Want to Lend a Friend Your Kindle Books? Try Lendle.Me!

I've been a reader for many years! I have ALWAYS loved to read, but I rarely read one book at a time, and there was a moment there, as an adult, when my reading waned because it was too difficult and cumbersome to carry around the multitude of novels and nonfiction books around with me that I was currently obsessed with.

Well, my iPad, of course, solved that particular problem. And I do love reading on my iPad. I pore through bit of a book almost every single night before slipping off, and into slumber. My Kindle app is easily one of the most used applications on my iPad, but the Kindle app hadn't solved all of my reading dilemmas.

Have you ever read a book you loved, and then loaned a beaten up paperback, or even a beloved hardback to a close friend or colleague, so they could check out just how completely mind blowing that new novel was? I like to do that too, and until recently, sharing books that I owned with my Kindle app had been very difficult. That is no longer a problem. Not with Lendle.me.

Lendle.me, is a new social book site that allows me to share my favorite Kindle books with not only my friends and family, but with any reader who requests to borrow them. The way the service works is that you use their search engine to find and list all of the Kindle books that are within your library that you might be willing to loan out to others. I listed 35 books in my library last night and I was granted the ability to borrow up to 4 books. It appears that the ratio of books listed to books you can borrow is about 8:1 For every 8 books or so that you list, you are granted 1 credit to request a book that you would like to borrow.

Anyhow, if a fellow Lendler requests a book you own, you'll get a notification asking if you want to lend it. When you lend a book, the borrower will have it for 14 days, and you will be unable to read it during those 14 days. At the conclusion of those 14 days, it will be automatically returned to your Kindle library.

This free service is eerily similar to BookMooch.com, in which you would list the physical books in your library that you were willing to part with, and for each book given away, you earned points to 'mooch' books from others users. When someone requested your book, you were responsible for obtaining the mailing information and bearing the costs of mailing the physical book to their location. I prefer the Lendle.me model of doing things to Bookmooch.com, because often in my busy life I would miss notifications from fellow moochers and discover that they had requested a book months ago before I sheepishly got around to mailing them. With the physical bother of shipping books removed, I can get down to what we all want from a service like this, which is to dig into some serious reading.

The service is new, so while the site is a bit slow, and is only available to U.S. Readers, it seems well designed and operational. It was built in HTML 5 so it works great on iPads, or any other Apple iOS device.. You can also swap books if you use an iPod Touch, iPhone, a Kindle, or even an Android device.

Have any of you used the service, and what were your thoughts about sharing Kindle books through Lendle.me?

Sources:

http://www.lendle.me

http://www.bookmooch.com