Amazon is in talks with publishers about potentially launching a subscription lending program for Kindle books according to The Wall Street Journal.
The proposal would allow subscribers to Amazon Prime to borrow Kindle books for free as part of their subscription. It’s unclear if there would be a limit as to how many ebooks could be borrowed in a given month or if there would be an additional fee to access the lending program.
If Amazon ends up launching this service it would bypass libraries entirely for ebooks. It would also make borrowing ebooks drastically easier than the current process and would most likely get Amazon a whole bunch of additional Amazon Prime subscribers.
This is definitely not good news for public libraries.