Not long ago, Amazon made it possible for you to borrow books from participating libraries, and now they’ve introduced the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. To participate, you must be an Amazon Prime member, and it appears you must own an actual Kindle. There are 5000 titles available now, including 100 current and former New York Times best sellers. You can borrow up to 1 book a month and keep it as long as you’d like. The lending library link, above, has details for borrowing books.
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This is exciting news for me because I don’t have a local library where I can borrow books.
I tried borrowing one of these books today. I’m already a Prime member, but you can get a one-month free trial of Prime if you aren’t. I tried to follow the instructions, but my Kindle never showed the Kindle lending library as shown in the Amazon instructions. Anyway, I saw that The Hunger Games was available for borrowing, so I clicked the Borrow button.
The book downloaded quickly, just as normal. The only way I see to return the book is on Amazon, using the Manage My Kindle page. The book I borrowed is shown in the list of my books, and “return this book” is one of the Actions for the book.
This is sweet! I have been a Prime member for several years. They keep adding features that make me want to re-up every year. I am taking delivery today of a keyboard Kindle (refurbished by Amazon) for my wife’s use. This benefit of being a Prime member will add greatly to her enjoyment of the ereader.
If you have an Apple product, download the free Overdrive application. If you have a library card, it will allow you to check out ebooks from your local library.
When it first started, the selection was a very small, however Amazon has allowed libraries to access some of the Kindle books which brought the Fort Worth Public Library from about 150 ebooks to 3300 ebooks. You select the book you want, add it to your digital cart, and then when you check out, it takes you to Amazon website where it shows up in your Kindle library. After two weeks, it will no longer open on your device. It will automatically return itself.
Amazon limits 2 or 3 copies per library. If you see a book you want that is already checked out, you can hold it and it will send you an email when it is available.
If you don’t want to make the trek to the library to return the books, or don’t have a library nearby, this is a pretty good option.