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cybmole · 05-04-2014, 01:50 AM

kindle lending is really a poor deal. the only positive feature is no return date - keep the books forever if you like...
but it's limited to ONE book per calendar month max, return the previous one in order to choose another - 1 a month does not feed the average reading habit, & there is now obvious search facility for finding prime rental books.

The USA kindle library loan system is more interesting. I joined a USA library & I took one book as Kindle, since there was no epub on offer. now with epub you just get a licence ascm licence file when works in DADE or direct to an authorised e-reader. with Kindle loans you get re-routed to amazon.com for the download ( & here I'm thinking this is where it will fail, because I am an amazmon Uk person)- but voila, I od have an amazon.com login from previous imports so it gives me the book - no quibble. Now that book does have a return date on the library site. return it manually was not intuitive, btu I found an option for that in the manage my kindle section of amazon site I did an early return to free up a library slot, so I never got so see if the loan book auto-deletes , or how/if it locks you out once expired.

going more on-topic, I wonder if Kobo will ever get into the lending books business. it would be a tasty incentive if each new reader was bundled with some lending deal, even a crappy 1 per month like amazon's. They could go one better, make it 1 book per 14 days & proclaim FREE BOOKS for a year in the device marketing blurb.

as they apparently know all about tying books to accounts & zapping as needed !, it shoud be simple for them to implement ?

05-04-2014, 01:50 AM	#18
cybmole Wizard Posts: 3,720 Karma: 1759970 Join Date: Sep 2010 Device: none	kindle lending is really a poor deal. the only positive feature is no return date - keep the books forever if you like... but it's limited to ONE book per calendar month max, return the previous one in order to choose another - 1 a month does not feed the average reading habit, & there is now obvious search facility for finding prime rental books. The USA kindle library loan system is more interesting. I joined a USA library & I took one book as Kindle, since there was no epub on offer. now with epub you just get a licence ascm licence file when works in DADE or direct to an authorised e-reader. with Kindle loans you get re-routed to amazon.com for the download ( & here I'm thinking this is where it will fail, because I am an amazmon Uk person)- but voila, I od have an amazon.com login from previous imports so it gives me the book - no quibble. Now that book does have a return date on the library site. return it manually was not intuitive, btu I found an option for that in the manage my kindle section of amazon site I did an early return to free up a library slot, so I never got so see if the loan book auto-deletes , or how/if it locks you out once expired. going more on-topic, I wonder if Kobo will ever get into the lending books business. it would be a tasty incentive if each new reader was bundled with some lending deal, even a crappy 1 per month like amazon's. They could go one better, make it 1 book per 14 days & proclaim FREE BOOKS for a year in the device marketing blurb. as they apparently know all about tying books to accounts & zapping as needed !, it shoud be simple for them to implement ? Last edited by cybmole; 05-04-2014 at 02:08 AM.