Amazon lends e-books free to Prime subscribers
Better to borrow than buy?
Amazon’s UK wing is now a lending library, albeit a private one exclusive to folk willing to cough up £49 a year.
Yes, Amazon Prime subscribers with Kindles can now borrow any of 200,000 e-books for no charge other than their annual Prime sub. They can pick no more than one book a month, but there’s no digital equivalent of the ‘due date’ rubber stamp of old.
With e-book ownership of questionable value - you can’t sell them when you’ve finished with them, or give them away; they’re clearly impossible to take down off the shelf, smell and flip through - getting to read them for free will no doubt appeal to many.
Whether that justifies the annual subscription depends on whether you’d spend more than £4.08 for an e-book each month. And that Amazon is willing to lend you the book you want to read, of course - 200,000 titles is a lot less than the number of books on Amazon's 'for sale' shelves.
Amazon would say Prime also gives you free, next-day delivery on physical items you buy, but free delivery over a slightly longer period is easy enough to select. ®
COMMENTS
Slightly longer period
Well, yes, you can get free 'Super-Saver' delivery. Which is fine for some things. But if it's a large or fragile item, that usually means that for no extra charge some bloke from "Craptacular Delivery Organisation" will drop-kick it over the wall and into your next-door-neighbour's pond for you rather than actually deliver it to your door.
"Free"...?
Let's see:
"getting to read them for free will no doubt appeal to many."
versus
"Amazon’s UK wing is now a lending library, albeit a private one exclusive to folk willing to cough up £49 a year."
49 a year? Doesn't seem free to me.
Re: Only on a hardware reader
that would be a really important and useful addition to the article, if someone can corroborate it?
Re: Only on a hardware reader
That is a pretty crap restriction. I read books through various kindle apps on my PCs, phone and tablet. But I don't own a kindle so, despite having been a prime subscriber for many years, I'm excluded from this. Along with the free films that they get in the US and the ability to lend books to other kindle users (also US) Amazon seem to be going out of their way to annoy large segments of their users.
Re: Only on a hardware reader
"Members who own Kindle devices can also choose from thousands of books -- including more than 100 current and former New York Times Bestsellers -- to borrow and read for free, as frequently as a book a month with no due dates, from the Kindle Owners' Lending Library".
from https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=lp_mem_help?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200182130
Clicking through to the link for the Kindle Owners' Lending Library confirms that it does not work with Kindle apps on other devices.
So it's only a good deal if you've got the kit.
