When Amazon made the amazing move allowing people to lend their Kindle eBooks to each other, it was only a matter of time before a service popped up making it easy to find the exact book that you’re dying to read but don’t necessarily want to buy. The Kindle lending process does have its limitations – you can only borrow the book for up to two weeks, but if you’re a fast reader it’s no big deal. If you’re not, it gives you enough time to decide whether or not you really want to buy the book.
The Kindle Lending Club started out as a Facebook page, growing to over 8,000 members in less than a month. The best part is that you don’t even have to own a Kindle to get in on the action. You can use the free Kindle apps op your Mac, PC, iOS, Blackberry or Android devices.
Register for a free account by providing your details, or if you’d prefer, you can connect the site to your Facebook account.
How to Borrow a Book
The first thing you’ll probably want to do once you’ve registered for a free account is see if you can find any books that you want to borrow. Clicking on the orange Borrow a Book button gives you the option to perform a search or to browse the available books.
If the eBook is lendable, it will be accompanied by buttons to borrow or lend the title, along with the option to purchase it on Amazon.
If the ebook is not available or is not lendable, it will only be accompanied by a link to purchase it on Amazon.
Of course, its availability in the Lending Club doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get to read it straight away. Depending on the number of copies available, you might end up on a waiting list until a copy becomes available.
If you can’t find what you’re looking for, browsing the available titles might pique your interest.
Once you’ve found a book that is available, you will have to wait until one of the owners of the book receives the notification that you wish to borrow the book.
Once the title has been loaned to you, you will receive an email notification with a link to download the book to your Kindle device or app. The book is yours for 14 days, after which it is automatically returned to the lender.
How to Lend a Book
Lending a book is just as easy. Click the green Lend a Book button and you can can then search for the titles you own or browse the most recently requested titles.
The method is exactly the same as borrowing a book. Click the lend button, and there are no current requests for the title, you simply wait to be notified when someone wants to borrow the book.
In the event that the book has already been requested, you will be presented with a list of the users waiting for the title.
You can then select one and follow the instructions to lend the title directly on Amazon after which you will confirm on the site that you have loaned out the title.
It is worth mentioning that the email address that you use will be visible to other users who lend you books, and that the email address you register with does not have to be your Kindle or Amazon email address.
If you want to delete an offer or a request, this can be done by accessing your profile and clicking delete on any given title from your page.
If we had one request, it would be the inclusion of book descriptions on the site. At the moment, you have to go to Amazon to read the description, and if you’re not sure what you want to read and are just browsing, it’s a little inconvenient.
Have you tried borrowing a book using the Kindle Lending Club? Got any books on offer? Let us know in the comments.
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Great idea and very well implemented. I am waiting on a title, so far there aren’t many I’d be interested in lending. Hopefully as more people read this & join it’ll be hard to choose!
Unfortunately Amazon only allows lending once, and not all titles are available for lending (the Kindle Lending Club founder estimates 50%).
I find it pretty ridiculous – all the drawbacks of a physical book with none of the advantages. Jumping through hoops to ‘lend’ a digital copy? Really? What is the incremental cost of a digital copy? This is just an artificial scarcity where there needn’t be any.
How’s this better than getting a scan of the book off a pirated IRC channel and circulating it?
Baen Free Library offers non DRMed ebooks for sale, and are doing quite well, so it’s not as though you NEED this sort of stupid technological handicap.
Great idea and very well implemented. I am waiting on a title, so far there aren’t many I’d be interested in lending. Hopefully as more people read this & join it’ll be hard to choose!
Unfortunately Amazon only allows lending once, and not all titles are available for lending (the Kindle Lending Club founder estimates 50%).
Did you know once you borrow a book you can have it for more then 14 days to read….the trick is you have to keep the 3g or wifi off. Once its turned back on blip their gone!! if after the 14 days.
I find it pretty ridiculous – all the drawbacks of a physical book with none of the advantages. Jumping through hoops to ‘lend’ a digital copy? Really? What is the incremental cost of a digital copy? This is just an artificial scarcity where there needn’t be any.
How’s this better than getting a scan of the book off a pirated IRC channel and circulating it?
Baen Free Library offers non DRMed ebooks for sale, and are doing quite well, so it’s not as though you NEED this sort of stupid technological handicap.
I have to disagree with you on that. You can’t compare borrowing a book to downloading a pirated copy.
For some people it’s a great opportunity to see if they want to buy the book themselves. And for others who lives in a country where the US dollar is pretty strong against their currency – it actually does make a difference financially.
Like I said, there are others like the Baen Free Library who offer some of their books for free, and don’t put any DRM on the paid ones either. And they’re doing good business. A digital download costs nothing. All the more reason to adjust your price according to purchasing power of the country you’re selling to. With DRM, you cannot transfer books off your Kindle to another device, and if Amazon decides to shut down the service tomorrow, you’re stuck.
With DRM you don’t own anything you purchase, it’s just ‘licensed’ to you, a license that can be revoked at any time.
Very nice; my only complaint is that Facebook login failed on Both IE 9 and Opera 11.
Did you know once you borrow a book you can have it for more then 14 days to read….the trick is you have to keep the 3g or wifi off. Once its turned back on blip their gone!! if after the 14 days.
thanks for the tip!
Does this prevent the lender of the book from accessing their book for as long as you have it or do they get it back at the end of 14 days no matter what?
I have loaned out 2 books so far and it worked great. I am waiting on a couple of titles now. It is easy to do- however, the 14days and just one time loan is something that I hope they work on. Also more publishers need to ok the loaning- I think it is time to look and see who the worst of the publishers are and put a little heat( boycott of their titles) or go to the author, and hopefully some of them would understand that if their stuff gets read more they will get more speaking engagements or demand for another book or two.
It is a start.. now lets make it better. I have a physical library of over 1,000 books that I loved to loan to folks and I have also brought so many of them because I read a loaned one and had to have one of my own. I believe I would do the same with the Kindle maybe even more because I use the notes function on the kindle a ton.
The kindle could even be better if I could pull all my notes out it for reference files on areas that I have an interest in.
Makeuseof.com thanks for all the great step by step stuff that you do……
thanks for the kind words :-) and your input regarding Kindle lending club.
Thanks for your comment Steven – I agree that there are a lot of books that I’d love to see added to the library and I’d imagine that the publishers should see the importance of adding their books to the list – but as someone who actually works in the publishing industry – I can tell you that these kinds of decisions are often very slowly made.
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I have to disagree with you on that. You can’t compare borrowing a book to downloading a pirated copy.
For some people it’s a great opportunity to see if they want to buy the book themselves. And for others who lives in a country where the US dollar is pretty strong against their currency – it actually does make a difference financially.
Like I said, there are others like the Baen Free Library who offer some of their books for free, and don’t put any DRM on the paid ones either. And they’re doing good business. A digital download costs nothing. All the more reason to adjust your price according to purchasing power of the country you’re selling to. With DRM, you cannot transfer books off your Kindle to another device, and if Amazon decides to shut down the service tomorrow, you’re stuck.
With DRM you don’t own anything you purchase, it’s just ‘licensed’ to you, a license that can be revoked at any time.