Amazon hearlds their lending/stealing library.

This is a blurb from Amazon! You'll see it when you log in today. It reads:

"In November we introduced our newest Prime benefit, the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, where Kindle owners can borrow and read thousands of books for free, with no due dates. The library has grown to over 50,000 titles and includes more than 100 current and former New York Times Bestsellers such as the Hunger Games trilogy, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and Moneyball. It also features Kindle Direct Publishing top-selling authors like J.A. Konrath, C.J. Lyons, and Julie Ortolon. We've also worked hard to make Kindle devices affordable, and they start at just $79 for Kindle and $199 for Kindle Fire.

Small publishers are dropping like flies due to this stealing library. Amazon uses the guise of a "lending" library to get around asking the "kindle" publisher whether they want this to happen or not. They claim they do ask but the bottom line is if you don't allow them to "steal" your e-book, you don't get to publish. The window of opportunity to opt out is short and most "kindle" authors don't even know about it until their fate is set.

Worse than that, why are e-books lent out in the first place? Most only cost NINETY-NINE CENTS!!! Oh yes, I suppose reading an e-book for free is WAAAAAYYY better. Most every publisher I know offers at least a free first, and sometimes even second chapter preview. Plenty of time for a reader to decide whether they want to "break the bank" and support an author's hard work. Amazon is trying to sell Kindles. They're doing it at the publishers expense in a desperate attempt to avoid the inevitable, the absolute and complete death of proprietary e-books and e-book readers. This is why I won't publish a kindle on Amazon EVER! You may find Kindle versions of my book at http://www.blackbedsheet.goshopper.net

Once again history repeats itself. IBM was the first out of the gate to attempt to keep the competition at bay with their propitiatory software and personal computers. Look where we are today. If you're a publisher or an author, you'd be wise to stay away from allowing Amazon to steal your work for their own benefit. Just saying! Barnes & Noble too but apparently their lending/stealing library is too complicated for customers to care about.