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The patron on the phone was insistent: "But they told me at Borders that I could check out ebooks at my local library ... and that's you." The Kobo Wireless e-reader was on sale and Borders bookstore was pushing it hard.
"No ma'am," I said, regretfully.
That was not the first call IVe fielded asking if our library lends ebooks, digital versions of traditional print books that can be read on computers or dedicated e-readers like the Kindle or NOOK. As the price drops on e-readers and the e-reading technology extends to smartphones and tablet computers, the demand for libraries to lend ebooks is rising.
The e-readers are like printers: The true cost of ownership only becomes apparent over time. The purchase price of a computer printer may seem remarkably low, until you start pricing the ink: $53 for a set of ink jet cartridges? Really? Yet we must buy them every few months if we are to keep printing.
In the same way, the price point on many e-readers has dropped to less than $150, down from almost $400 when Amazon introduced the Kindle in November 2007. But ebook prices can run $13 per title for a best-seller. No wonder our public demands ebooks to lend.
Still, does Borders bookstore honestly encourage its Kobo ereader buyers to borrow books from their local library ... without letting us know? Ours sure does.
Kobo Wireless Reader
http://koboeReader.com/usd/
The site of the new, low-cost Canadian e-reader, Kobo, which debuted in 2010 for about $140, promises that there are ebooks to be borrowed from the local public library for free. Kobo, Inc., a company hatched by partners Indigo Books & Music, Borders Group, REDgroup Retail, and Cheung Kong Holdings in 2009, had a budget e-reader ready for sale by the following year.
The Kobo e-reader runs on Adobe Digital Editions, or ADE. It can indeed read files from libraries that subscribe to OverDrive or NetLibrary. It downloads ebook files from computers or over the wireless internet.
Kobo also offers free apps for all Apple devices and Android and BlackBerry smartphones, which transforms them into de facto Kobo e-readers. At this time, Kobo only supports English text. It is one of the only e-readers available in Canada.
E-Readers and...