14 DAY TRIAL // We already said how owners of the Amazon Kindle e-readers or tablets can loan books from an online library, but even though the service hasn't existed for long, one supplier of e-books decided to suddenly cut off access to its titles.
It was a report from The Digital Shift that brought to attention how US customers can no longer get Penguin books.
Penguin gave security concerns as the reason for this sudden move.
“We have always placed a high value on the role that libraries can play in connecting our authors with our readers," the company reportedly said.
However, due to new concerns about the security of our digital editions, we find it necessary to delay the availability of our new titles in the digital format while we resolve these concerns with our business partners.”
It didn't stop with just that either. It also delayed the release of new e-books in the Overdrive library.
Last week Penguin sent notice to OverDrive that it is reviewing terms for library lending of their eBooks,” said OverDrive on its blog.
“In the interim, OverDrive was instructed to suspend availability of new Penguin eBook titles from our library catalog and disable “Get for Kindle” functionality for all Penguin eBooks. We apologize for this abrupt change in terms from this supplier. We are actively working with Penguin on this issue and are hopeful Penguin will agree to restore access to their new titles and Kindle availability as soon as possible.”
One would think that the world would have learned a lesson from how messy, long and subject to corporate power struggles the change from analog to digital music distribution was.
Those in the know probably hoped e-books wouldn't go through the same.
Unfortunately, the speed with which Amazon's new service started seeing such issues implies something similar will affect this field as well.