It's not your grandmother's library, but there's no question that Amazon's Kindle Owner's Lending Library empowers indie authors. In both a strategy to add value for customers that pay the premium for Amazon Prime and also help increase the adoption rate of Kindle devices, Amazon provides subscribers with free access to a monthly book through their Kindle Owner’s Lending Library. How does this benefit authors? Each month Amazon allocates a budget that is split based on the percentage of “borrows” that the author’s title(s) represents. For January, Kindle Direct Publishing announced that the budget is "700,000 dollars."

According to a recent Amazon statement, “…KDP authors have earned $1.70 per borrow.” On top of potential revenue from the lending out of digital titles, authors and publishers can continue to also receive revenue from the sale of their book. The only restriction is that authors participating in this program provide a 90-day window of exclusivity for the digital version of the book. Beyond not making it available on the Apple iBook store or other platforms, authors are restricted from making it available in digital form on their own sites. From all indication, this initiative appears to be an immense step in the empowerment of indie authors and another step in a paradigm shift in publishing. -Israel Vasquetelle