# Can I buy e-books from Amazon to donate to my library?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-buy-e-books-from-amazon-to-donate-to-my-library/693373>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [July 17, 2014, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-buy-e-books-from-amazon-to-donate-to-my-library/693373 "2014-07-17T17:00:38Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Erdosain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/erdosain/32/7284_2.png) [@Erdosain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Erdosain)\
**Post date:** [July 18, 2014, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-buy-e-books-from-amazon-to-donate-to-my-library/693373/21 "2014-07-18T21:57:45Z")

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> [@Fir\_na\_tine](#):
>
> They claim to have 600,000 titles available. If they aren’t from the big 5, where are they from?

They are from Amazon-owned publishers, a couple smaller publishers, and self-published books. I’m sure they’re also counting all the free public domain books in there, too. Just scrolling through the popular titles, I saw books from publishers such as Houghton Mifflin, Scholastic, WW Norton, and Harvard University Press. I don’t think they’ve secured all those publishers’ back lists, just a handful of their popular titles.

600,000 may sound impressive, but it’s mostly garbage. And nowhere near all e-books that are available in the US.

> [@StGermain](#):
>
> What are Oyster and Scribd?
> 
> **Fir na tine** - No, it’s not all the Kindle titles. For example, the title that I want to read _right now!_ is called The Late Scholar by Jill Paton Walsh. It’s a Kindle book, but isn’t a free book.
> 
> StG

Oyster and Scribd are subscription e-book services almost identical to this new Amazon service. Obviously, they all have different libraries of titles available to borrow.

“The Late Scholar” is published by Minotaur, subsidiary of Macmillan, one of the Big 5. As far as I can tell, not a single title owned by the Big 5 is available on this Kindle Unlimited program.

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**Author:** ![LibrarySpy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f9ae1b/32.png) [@LibrarySpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LibrarySpy)\
**Post date:** [July 19, 2014, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-i-buy-e-books-from-amazon-to-donate-to-my-library/693373/22 "2014-07-19T16:54:45Z")

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> [@Erdosain](#):
>
> 600,000 may sound impressive, but it’s mostly garbage.

This. I publish on Amazon, but I do not participate in their lending services, because the rules for submission are restrictive, and the payout if someone reads the book is prohibitively small.

I do authorize friend-to-friend lending, and my books are available through Overdrive and other library vendors.

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