You can lend eBooks, in fact, in some ways it is easier. Buy an extra Kindle, put all your books on it, and make it your "loaner" copy.
Not that complicated. And you get to loan hundreds of books at once.
Not that complicated. And you get to loan hundreds of books at once.
I understand why people are downvoting my original comment -- it is very easy to dislike Amazon, for many reasons -- but the fact remains that you can lend eBooks.
You just have to put them on a physical device first.
And you're allowed to put each eBook on up to 5 devices. That means you could, theoretically lend up to 5 copies at a time. Not just one.
It's true that you can lend ebooks, there are just a lot more hoops to jump through ;) I can't lend my ebooks, because I don't have a spare device, but that can be changed if I want. If I'm going to pay just as much for the paper book, though, I might as well buy that and skip the extra device management.
Just because it's not one's opinion, does not make a comment downvote-worthy.
It might work for "family sharing" (although Amazon actually supports that already), but for sharing with third parties it is risky in my opinion.
The only downside, as far as I see it, is that you're risking the $60 it costs to buy a Kindle.
I've never done this (probably b/c it just feels weird to loan devices, while loaning books seems perfectly normal).
But you could be right, declining prices of gadgets and aggressive restrictions like DMCA, and in 20 years it might be the opposite, just far easier to trade devices rather than licenses.
That's not all that much more than a single (non-mass market) book nowadays. Most technical books are in the $30+ range. Textbooks can cost hundreds.