The Glade 4.0

Do ever want to just grab someone and say...WTF is wrong with you?

You can enjoy your Kindle content on Kindle devices or Kindle applications that are registered to your Amazon.com account. There may be limits on the number of devices (usually six) that can simultaneously use a single book. Subscriptions to newspapers or periodicals cannot be shared on multiple devices. You can see all your Kindle content and send downloads to your registered Kindles or Kindle applications from the "Your Orders" section of the Manage Your Kindle page.

Are you wondering how to share your Kindle books with other Kindle users? The Amazon Kindle Team says that a Kindle ebook lending feature will happen soon.

On October 22, 2010, Amazon made a quiet post in the Kindle forum with some of the biggest news Kindle users have been waiting to hear: Kindle users will be able to be lend books. The strange part about the news is not that there will be an ebook sharing feature, which is something people have asked for since 2007, but how the information was released. Amazon revealed this as a secondary comment in a Kindle forum discussion for users rather than in a press release to potential customers.

Amazon Kindle Book Lending Feature Announcement
The post in the forum came from Amazon's official voice in the Kindle forums, The Amazon Kindle Team. The first part of the announcement was that newspapers and magazines can soon be read on Kindle apps. (Yawn. Digital periodicals aren't working well on ereaders yet. People like to flip through magazines, and ereaders work best for sequential reading.)

Then, eyes popped open at part two of the post, because the Kindle Team wrote that "we will be introducing lending for Kindle, a new feature that lets you loan your Kindle books to other Kindle device or Kindle app users. Each book can be lent once for a loan period of 14-days and the lender cannot read the book during the loan period."

They also mentioned that not every book will qualify for ebook sharing, because the ebook lending rights are set by the publisher, not Amazon. The restrictions of this feature look exactly like Nook's ebook lending policy. The similarities indicate that this is another chapter in the epic war of Kindle vs. Nook, which has lately been reduced to skirmishes.

Do ever want to just grab someone and say...WTF is wrong with you?

Unofficially, if Alice wants to share a book with Bob, this is what you do:

1) Have Bob de-register his Kindle. Books already on the Kindle stay on the Kindle.
2) Have Alice register Bob's Kindle to her account.
3) Download Alice's book to Bob's Kindle from her Archived Items.
4) De-register Bob's Kindle once again.
5) Have Bob re-register his Kindle to his own account.

The only catch is that if Bob removes Alice's book from his Kindle, he won't be able to retrieve it again unless you go through this entire process all over.

Unofficially, if Alice wants to share a book with Bob, this is what you do:

1) Have Bob de-register his Kindle. Books already on the Kindle stay on the Kindle.
2) Have Alice register Bob's Kindle to her account.
3) Download Alice's book to Bob's Kindle from her Archived Items.
4) De-register Bob's Kindle once again.
5) Have Bob re-register his Kindle to his own account.

The only catch is that if Bob removes Alice's book from his Kindle, he won't be able to retrieve it again unless you go through this entire process all over.

Do ever want to just grab someone and say...WTF is wrong with you?