Book Love and the Kindle – A Match Made in Purgatory?

As children, we’re encouraged to visit the library, to sign up for a card and borrow books. When there’s no library around, or a lack of the latest and greatest, we swap books with friends and classmates or sign up for online services such as Paperback Swap, Bookins, and Book Mooch.

Borrowing books is an important part of the zeitgeist. And while borrowing a book from a library or swapping one online may be a simple matter, borrowing a book from a friend is an essential process. Libraries and book swaps are impersonal. But borrowing from a friend? There’s an element of recommendation, a shared love of books and genres and particular authors.

Consider my trips home (Australia). Every time I visit, I swap books. Last time, my friend Rouha loaned a copy of the seventh Harry Potter and an injunction to “read it fast”. I, in turn, loaned my copy of Sarah Dessen’s Lock and Key to my Jodi Picoult fangirl sister-in-law, Serena because the likelihood of a Picoult fan also being a Dessen fan is pretty high.

But there’s more to it than that–the simple lending of a volume is just the beginning. When I finished HP 7 (it sounds like a printer, doesn’t it?) Rouha and I got together to discuss the book. When Serena finished Lock and Key, we lounged on my bed and talked about the book.

Now, while I’m for book borrowing, I understand the implications of it–it’s a free read, resulting in no flow of money to publisher or author. But book borrowing is a force for positive publicity. It taps the most trustworthy kind of publicity–word of mouth–and results in more sales for a given author. More importantly, though, book borrowing encourages the borrower to explore other genres more than any form of advertising. True, bookstores provide recommendations, and people follow them. I’ve bought books from the “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” list at the bottom of every Amazon page. I’ve also purchased a book based on the little staff recommendation cards at Barnes & Noble. But this only happens, say 2 in 10 times (20% for my Dalek readers. I know how you like Math.). The remaining 8 times, I skip the recommendations, and take just the one (or three, or five) book.

Sharing a book–and a love of books–is a very human act. We are hard-wired to want people to like us, to want people to like the things we do. And the best way to get someone to like our favorite chocolate/coffee shop/author is to introduce them to said favorites. Sharing a book is such a human act that, according to historian Lisa Jardine,

“On the title page of many surviving [early modern] books the owner has signed his name, and then added “et amicorum” – “my friends’ too”. It means that the book is intended to be shared, passed from one acquaintance to another, or consulted jointly in something like an early modern book club”.

But with the proliferation of e-readers such as the Kindle, book borrowing may soon go the way of cheap, non-Starbuckian coffee. DRM, or digital rights management, locks e-books, preventing the sharing of a single purchase. So while I may enjoy Kristin Cashore’s Fire (actually on my Kindle right now) and want to lend it to my fantasy book fiend bestie, I can’t. Where I could once prove Cashore is a worthwhile read, sharing it–discussing it–with my friends requires them to shell out $9.99 for the Kindle/Nook editions, $10.52 for a hardcover online, or the $17.99 list price in a brick-and-mortar store.

The Nook does allow limited lending – if the publisher allows, Nook users can loan a book for 14 days (a non-negotiable, one time limit) to other Nook users or those using B&N’s e-reader software. Not so the other e-readers, though, if you trust your friends, you could swap Kindles &c., books and all. This, however, is far from ideal.

Hard core borrowers and anti-DRM folk aren’t taking this lying down. According to yesterday’s PW Online, pirate sites such as Scribd, Wattpad, and DocStoc are contributing to $3 billion worth of illegally downloaded books. And that’s just text specialty sites–torrent sites such The Pirate Bay and Mininova do a brisk trade in both print and audio books.

If it hadn’t been for Rouha, I may not have read HP 7. I wasn’t that interested in it; I’d read poor reviews. But her insistence that I struggle through it, along with the offer of the book itself, led me to read it almost overnight (pre-baby, of course). And, while I didn’t think it the best book on the block, I did learn something from it (endless journeys are boring; characters shouldn’t take too long to recognize the obvious; 759 pages is too long for a YA book). I also love the freedom of my Kindle–I can get a book instantly, then read in relative comfort while Baby snoozes on my chest. But if having a Kindle meant I could never again borrow or lend a book, I’d give it up in a heartbeat.

Will the publishing industry recognize the power of book borrowing? I’d like to think so. Some publishers, such as Tor, offer a lot of free content on their websites, even providing exclusive short stories by popular authors (Charles Stross leaps to mind). Last year, Harper Collins put up video of Neil Gaiman reading The Graveyard Book in its entirety; in 2008, they gave away free e-copies of American Gods (more content is available via the “browse inside” section of their website–the books aren’t available for download).

From a 2008 NYT interview about Harper Collins’ decision to offer free content:

“It’s like taking the shrink wrap off a book,” said Jane Friedman, chief executive of Harper Collins Publishers Worldwide in 2008 interview with the New York Times . “The best way to sell books is to have the consumer be able to read some of that content.”

Gaiman agreed.

“I didn’t grow up buying every book I read. I read books at libraries, I read books at friend’s houses, I read books that I found on people’s window sills.” Eventually, he said, he bought his own books and he believes other readers will, too.”

He elaborates in a 2008 blog entry, writing,

This [book borrowing] is how people found new authors for more than a century. Someone says, “I’ve read this. It’s good. I think you’d like it. Here, you can borrow it.” Someone takes the book away, reads it, and goes, Ah, I have a new author.

Libraries are good things: you shouldn’t have to pay for every book you read.

Will the Kindle, the Nook, the Sony e-reader or Spring Design’s Alex kill book borrowing? Individually, perhaps not. Together? It’s a strong possibility.