Penguin Books plus Kindle equals Frustration!

Posted March 16, 2012 in eBook News and Help, General

Many of you are experiencing problems with downloading books to your Kindle from both of our OverDrive eBooks / eAudio books websites. You’re not alone in your frustrations. Publishers are (in my opinion) panicking from the phenomenal sales of ereader devices and the rise in the usage of ebooks from Public Libraries. Publishers have responded in many ways: Harper Collins restricted number of uses (26) at which point you have to repurchase; Random House raised the cost of ebooks by about 300%; Macmillan, Simon and Schuster, Brilliance and Hachette withdrew from their contracts and will no longer sell ebooks to any vender other than Apple. In all cases we were allowed to keep the titles already purchased, we just can’t buy new titles. Penguin Publishing Group withdrew their contracts and will no longer sell ebooks to anyone other than Apple plus said that they would not allow their books to be transferred over the air by Whispersync. All Penguin titles must be download via USB cord. So what does this mean? As long as you have a Kindle device (Fire, Touch, etc) you can download Penguin titles to your device using your USB cord, but, if you own a device that uses a Kindle App, you can’t get a Penguin title at all. Devices using Kindle App’s are: iPads, Smartphones, tablets (Android based) and many others.

So, how do you know that the title you are downloading is a Penguin title, because not all Kindle formated books have these restrictions. Here’s what to watch for. Kindle formatted books from other puplishers will say: “Use on: Kindles and free Kindle apps”, Kindle formatted books from Penguin will say: “Use on: Kindle devices via USB only”. Please know that OverDrive is working to add other Publishers to compensate for the loss of those publishers listed above, and we area libraries are as frustrated as you at the complications and loss presented by these publishers. If you have any questions please call the adult information desks at (269) 329-4542 ext 600 or email us at Answerline@portagelibrary.info.