OCLC's NetLibrary has launched five new eBook collections developed specifically for the Sony Reader. They include titles on business, leadership, young adult, romance and popular fiction titles for readers on the move.
These mobile collections come with everything libraries need to get started on loaning ebooks, including the Sony Reader, a collection of quality titles from leading publishers, and all required licenses!
OCLC says once libraries have purchased a Sony Mobile Collection which starts at US$500, they can make the Sony Reader available to library users for on-site or off-site circulation. Not a bad starting price, given that they're throwing in the ebook reader as well.
Using a PC, libraries then can download a Mobile Collection title or titles from the NetLibrary site and transfer to the Sony Reader. The catch: the collections are only available to U.S. libraries.
It's obvious Sony and OCLC are taking advantage of the ambiguity surrounding the terms and conditions governing the use of Amazon's Kindle, which users cannot "sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense or otherwise assign any rights to the Digital Content or any portion of it to any third party", although it can reportedly be loaned without content - and why anyone would do that is a point of contention.
These are beginning signs of a ebook war erupting between Sony and Amazon, though it's unlikely anyone will end up as winners, if they continue to take the wall-garden, lock-in approach. I've always argued that an open standard such as ePub is the way to go before ebooks can eventually take off. After all, it was the development of the MP3 format by the Motion Pictures Expert Group (and approved as an ISO standard in 1991) that planted the seeds of the digital music revolution.
Labels: ebooks
