Lending on Kindle

[sparrowsong]

So I thought they were making it so you could lend books on kindle.

So far a big fat ZERO of my books have been lendable. What BS. Has anyone been able to share anything?

[dorothyinAus]

I've been able to lend about 6 books on Lendle. Most of my books are the free Kindle books. Interestingly, only three of the books I paid for are lendable, while nearly all of the free ones are. I just don't get that. Why borrow something you can own free?

[GilliC]

I've loaned a few. Hunger Games was lendable, and I borrowed My Horizontal Life from someone on NBC.

And a lot of the free books aren't free forever, so the lending can be useful later on if you liked the book.

[amyb2332]

I just got Spell Bound (the 3rd Hex Hall) loaned to me on nook. If I remember right, the lend me thing is a publisher issue (and one that both kindles and nooks have). It does suck beause it is a nice feature if more were lendable.

[alithebride]

i've lent a few.

[Jenniatonu]

Make sure you are placing the blame where it belongs: on the publishers.

It is the publishers who decide if a book will be lendable or not. That is why you won't see certain e-books available at the library either.

[GilliC]

I wish I had known The Lover's Dictionary was lendable before I bought it. I probably could have borrowed it from someone on NBC.

Is there a way to see whether a book is lendable before buying it?

[Jenniatonu]

Gilli, yes.

If you go to the kindle book on Amazon, scroll down to 'Product Details.' (Right about the reviews.) If it is lendable, it will say: Lendable:Enabled.
If it's not lendable, it won't say anything.

[bluejen22]

Can anyone lend me 50 shades of grey on Kindle?!

[secretlyevil]

Ok - explain it to me like I'm five - how do I lend books (if they're lendable) through kindle?

[secretlyevil]

And while we're at it. I do not understand why there is a wait list for a library's ebook. Seems to defeat the purpose.

[doxies]

May 22, 2012 10:32:44 GMT -5 secretlyevil said:

Ok - explain it to me like I'm five - how do I lend books (if they're lendable) through kindle?

In the manage your kindle section, you can click on the "Actions" button on the right. If it is lendable, it will say "Loan this Title". Click on that and put in the person's email address. They'll get a link to download the book to their kindle for 2 weeks. I think while they have it, you can't.

As far as the library, ebooks have licenses just like regular books. So, the library has a certain number of copies of the ebooks and they can only loan out as many copies as they own. I also think at some point there was talk of the libraries only being able to loan out ebooks so many times before the license expires, but I am not sure if that part is true. It is very publisher specific (some publishers you have to transfer via USB rather than just download over wifi).