Rachel Yu must be a bright and talented young lady because she is only 16 and already a successful author.
Rachel self publishes through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing Program, and her books can be borrowed through the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.
So, Rachel, at a tender age, has developed a constructive relationship with a company that publishes her books and distributes them to buyers and borrowers. Sale or loan, Rachel makes money, because, on top of royalties from sales, Amazon pays writers every time their book is loaned.
In December, that translated to $1.70 per loan, and for Rachel, that meant 3,647 loans or $6,200.
So, even as public libraries tussle with the criss-cross of debates about ebooks, even as large publishing houses sniff at the idea of public libraries lending ebooks, Amazon has further vexed the library groundwork with this disruptive idea — royalties for borrows.
For more, go to
http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2012/01/opinion/lj-insider/rachel-yu-and-the-monetization-of-library-loans/