Amazon has rolled out a new free feature for Kindle users who are also Amazon Prime customers: the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library. Really it should be called the “Kindle Owner’s Borrowing Library”, so as not to confuse it with the feature where you can loan a Kindle book to a friend. In any event, with the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library you can borrow books to read on your Kindle – but a word to the wise: it only works on actual Kindles, not with any of the Kindle apps.
Assuming that you have a Kindle, and an Amazon Prime account, all you need to do is go into the area where you would buy books or magazines on your Kindle, and you will see a new area, called “Kindle Owner’s Lending Library”.
There you will find all of the books available from the Kindle lending library – you can borrow one book a month, and it doesn’t cost anything extra. It’s basically like a free “book of the month” club for Kindle owners who also subscribe to Amazon Prime, only you get to choose which book you want to read.
So far there are only about 5,000 titles available to borrow, but Amazon says it will be adding many others.
The Internet Patrol is completely free, and reader-supported. Your tips via CashApp, Venmo, or Paypal are appreciated! Receipts will come from ISIPP.
CashApp us
Venmo us
Paypal us
“The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library features a wide array of popular titles, including Water for Elephants, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, and Fast Food Nation – plus award-winning novels such as The Finkler Question, motivational books like The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, biographies and memoirs including Kitchen Confidential, and Pulitzer Prize-winning books like Guns, Germs, and Steel,” said the announcement from Amazon.
Amazon openly admits that they are trying to drive up sales of their Kindle devices by limiting this to people who own Kindles, and not making it available to people who are using Kindle apps, such as on an iPad or Android device.
Personally, we think that they are missing the mark, because nobody who uses the Kindle app on an iPad or other tablet is going to buy a Kindle just to have access to one free book a month, while it may have been the tipping point that would cause people using Kindle apps to subscribe to Amazon Prime.
On another note, in addition to not allowing access to the Kindle lending library for those using a Kindle app on an Apple or Android device, Amazon has made it harder to purchase Kindle books with the Kindle apps, by removing direct access to the Kindle store from their Kindle apps. It’s still not going to cause us to buy a Kindle, but it may well cause us to start buying our digital books elsewhere.
The Internet Patrol is completely free, and reader-supported. Your tips via CashApp, Venmo, or Paypal are appreciated! Receipts will come from ISIPP.
CashApp us
Venmo us
Paypal us
