My View on the Potential Amazon Digital Library

I saw a tweet come through on my feed this morning about Amazon wanting to launch a subscription-based library for the Kindle. As a new Kindle owner, I thought the idea would appeal to me. It doesn’t. In fact, it disturbs me.

I can’t imagine having to pay to access a library. As I shared with you in an earlier post, I grew up in the library. We have free public libraries across the country that are starting to adapt to digitally published books. Why pay for monthly access when you can still borrow a digital book from the good old fashioned library?

The obvious answer is convenience and availability.

Fine, if you want to pay for your subscription, do it. But reports are saying that Amazon wants to make it available to prime members. I am not paying $79 a year to rent books.

Why Amazon? You already let Kindle users share books for two weeks. Most of the classics are free. Sorry, this subscription thing is not for me.

My other concern, also addressed in the article, is how authors are going to be affected. As I have started to blog and have become more active on social media sites, I have had the opportunity to connect with a lot of authors. I understand publishers are leery about this idea, but how will this impact those who are self-published writers and have e-books through Amazon? Are they going to be included in this “premium” library? Would they even want to be?

It will be interesting to see if Amazon goes forward with this idea. What do you think?