Kindle Owners Lending Library Coming To Europe Finally

Posted by Tony on October 16, 2012 | Filed under libraries

Very shortly all Kindle owners in the European countries with their own Amazon stores will be able to make use of the Kindle Owners Lending Library. Amazon have just announced this happy fact, which should be a source of unbridled joy for Kindle owners and writers of Kindle ebooks.

What it means in practice is that you may borrow up to one book a month for free from a list of some 200 000 ebooks in a range of European languages and genres. All you need is to be the happy owner of a Kindle (or a Kindle reader App) and to have a Prime Membership with Amazon.

Prime Member.

This is a system that Amazon have in place that carries a number of advantages for those who join it, free one day delivery of just about everything that Amazon sells and a number of other advantages, all of which will cost you about 50 pounds a year. Something that if you use Amazon much is well worth thinking about taking up I feel.

Anyhow, as Amazon puts it in their press release for this spread of their lending library:-

Soon Kindle owners with a Prime membership in the UK, Germany and France will also be able to choose from over 200,000 books to borrow for free – including thousands of local-language titles and all seven Harry Potter books in English, French, Italian, German and Spanish – as frequently as a book a month, with no due dates.

Also interesting for Indie authors:

Apart from the real benefit to readers of this system,. it is also good for authors as well, as every time their ebook is borrowed, they receive $2.29, which is often actually more than the selling price of their ebooks, so unlike normal libraries from whom authors receive nothing every time their books are borrowed, here they actually make money.. A pleasing point I would think for any author. And as borrowing ebooks this way cost the reader nothing, it encourages readers to take risks by borrowing ebooks from authors they have never heard of before.

Yet another Amazon loss leader.

This is obviously another way that Amazon is using to attract customers and encourage us to buy from them, much as with the remarkably low prices they charge for their various ereaders, which are also nothing more than another method to tie us to their system and thus become permanent customers, this scheme is simply an additional weapon in Amazon’s arsenal in the war with other ebook sellers around the world. One which is obviously a winner from Amazon’s point of view, and one which I for one can find no real fault with.

And for the rest of the world?

Once again, the greater part of the world is left out of all this festive stuff….. No word about bringing this idea to Africa, South America, Asia Pacific or even the Falkland Islands….. seems a pity that all these things are always limited to the richer parts of the world.

For more detail here are the links to their various European sites on this subject: