Book rental companies have existed for years, and no, we’re not talking about public libraries. But, what about a rental service for digital books? That hasn’t been done yet. And Amazon is rumored to be a possible pioneer.
Amazon currently offers digital movie and TV show rentals through their Amazon Prime digital streaming service, currently priced at $79 a year and also offers free 2-day shipping on every Amazon purchase. Digital e-book rentals may be added to this service.
Now, this addition would require mass buy-in from traditional book publishing companies. And this very well could be a stop-gap in this rumor. Think about it. When your public library starts offering you free e-book rentals, downloadable from home, are you buying books again? And this could essentially be what Amazon does. Of course, book publishers would get a part of that $79/year subscription fee. But agreeing on $/download could be a difficult conversation to agree on.