Amazon Sweetens Its Prime Membership with Book Lending

Amazon just made its Prime subscription service a bit sweeter by offering a Kindle book lending service. Kindle owners can now skip a trip to the library and go straight to Amazon to borrow a book at no additional charge. It is calling the service Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.To be clear, users will have to shell out $79 a year for the Amazon Prime service to be eligible, but those users who were already Prime members anyway will get a nice treat with the lending library. They can only borrow one book per month, which should be sufficient for many average readers who like to finish what they start. According to Amazon, they will be able to choose from “thousands” of fiction and nonfiction ebooks previously only available for purchase.

Amazon has been gradually beefing up its Prime membership and digital services, offering video streaming, music downloads and storage, direct publishing for authors, and its recent exclusive graphic novel deals for the new Kindle Fire. In doing so, Amazon seems to be positioning itself as a one-stop-shop for all things digital.

Kindle Owners’ Lending Library will have no due dates or late fees for borrowing books, which is one advantage ebooks have over print. Users must also actually own a physical Kindle device. As of now, the service is not available for other devices, such as Android phones or PCs, that have Kindle apps. The service currently offers more than 5,000 titles, including over 100 New York Times bestsellers.

Amazon Prime has worked with MWW PR Group.