For Amazon Prime Readers, a Lending Library
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"With less than two weeks to go before the new Kindle is in the hands of the masses, Amazon is aiming to stoke sales with more benefits. Wednesday night it announced a new program that loans eligible customers a free e-book every month.
The program, the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, is open to Kindle users who are also members of Amazon Prime, the $79-a-year fast shipping and video-streaming service. Customers can keep a selection for as long as they want but it will disappear if they choose another book the next month.
Emile Wamsteker/Bloomberg NewsJeffrey P. Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, with the Kindle Fire, which goes on sale later this month.Amazon touts “over 100 current and former New York Times best-sellers,” but a quick check of the 20 top Times sellers listed in Amazon’s Kindle Store show none in the lending library. Traditional publishers are obviously leery of this program.
The full list of 5,156 available titles, sorted by their best-selling status, begins with Suzanne Collins’s popular “Hunger Games” and includes efforts by Anthony Bourdain and Michael Lewis, along with a host of volumes that may be familiar only to ardent Kindle readers: “Dixie Divas” by Virginia Brown, “101 Ways to Find a Ghost” by Melissa Martin Ellis, and “Already Gone” by John Rector.
Amazon was rumored to be starting an all-you-can-eat program that would allow Prime subscribers an unlimited number of e-books for a set fee, but that seems delayed at best as the retailer tries to overcome publishers’ reluctance. Recently, Amazon allowed libraries to begin lending e-books readable on the Kindle."
The program, the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, is open to Kindle users who are also members of Amazon Prime, the $79-a-year fast shipping and video-streaming service. Customers can keep a selection for as long as they want but it will disappear if they choose another book the next month.
Emile Wamsteker/Bloomberg NewsJeffrey P. Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, with the Kindle Fire, which goes on sale later this month.
The full list of 5,156 available titles, sorted by their best-selling status, begins with Suzanne Collins’s popular “Hunger Games” and includes efforts by Anthony Bourdain and Michael Lewis, along with a host of volumes that may be familiar only to ardent Kindle readers: “Dixie Divas” by Virginia Brown, “101 Ways to Find a Ghost” by Melissa Martin Ellis, and “Already Gone” by John Rector.
Amazon was rumored to be starting an all-you-can-eat program that would allow Prime subscribers an unlimited number of e-books for a set fee, but that seems delayed at best as the retailer tries to overcome publishers’ reluctance. Recently, Amazon allowed libraries to begin lending e-books readable on the Kindle."
