Rent an Electonic Book

Via The Hindu

A few years after electronic book readers made inroads into the publishing industry, a new innovation now allows readers to buy or rent books online without falling prey to pirated contents.Launched at the recently concluded World Book Fair in the capital, “thisbookreader” allows readers to rent a book for a specific time and price set by publishers.The innovation is pending patent approval in the U.S. and Japan. Only three Indian publishers have evinced interest in it so far.“We have received interest from three publishers and talks are on to rope in more publishers to use the technology,” says Vidyut Shah, co-founder, Parth Online Bookstore, which has introduced the technology.The technology, which also acts as an independent e-book reader can be purchased online or through physical book stores is based on an open source digital reading management and uses state-of-the-art encryption technology.Mr. Shah says with the help of the new innovation, readers need not buy books but merely rent them from the publishers or authors directly. “Since this is not hardware driven, it does not require an e-reader and can be downloaded onto desktops or laptop computers. The publisher, who is given the technology free of cost gets a percentage of the rent.” The technology works across e-book hardware like Kindle or Nook and users need not buy expensive hardware but download it from individual publishers’ or authors’ websites.

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