Booklending.Com: Sharing the Kindle Love

One of the main issues with DRM-protected ebooks is the fact that you cannot share them with others. Amazon took a bold step to resolve this issue by allowing 14-day lending periods, during which you can share your Kindle book with others. The book will be unavailable to the owner of the book during that period, but once it is over they will be able to enjoy the book once again.

This eliminates one major downside to physical books: recovering loaned volumes. Readers can now lend and borrow books without fear of loss or worrying that they will damage the volume and be forced to replace it!

This ability has created the ability to share Kindle books with total strangers, as they will only have access to the volume for a limited time. Booklending.com is a website that allows you to list what books you have available to lend--and which books you would like to borrow.

Once you register on the site, you click the green or orange book icon to indicate whether you wish to lend or borrow a book. You can browse the site to look for available or desired selections, or enter a title and choose whether you wish to loan or borrow this item.

If you wish to lend a book that has a request for it, you will be taken to the Amazon page for the ebook. Instructions will appear on the top of the page to explain how to loan the book, and you will be asked to click a confirmation button after you lend the book to the person who's email address is provided for you.

Should you place a request on the borrowed list, when someone chooses to lend that title to you you will receive an email from Amazon about the loan. Accept the loan, download the ebook and treat it as your own for two weeks. Any notes you make will be saved to your Kindle but will not be available to the one who loaned you the book. At the end of the lending period the book will be placed in your Archived Items and you will no longer have access to the book unless borrowed again or purchased from Amazon.

This is an excellent way to read books that you aren't certain that you want to purchase, and to lend your unused ebooks out for others to enjoy. The process is quick and painless for both parties and continues the tradition started years ago by Ben Franklin himself--the original founder of the lending library.

Unfortunately, you are only able to loan Kindle books out once, so after loaning them out a single time you won't be able to loan them out again. However this is a wonderful way to share books that you would like others to read.

If you are interested in loaning or borrowing Kindle books to others, check out Booklending.com to utilize their free service.