PublishersLunch
Overdrive announced Monday that Penguin "instructed" them to "disable 'Get for Kindle' functionality for all Penguin ebooks" that Overdrive supplies to libraries, in what the service calls an "abrupt change." Penguin also told OverDrive "it is reviewing terms for library lending of their ebooks" and has suspended availability to libraries for the new ebook releases. Kindle users first started reporting the disappearance of Penguin titles from participating libraries on Saturday.
Penguin's own statement was more coy than OverDrive's, insisting that "due to new concerns about the security of our digital editions, we find it necessary to delay the availability of our new titles in the digital format while we resolve these concerns with our business partners." Their statement did not address the Kindle issue in particular. And for now, Penguin refuses to answer any of the logical follow-up questions.
But publishers have been quietly upset ever since OverDrive made live their Kindle lending extension in September. Though OverDrive had promised in April that patrons' "confidential information will be protected," in implementation their program is an engine for turning library users into Amazon customers. The expectation was that OverDrive would serve Kindle-compatible files, but instead they send patrons directly to Amazon's site for processing. Some publishers believe this violates their contracts with both OverDrive and Amazon. Standard OverDrive contracts, as they have been explained to us, give OverDrive the right to serve and fulfill library ebooks from their own servers only, and standard Kindle contracts cover the "purchase" by a consumer only. So you can see how a publisher could conclude that having Amazon administer the library lending of ebooks without direct authorization makes that lending less "secure" since it isn't governed by publishers' contracts with Amazon or OverDrive.
Despite those contractual and "security" issues, some publishers we spoke to this fall had concluded that, under the first sale doctrine, it would be hard to achieve any remedy on ebooks already purchased by libraries. Little did they know that they could "instruct" OverDrive to stop serving Kindle versions and that OverDrive would comply. If this holds, you might see other publishers issuing similar instructions soon.
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