The selection of books that can be lent through this new program, however, is exceptionally small: just 5,000, which may sound like a lot but isnt really. Although it includes some best-sellers such as Moneyball, there arent going to be that many well-known books to lend because none of the six major publishing houses is participating in the program. Is that because Amazon asked for onerous terms of some kind, or proposed a deal that the publishers simply couldnt stomach for some reason? Possibly.
Publishers may also be leery of playing ball with the company thats eating their lunch in so many different ways. For every publisher who takes a positive step like Simon & Schuster did recently, by trying to add features that could help authors understand the business better or connect with their readers more easily, there are plenty of others who are probably cursing Amazon for ruining the industry by trying to get them to lower prices on their books, for example, or by going directly to popular authors like Tim Ferriss and Barry Eisler and signing them to lucrative deals, and making traditional publishers look bad.
It its more likely, however, that the major publishers balked for the same reason they lock down lending on e-books of all kinds even those that are lent through the library system, where some require that libraries buy new copies after a certain number of loans (which often makes me wonder: if libraries didnt already exist, would publishers allow them to be created?). Much like newspapers are doing with paywalls, book publishers seem to be trying desperately to maintain the control they used to have so they can prop up their traditional business model.
