First free video, now free books. Amazon has launched their Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, available to Amazon Prime members, at no additional cost. Users may borrow select titles for an unlimited time, without due dates or extra fees. There are 5,000 available titles, and the selection seems reasonably wide, including titles from the New York Times Best Seller List.
The catch is that the Library is only accessible from a Kindle device registered to an Amazon Prime account; it won’t work through Kindle apps on other device. Also, you can only borrow one title per calendar month, which quick readers may find frustrating. To add yet one more particularly large whopper of a catch, it turns out that the six largest publishing houses in the U.S. are not participating.
Amazon has made books have available for borrowing on Kindle for free -– including Kindle apps -– since September 2011, through Amazon’s public library program. The availability of books depends on the specific library, and there are due dates. Like the Lending Library, this program saves your notes and highlights, and you can see them if you borrow the book again.
Basically, this is a nice extra feature if you are already an Amazon Prime member, and if you already own a Kindle. It’s not enough incentive to cause you to buy either of these just to use the Lending Library though.
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