Miss your old neighborhood library? Amazon is trying to help with their newly announced Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. This service allows Kindle users to check out books from the library and later “return” them and get a different book, all without buying any of the books.

But there is a catch. Or actually several of them. The service is only available for Amazon Prime users ($79/year), a service which also gets you free 2-day shipping, unlimited streaming of movies and TV shows and other shortcuts and benefits on Amazon. The service is also available only for actual Kindle owners (a Kindle app for say the iPad is not enough), and you’re limited to one book per month. When you switch books, the previous book disappears from your device.

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So what’s good about the service? If you’re already both a Kindle owner and a Prime member, you can choose a book a month from more than 5,000 books, 100 of which are current and former New York Times bestsellers. And it’s probably going to help Amazon sell some Kindle devices.

To access the library, grab your Kindle, head over to the store, choose See all… under Browse, and from there access the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. As with many other Amazon services, this one too is limited to US users since Prime’s benefits only work with US addresses.

Is the new lending library a service you plan to use, or are there currently too many limitations for it to be useful?

Source: Techland

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Yaara Lancet

Yaara (@ylancet) is a freelance writer, tech blogger and chocolate lover, who's also a biologist and a full-time geek. Find her also at lnct.org.

Hide 5 Comments

Joy_case November 9, 2011

Check your local library, mine has many ebooks for the Kindle, I can check out up to 6 at at time, and best of all -FREE!!!

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- Yaara November 10, 2011
  
  I’ve heard of many libraries doing that, it’s awesome. I wish there were libraries that lent out Kindle books in my area.
  
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  - Piotr Kowalczyk November 10, 2011
    
    You can find a library here: http://ebookfriendly.com/2011/09/28/how-to-find-the-library-which-lends-kindle-books/
    
    It doesn’t have to be in your neighborhood, as you can borrow books via their website. The only thing you have to have is library’s ID card, so maybe this one time you’ll have to visit them.
    
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    - Yaara November 10, 2011
      
      Thanks Piotr, but I’m not in the US, so I’m afraid it doesn’t help me much.
      
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Piotr Kowalczyk November 10, 2011

It would be great to check what titles are available for Prime members before buying a membership. I’ve written down 3 ways to do it: http://ebookfriendly.com/2011/11/07/how-to-search-the-catalog-of-kindle-owners-lending-library/

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