Kindle gets library book lending

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13155967

by dpapathanasiou • 15 years ago

26 14 15 years ago

bbc.co.uk

davidw4• 15 years ago

What I really want is family lending. Sooner or later my wife will get a Kindle or something capable of reading Amazon books, and I want to be able to easily lend books to her without handing over my Kindle.

locopati2• 15 years ago

This does seem to be something that needs to be broadly considered when it comes to new technology. For example, Netflix - one account for my household, but there's no separation between recommendations for my wife, my son, myself (which makes for some amusing confusion). In general, the possibility of personalization needs to be considered for applications where you want single-billing but might have many individuals within that account.

ja27• 15 years ago

Netflix does have sub-accounts to allow for different family members. It works reasonably well, but you can only stream video using the primary account.

larsberg• 15 years ago

I know quite a few families in this situation that just re-register kindles between Amazon accounts when they want to grab a different book. According to them, registering a device switches its account, but does not delete or remove stuff you already have on it.

officemonkey2• 15 years ago

You can have multiple devices registered to the same Kindle account. My wife and I use the same Amazon login to buy everything (yay, Amazon Prime), including Kindle books. That means her iPad and my Kindle both get to download and read the same books. No lending necessary.

davidw4• 15 years ago

Yeah, that works, but still isn't 100% ideal. I don't want Phillip Roth books showing up in my recommendations. Ever. And my wife does not want to see books about Erlang or science fiction (although she has been enjoying some of the Louis L'Amour books we stashed in our carry ons coming home from Oregon).

dhimes2• 15 years ago

I believe you can lend, to friends or family or whomever, if the publisher allows, and for whatever time frame the publisher permits (I've only seen two weeks as the limit, but the wording is such that it may vary). The inconvenience is that if you lend a book to someone else, you lose the ability to read it until you get it back.

davidw4• 15 years ago

> if you lend a book to someone else, you lose the ability to read it until you get it back.

Same as with a real book. I think the limits we're all used to with physical objects seem, in some cases, a bit less onerous than weird, arbitrary ones. "I bought it, I should be able to do what I want with my copy".

diegob• 15 years ago

I guess this is why the other book lending services got crushed ...

Kindle gets library book lending

Related Stories