Amazon Kindle Books Available for 'Free' With Prime Membership in Lending Library
Amazon.com announced on its website Thursday that it will be making a lending library available to Kindle owners who have Amazon Prime membership, which would allow users to borrow one book per month from a list of thousands of titles, with no due dates to worry about.
"Owning a Kindle just got even better," said Amazon.com Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos in a statement. "Today, we're introducing a new Prime benefit built for Kindle: The Kindle Owners' Lending Library. Prime Members now have exclusive access to a huge library of books to read on any Kindle device at no additional cost and with no due dates."
The website states that the selection of books includes New York Times Bestsellers as well as popular titles such as Water for Elephants, Moneyball: The Art of Winning and Unfair Game, and Fast Food Nation. The lending library will also include award-winning novels such as The Finkler Question and Pulitzer-Prize winning books such as Guns, Germs and Steel.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
"The Kindle Owners' Lending Library is a great new benefit for Kindle owners and an entirely new growth opportunity for authors and publishers," said vice president of Kindle content Russ Grandinetti. "With the growth in Prime membership and the recent addition of Prime Instant Video, we've been able to broaden our relationships with movie and TV studios such as CBS, Fox, and NBC Universal and significantly increase their revenue. We're excited to expand that investment to books - with this launch, we expect three immediate results: Kindle owners will read even more, publisher revenues will grow, and authors will see larger royalty checks."
The Amazon Prime Membership itself costs $79 a year and offers features such as free two-day shipping, no minimum order size and unlimited streaming of instant movies and TV shows Prime instant videos.
However, Kindle owners seem unimpressed with the new deal.
"What a rip off, it is not free," said one commenter. "It is $79 per month because you must become a Prime member and you only get one book per month. I call this false advertising."
