Lending for Kindle service crocked by caveats

by Steven Mostyn - Nov 2 2010, 12:05

Perhaps eager to counter Barnes & Noble’s recent unveiling of the NOOKcolor, online retailer Amazon has today announced the upcoming availability of ‘Lending for Kindle’ for its popular (but still greyscale) electronic book reader.

According to an official Kindle Community forum post, the new service will come into effect before the end of 2010 and will enable Kindle owners to temporarily share individual eBooks amongst other Kindle users.

While the prospect of shared reading experiences may excite certain corners of the Kindle population, Amazon’s announcement does come with some notable—and potentially annoying—caveats.

“Each ebook can be lent once for a loan period of 14-days and the lender cannot read the book during the load period,” the post outlined—though Amazon has yet to define whether “can be lent once” means a title can be lent out once and once only, or whether it can only be lent to one Kindle friend at a time.

“Additionally, not all ebooks will be lendable—it is solely up to the publisher or rights holder, who determines which titles are enabled for lending,” it added—which we here at The Tech Herald suspect will mean old or classic publications may be released to Lending for Kindle, while new and/or best-selling titles will be off limits.

Lending for Kindle will be rolled out in the United States over the next few weeks and will eventually expand to cover the device’s international customer base.

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