Amazon Planning E-Book Rental Service

Would be like a library, except for you'll have to pay for it and you won't actually get a physical book.

Amazon appears to be preparing an e-book-rental service, kind of like a NetFlix for their e-readers. In a forgotten time, places from which you'd rent books were called “libraries,” and you didn't even have to pay to rent them! They just gave them out so long as you had a little card! Crazy libraries. Anyhow, Amazon's keeping their plans quiet for now, but it looks like the service will be rolled out in the U.S. before anywhere else. For a monthly or yearly fee, subscribers will get to rent books from publishers that have signed up to the program, as well as a from a selection of classic titles. News of the rental service (let's just call it an “e-library”. Are we fine with that? We are? Great!) coincides with Amazon's plans to release a tablet to compete with the iPad, while their Kindle continues to dominate the e-reader market.