Customers of the german www.amazon.de website have the possibility to borrow one book per month without an expiration date.
I’ve been waiting for this since years. I’ve used several book lending clubs while having my kindle on amazon.com but ever since I had to switch to amazon.de (not by choice), I’ve been missing this feature.
Unlike on amazon.com where customers can borrow from other customers anytime any books, on amazon.de customers can borrow directly from amazon but there is a catch. Actually several as you can see from the list below:
- You have to be a Prime member with annual cost of 29 euros, including up to 4 family members living at the same address
- You can borrow only one book per month, on the plus side you don’t have a deadline when you have to return the book
- You have to own a Kindle reading device or any of the Kindle Fire devices, you can only borrow and read using this device which must be connected to your Prime membership
- You can’t read with the Kindle apps (iOS, Android,…) the books you borrowed on your Kindle
- You can only borrow one book at a time, if you borrow a new book, the previous will be canceled
- If you did not borrow a book in one calendar month, it will be lost and you cannot take it to the next month
- Wheather the book can be borrowed is displayed only in the Kindle Shop on the device
- If you cancel your Prime membership, the currently borrowed book will be lost
Adittionally to all of the above, the selection of Kindle books which can be borrowed is very limited, I didn’t find any books I was interested in till now so this is one feature I am very disappointed with and won’t be using at all.
Related:
http://www.amazon.de/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200986710 (link in german)
FitGeekGirl 