You might have read in the news over the past few days that the UK government is set to have a review into the lending of e-books. The aim of the review is to look at all of the issues associated with lending e-books in libraries, from the benefits that can be drawn from it, the demand that exists for it and how it might impact publishers, among others.

At the moment, only relatively few libraries offer e-lending services, but as more of them start to make the leap and demand for e-books continues to rise, this is an issue that will merit further consideration. One of the big issues often cited in relation to e-book lending is that, while authors whose physical books are borrowed from the library receive a payment under the PLR system, no such system yet exists for e-books.

This means that people could end up borrowing e-books rather than buying them, and authors would not be compensated for their work. It seems that most people involved in the industry agree that e-book lending has the potential to be a good thing, but there are still quite a few technicalities and other issues that need to be worked out.

It will definitely be interesting to see the results of the e-book lending review when it reports back. In the meantime, you can read more about the issue here.

What do you think of the e-book lending debate?