Kindle Book Lending is here!
Without much of an announcement, Amazon has rolled out the Kindle feature that many people has been waiting for since it was announced two months ago. Kindle books can now be lent and borrowed for a period of 14 days. The feature is only available for some of the books. Here’s official Amazon help page about eBook loan feature.
At the moment it is not integrated into Kindle device software so you have to visit amazon.com website to loan and borrow books. You can do it either via “Manage Your Kindle” page or by visiting product pages of the books that you’ve already purchased. Either way you will see one of these links.
After clicking on this link, you will be prompted to enter recipient email address, name and a personal message. They will then receive an email with the link to accept book on a loan if they wish.
The whole thing is relatively simple and straightforward. It is up to publishers to enable to disable this feature. Since I didn’t explicitly enable it for my dictionary books and they are available for lending, I guess that it’s enabled by default.
What percentage of books is lendable is hard to say at the moment. I did a quick check of my Kindle library and it roughly seems 50/50. В Typically it’s either free out-of-copyright books that have lending disabled or popular bestsellers like “Lord of the Rings” or Gunslinger series by Stephen King.
To get a feel for how this new feature works, I’m going to loan out all of the lendable books in my collection. If you like anything from the list below, just drop me a comment and I’ll loan you the book. If enough people would get interested, I would set up a book loaning exchange website, where people can list Kindle books they are willing to loan and people who would like to borrow can find them.
Enjoy!
- Easy Crosswords for Kindle, Vol 1
- Empire of the East
- The Timegod
- English-German Dictionary WithВ Transcriptions
- English-Spanish Dictionary withВ Transcriptions
- Joomla! For Dummies
- White House Diary
- Freedom: A Novel (Oprah’s BookВ Club)
- Dragon Age: The Calling
- Photoshop Elements 8 For Dummies
- THE REPUBLIC
- Complete Dialogues of Plato (26В dialogues) The Republic, Crito, Laws, Symposium, Gorgias, Phaedrus & moreВ (mobi)
- A for Anything
- English-Russian Dictionary WithВ Transcriptions
- An American Tragedy
- The Eye of the World: Book One ofВ ’The Wheel of Time’
- Home Buying For Dummies
- The Essential Jules VerneВ Collection (25 books)
- The Ultimate Science FictionВ Collection: Volume One (22 Books)
- The Ultimate Science FictionВ Collection: Volume Two (30+ Books)
- The Complete Mark Twain CollectionВ (Over 300 works, with active table of contents)
- Brave New World
- Roget’s Thesaurus
- QuickBooks 2009 All-in-One ForВ Dummies
- Copyright Law Of The United StatesВ Of America
- Hellhounds of the Cosmos (A Sci-FiВ Pulp Classic!)
- The Vortex Blaster and The TheВ Street That Wasn’t There
- Project Mastodon
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.В Illustrated. (mobi)
- World Wide Rave: Creating TriggersВ that Get Millions of People to Spread Your Ideas and Share Your Stories
- Poor Richard’s Almanack
- The Bed Time Story Book
There is a ‘Kindle Lending’ group on Goodreads. This group gets Kindle borrowers and lenders together to share Kindle books :)
Hello Andrei! I would be certainly interested in reading Freedom by J. Franzen if you are willing to lend it! Also, you can count me in as one who’d be interested in the potential exchange site.
Wow, this is great news. I’m rather new to Kindle (since October 2010) and have not had time to amass a large collection of books yet. So far, none of the books I’ve purchased are lendable, but hopefully that changes and more books soon become eligible.
“White House Diary” has been on my “to read” list, and I’d love to give the lending feature a try.
Robert and Kevin,
I’ve sent you the books you’ve asked for on loan.
Enjoy!
Andrei, many thanks! The process is extremely straightforward. From the moment I received the lending notification e-mail to the moment I began reading the book took no longer than 90 seconds. That includes clicking the “Get your loaned book now” button in the e-mail, which took me straight away to the “Accept Your Loaned Kindle Book” page for the title you lent. From there I simply clicked an “Accept loaned book” download button and, like most downloads from Amazon via Whispernet, the thing began downloading immediately. Very smooth!
Got it, thanks Andrei!
I cannot believe anybody thinks Amazon’s lending policy is a good thing.
I can lend SOME books FOURTEEN days to somebody ONCE.
It is so horrible and unfair.
I have made it my new policy to remove the DRM from all Amazon books so I can lone them normally.
If they had a reasonable policy such as: I can lone a book to one person for as long as needed and when that person is done, the book is returned to me, I would never had messed with removing DRM.
Too bad for Amazon.
Hello, I got my Kindle recently too. i would like to try out the lending with the Brave New World please.
Rolando,
Loan invite sent for Brave New World
Excellent idea. Can you lend me The Ultimate Science Fiction Collection: Volume One?
Thanks Andrei,
This is a great feature. Every time I’ve lent someone a physical book it seems to have been permanent. I’m looking for a new house this year and would like to borrow Home Buying for Dummies.
Check out the Kindle Lending Club page on Facebook – for people to request and offer Kindle book loans, discover great new books for free, and share their collection with other book lovers:
http://www.facebook.com/KindleLendingClub
Robert and Victor,
I’ve sent book loan invites
Love to try “Easy Crosswords for Kindle, Vol 1″ –thank you.
Darryl,
I’ve sent the book loan invite
I’ve been meaning to read Saberhagen’s Empire of the East for a while. Care to make it happen? Thanks!
Hi, I’m interested in the English German dictionary…
Thanks, works perfect!
I’ll buy that one
Can I ask for one more, The Ultimate Science Fiction Collection: Volume Two (30+ Books)
Many Thanks!
Hi, I;m interested in borrowing Joomla! For Dummies book, if it is still available. Thanks.
I just got a kindle as a gift and I love it. I am looking to borrow The Help by Katheryn Stockett. Thank you
I am happy to lend or join a lending group. I agree 14 days is a short loan. I would love to see kindle loans become easier I can see potential in the workplace too!
I have just been through my library of free and purchased books but NONE of them are lend able. I am very disappointed, I may even return my kindle and all of the books I have purchased. This was one of my reasons to purchase a kindle.
This Amazon policy stinks – I could understand lending a book to one person at a time, but for 14 days only and once only and to allow the publisher to disallow – how stupid. What about newspapers? Why can’t I lend a newspaper to someone on the train, I can with the physical copy. I can even leave it there if I want to for anyone to read. A great reason to go back to paper. I’m seriously disappointed.
You can lend your Kindle instead of paper book. But do not forger to deregister it if you do not rely on the person. Deregistering does not erase information from Kindle.
If I buy a paper book, I own it, I can give it away, burn it or whatever. I do not see why the public is willing to buy a product like this where you have no ‘rights’ with the item you purchased. It is your ebook, you paid for it, you should be able to give it a friend or trade it…. This dumb policy is only good for Amazon and the publisher’s wallet not yours….
hello andrei! unfortunately i did not see any books in your collection that i would like to borrow. but would you happen to know if anyone is able/interested in loaning the Hunger Game?
Well Andrei,
If you ever check back here I would love to borrow World Wide Rave.
Hi Andrei! May I borrow “The Complete Mark Twain Collection”?
Could anyone lend me the first hunger games book?
can I borrow •The Bed Time Story Book/
Thanks.
I am interested in the English/Spanish Dictionary and the Easy Crosswords please.
Is it true that you can only loan a book one tine? Or can you loan out the same book multiple times after its returned back to you? Just confused about this.
Carmen the Hunger Games is available to borrow for free for 1 month Prime members. You may check into that.
Hi I’d be interested in reading house buying for dummies and also the lending group! Thanks.
do you have to belong to kindle prime to loan books on your kindle to other kindle owners? if not, how do you lend?
Thanks so much for the help! I’d love to read Empire of the East, if it’s still available for loan.
Anyone know how I can lend and borrow books on my kindle without actually knowing the owner of a book? I’m really wanting to read Peter Church’s and Stieg Larson’s books, but can’t afford to buy them any time soon.
Can I borrow quickbooks for dummies
apparently not available at all in the UK, despite instructions in the UserGuide saying otherwise. thank you Amazon.co.uk for nothing
I’d like to borrow Easy Crosswords. Thanks.
Just found out that I can only lend a Kindle book ONCE!!! It’s bad enough that they tell me I can only lend it for 14 days, but then to tell me that I can’t lend it anymore is unacceptable.
Kindle books should be treated just like a hardcopy. I can loan it to whomever I want; as long as I want; as many times as I want as long as it’s one at a time.
WE AS AMAZON CUSTOMERS SHOULD NOT PUT UP WITH THIS!! WE SHOULD CONTINUE TO YELL, SCREAM AND COMPLAIN UNTIL THEY CHANGE!!!
I am seriously rethinking my use of Kindle books for any future purchases.
Glen,
I agree with you on most of that, but don’t think the problem rests with Amazon. When it comes to lending, the situation is basically being dictated by the publishers who are anti-eBook and anti-Amazon by and large. You can see a lot of this in Penguin’s recent withdrawal from libraries entirely. They’re the ones you want to send complaints at, as far as this issue.
I am new to Kindle–I received one for Christmas. I would be very interested in borrowing Photoshop elements 8 for Dummies. We are snowbirding and I thought I would learn this program while we are here but I am lost!!
Thank you for this post and your generous offer! May I please borrow Robert Jordan’s “The Eye of the World”?!
Can anyone lend me World 3.0: Global Prosperity and How to Achieve It, by Pankaj Ghemawat?
May I barrow The Timegod? Thank you so much :)
This all makes me wish I wouldn’t have purchased a kindle…..something that could b so simple is so complicating…. this is ridiculous…. everything is always about money….wow….reallly????
We have a book library at work where people leave books when they have read them. I will continue to borrow from there or buy books and donate them when I have finished them. Kindle is nice for travelling as I don’t have to take anything extra as I can use my phone. I only buy books on offer or free though, not going to pay full price for something I don’t own!
Can you lend me Photoshop Elements 8 For Dummies? I’m trying the lending process for the first time. THANKS!!