Unexpected hazards of e-book lending

In December, Amazon changed its policies to allow borrowing of Kindle books. A friend had been wanting to read Freedom, so I set things up to lend her my copy. Or so I thought. The little note next to the book indicated that it was on loan, but what actually showed up in my friend’s account was The New Oxford American Dictionary. (Eternal disclosure.)

“You’re just lucky,” she joked, “that it didn’t send your copy of Best Torture Clubs of the Northeast or How to Care for your Rubber Masks.”

I’m not actually into S&M, for the record, and maybe they’ve worked out the kinks (sorry) since January — everything went smoothly on the second try — but yeah, if you have the book equivalent of Etsy’s glass dildos and puppets in your electronic library, you might think twice about pressing that button.

(Incidentally, the bookmarks at the top of this post arrived in the mail yesterday from Google Books, to thank me for… buying an ebook.)


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