So it's not just libraries?

Apparently, Penguin is out to alienate ALL of its customers.  I was just reading about the latest shenanigans involving Kindle versions of ebooks through OverDrive in this news brief from TechDirt.  For some strange reason, they are forcing Kindle users to borrow books only through USB connection, not wirelessly.  I'm not sure what this is supposed to accomplish, other than acting as an irritant.  Perhaps it is just another bump in the long, slow decline of major publishing houses.  They seem to be taking the path of the music industry giants by trying to throw up higher and higher hurdles for people to get access to their products.  I think this is a poor strategy since self-published titles rose from 29,000 in 2004 to 2.7 MILLION in 2010.  The savvy author doesn't need a huge publishing company to get a book out there anymore.

I cannot stress this enough - libraries have a great opportunity here.  This is no time to panic, this is the time to act, and act decisively.  Libraries have the rare opportunity to be the SOLE middle-man in the author-to-reader supply chain.  Libraries could directly interact with the authors of many of those 2.7 million titles and publish and help distribute those ebooks if only we set ourselves up to do it.  That means the network and server capacity to circulate and even potentially act for authors and readers as a store-front or a gateway to book sellers.

This article makes me think we might want to add extra precautions opening boxes of paper books from Penguin as well!