Amazon Kindle Lending Library For Prime Members - Borrow Books For Free

Borrowing books from friends is bothersome because sometimes they nag you for not returning them on time. Keeping in mind the needs of it's ardent readers Amazon has launched 'Kindle Owners' Lending Library' that let's you borrow books online. If you own a Kindle, a Kindle Touch , a Kindle Fire or a Kindle Keyboard already, you have to get a Amazon Prime membership for $79 a year, upon which you will be able to borrow one book every month. The good part is that a book once borrowed doesn't come with a due date & you get to choose from 5,000+ titles including many bestsellers.



It's important to note that the books provided on this library program are licensed between the publishers and Amazon. This is quite different from what Amazon offered in this September, when Kindle was made available on more than 1o,000 local libraries. The cons are that there aren't many major publishers currently in the lending league. Moreover, $79 a year makes it approx. $6.6 a month which is not quite appealing since we get only 1 book per month. And yes you got it right, you can't read it on any device other than the Kindle. It's not even available for the Kindle app users for their tablets & smartphones.

Russ Grandinetti, Vice President, Kindle Content said in Amazon's press release that the 'Kindle Owners' Lending Library' is a great new benefit for Kindle owners and an entirely new growth opportunity for authors and publishers. He further added, "With the growth in Prime membership and the recent addition of Prime Instant Video, we've been able to broaden our relationships with movie and TV studios such as CBS, Fox, and NBCUniversal and significantly increase their revenue. We're excited to expand that investment to books - with this launch, we expect three immediate results: Kindle owners will read even more, publisher revenues will grow, and authors will see larger royalty checks."

We aren't sure if publishers will love this concept. Amazon is making sure that it's users get hooked up to their Kindles, especially when Barnes & Nobel are announcing something on Monday, Nov. 7. Tough competition this winter, eh? We, like most others, suspect that it will be about an update on it's eReader 'Nook Color'. Let's wait & find out.