Kindle Lending is now enabled

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by mizzsty

who reads a book in 14 days?!?

You're right; it is rather a long period. I certainly don't know anyone who takes anywhere near that long to read a book. I guess they have to cater to slow readers, though.

[OtterBooks]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Maybe we are not communicating. I understand not being able to read it while it is lent out. But with the Nook lending system a book can only be loaned out one time and then never again. Is that the way the Kindle system is working?

Yes, it appears so. edit: beat me to it.

[kennyc]

Thanks Harry.

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl

I think that Simultaneous Device Usage refers to the number of devices registered to a single account that has purchased the books. For example, you want to have the book on your Kindle, your spouse's Kindle, your iPhone, your Kindle for PC, etc all at the same time. The Loan Me feature is for loaning a book registered to one user's account to someone with a different Amazon account. If you go to the Manage Your Kindle account page and click the arrow next to the book title in your orders list, then you will see a button that says "Loan this book" if it is lendable.

But also

Lending: enabled

in the "Product Details" section of the full Amazon entry for a book, eg (recommended)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Spirit-R...dp/B003Z4KBIO/

Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited is Amazon's small print for "this book is not DRM'd/ encyphered" and I suspect the two are connected so a SDU:U must be enabled for lending and enabled for Text-to-Speech(TTS).

Googling I found a Q&A

At this time we are not supporting the feature to manage Text-to-Speech (TTS) settings and to limit simultaneous device usage for Kindle books published through Amazon’s Digital Text Platform (DTP).
==

Thus the indie books may have become Lending: enabled by default where the the big publishers will have a response time delay just to answer the question.

[hedwig]

Is the lending system limited to US Kindle owners or can international users also participate? I can't seem to find this information on the Amazon site.
Thanks.

[HarryT]

It's certainly "Amazon.com" only at present; it's not yet available on the UK site. I don't know whether or not it's available to people outside the US using the US site.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Originally Posted by hedwig

Is the lending system limited to US Kindle owners or can international users also participate? I can't seem to find this information on the Amazon site.
Thanks.

Right now only US Kindle owners can lend books. However, a US owner can lend to an international Kindle owner as long as the book is not subject to geographical restrictions for that country.

[hedwig]

Thanks for the replies.
I hope Amazon make this service available to international users soon - it would be a great way of finding new authors.
I know that when I have borrowed paper books from friends before I have often found myself buying the book for my own collection. I did this for Mathew Pearl's The Dante Club.

[whitearrow]

Originally Posted by bhartman36

Well, I checked. Apparently, when you lend out a book, it disappears from your Kindle, even if your wifi is off.

This isn't what happened for me. I loaned a book on Friday -- the book was still on my Kindle with wireless off until Sunday, when I turned on wireless to sync. Then I got the lending notice and the book was moved to the archive.

If Amazon was remotely turning on the wireless radio without notifying users, I think there would be hell to pay.

[JSWolf]

Does lending work with KindleForPC?

[bhartman36]

Originally Posted by whitearrow

This isn't what happened for me. I loaned a book on Friday -- the book was still on my Kindle with wireless off until Sunday, when I turned on wireless to sync. Then I got the lending notice and the book was moved to the archive.

If Amazon was remotely turning on the wireless radio without notifying users, I think there would be hell to pay.

Yeah. I corrected myself in a later post in this thread. I had the same experience: The book stayed on my Kindle until I synced. To be honest, I'm not sure what was happening when I wrote that post. For some reason, when I looked at the book, all I could see were the Notes & Highlights (of which there were none, for this book). The next time I went in, the book was there, and then after I turned on the wifi and synced, the book was gone.