How to Lend a Kindle Book

One of the underused features on the Amazon Kindle is borrowing.  Maybe others use it more, but I do not know many people that read a lot of the same type of material and frankly, the best thing about having a kindle is the ability to impulse read.  So I want a book, I can buy a book, right now.

If you do want to save some money or you just want to be generous and loan your books, lending/borrowing is worth looking into.

From the borrower side, really all you need to do is identify a book and request it from the owner, making sure that the owner of the book knows you kindle email address.  You will receive an email from Amazon with basic directions.  It is very simple.

From the lender side, you first need to figure out what books are lendable.  I have organized my lendable kindle books on Goodreads.  If you have a large library, it can take a while to get it organized.  Only about 10-15 percent of kindle books (depends a lot on the genre) are lendable.  There are a couple ways to find out.  One is look on the product page.  You will see:

If the page says ‘loan this book’ on a page that you have purchased the book then that is a lendable book.  Click that link. If you have not purchased the book yet, then in the product details about midway down the Amazon page you will see: Lending Enabled.  If there is nothing after ASIN, then the lending is not enabled on this book.

You can also sort through all of your books on you manage you kindle page (which is what I would do if you have lots of books you are trying to organize.  Once you open Manage my Kindle, choose just to look at book and then sort however you want.  Click on the ‘Action’ button on the right and you will either see ‘Loan this title’.  If you do not see that fifth option, the book is not lending enabled.

When you click on that ‘Loan this title’ link you will go to a lending page.  You will need the borrower’s email address.  Your name is already typed in, their name and a personal message is option.  The page is very simple:

Once you fill it out the form you as lender are done.  If you have multiple devices (or people) on your account, every device that has that book will be locked out of the book during the 14 day lending period.  Also each regular kindle will get a notice that says that the book is not available because it is being borrowed.

I have noticed that occasionally not every book is released at 14 days.  Sometimes you just need to delete the book off your device and re-download it again. Has not happened much, but it has happened.

The borrower will find an email just like this:

If you are interested in borrowing some books, or if you have some ideas about how to make the search process better leave a comment or look at my list.

I have 335 books that you can borrow.  You can search through them, find ones that I rated and see my reviews, see covers and find out if I have read the books or not (hint I have only read 35 of that list, mostly it is made up of free books that I haven’t gotten to yet.)