ux strategy, architecture & design

Is the digital public library just around the corner? The ability to “lend” an ebook has so far been missing from ebook readers, but the Nook from Barnes & Noble may finally pave the way for this concept to become a reality.

Last year I wrote a blog post (”What I want from an ebook reader“) in which I described the features I’d like to see included in an ebook reader before I’d consider buying one. At the time I wrote that post the Kindle was going gangbusters and rumours had started circulating about a possible device from Apple.

There were a number of features identified in that post, but one of the key ones for me was the ability to lend an ebook to someone else. You see, I own quite a few books – maybe 500 or so. And one of the real pleasures I derive from owning them comes from laoning a book to a friend, colleague or family member.

There are several reasons for this enjoyment. For one, most of the time a book – once purchased and read – will sit idle on the shelf; lending it to someone costs nothing and gives so much.There is also the enjoyment that comes from a shared experience – talking about the storline, the characters, the writing. And then there’s the pleasure of introducing someone else to new ideas that I myself find interesting.

For all of these reasons I found the lack of a lend function in the current crop of ebook readers, and the associated digital rights management and distribution models very disappointing.

The Nook

It was therefore with a great deal of surprise and delight that I read of the inclusion of a lend facility in the newly-released Nook from Barnes & Noble. I haven’t seen on of these devices yet – and since they’re not available for sale outside the US I’m not likely to see one any time soon. So this isn’t a review of the Nook itself; but I would like to talk about its Lend function, and what that might mean for the take up and use of ebooks.

The Nook allows you to “lend” your copy of an ebook to another Nook owner for 14 days. It’s not clear what happens at the end of those 14 days, but it seems that the book is no longer available to the person to whom the book was loaned.

Now, I love the fact that Barnes & Noble have introduced this feature into the Nook. By doing so they’ve opened up whole new avenues of use for ebooks and ebook readers, and moved much closer to reflecting the way printed books are used.

The model they’ve chosen to implement mirrors the operating model of all public libraries. Books are ‘checked out’ for a fixed period and then ‘returned’. This is a nice, neat model which is easy to implement. And the feature seems well suited to a formal library, and provides opportunity for the creation of digital public libraries.

You can easily see a scenario in which the library owns several copies of the book, and due to the lower costs of an ebook versus its printed counterpart, owning multiple copies of a title becomes more economic (not to mention the reduction in the physical space required). The library would loan its copies to readers and, after 14 days, the book would be automatically returned. This alone would save libraries a great deal of effort and money in retrieving and replacing overdue books.

You can see the opportunity for additional sales arising as a result. The borrowed copy – whether from a friend or a library – may be returned to the owner, but the borrower may be given the option to purchase a copy of their own directly from the ‘ghost’ left behind. If Barnes & Noble wanted to get smart about it, they might offer a commission to the owner of the original copy for their help in generating the sale, thus encouraging more people to lend books; and providing a potential source of revenue to the libraries.

Short-comings

When I lend a book to a friend I don’t tell them they have to return it in a fixed timeframe. And I certainly don’t take it off them before they’re done with it. I much prefer for them to take their time enjoying the book and return it to me when they’ve had a chance to read it. Sometimes that may take a week; or it might take a year. The choice seems more driven by technical considerations than user experience ones.

I’d be happy with the idea of my copy of the book being locked and unavailable while it was on loan. If they were smart they would let me buy a 2nd copy and give it away; or let the person who borrowed my copy buy their own copy and return the original to me (as described in the previous section). In this way Barnes & Noble could have facilitated a more effective viral channel for their book sales. More importantly, they could have provided an experience that was much more closely aligned with the way printed books are owned and shared.

A more flexible lending feature woul have also provided a decent platform for the widespread use of ebook readers in schools to replace the collection of heavy textbooks carried by millions of students every day. ebooks could be provided to students on loan and then either returned to the college or purchased at the end of term.

The current implementation makes this impossible, or administratively impractical – another missed opportunity.

Summary

The lend feature in the Nook is a good addition to the standard repertoire of an ebook reader. The lack of this feature to date has, to my mind, reflected a failure – accidental or deliberate – on the part of manufacturers to match the experience of a traditional book in a way that detracts from the experience.

The design of this feature, as it appears today, still falls well short if the potential offered by the digital format to match, or even enhance, the real world experience of sharing a book with somebody else, but Barnes & Noble have taken a significant step forward in the design of the digital book reading experience, and may have paved the way for a public digital library.