflated Google's balloon by ruling that it would create a monopoly and violate copyright laws. There are too many facets of this subject for me to go into it in any detail here, but if you're interested, read the NY Times article at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/23/technology/23google.html?_r=1&ref=books

With so many new things happening in the book world, there are bound to be some battles. Who will win and who is going to lose may be a toss-up, but it would behoove all writers and readers to pay attention to what goes on.