Amazon are launching a new digital book loaning library that will be made available to their most important customers – Kindle and Kindle Fire owners who also subscribe to the Amazon Prime delivery program every year.

According to the WSJ, the new service is going to be focused on titles that can be loaned, which at launch will be over 5,000 titles. So far none of the largest publishers in the States will be offering titles with this service. We would feel they might think that such a service could damage sales of specific books.

Amazon are restricting the service to one title at a time …. only one book per month. People can hold onto the book for a long as they want, but when they borrow a new book the old one will disappear from the user device. Much like they had returned it to a local library.

The Kindle Owners Lending Library wont be made available to other devices, just the Kindle and Kindle Fire. This will help drive sales to Kindle devices, according to Amazon. This program will start in America soon, just before the launch of the Kindle Fire on November the 15th.

Amazon Prime is a free, express delivery service which generates the company over $300 million a year, although recent reports would indicate that Amazon spend over $900 million on shipping costs, so we can imagine that the $79/£50 a year fee may increase soon.

Kitguru says: A ‘virtual' book loaning service. Is this going to help push sales for Amazon and their partners?

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