How to Loan a Kindle Book

I’ve been a bookworm for as long as I can remember. And back before I got sucked into the world of kindle ebooks, I used to pass along good books to friends with an ohmygosh-you-HAVE-to-read-this excitement.

I lost a little of that excitement once I went primarily to buying ebooks. Instead, I’d blog about my favorite books or post reviews to goodreads. Until I discovered how to loan Kindle books, the best part being that I could loan a book to a friend who lives far away, that I’d never be able to physically hand a book to. The person you loan it to can read it on their Kindle, using a Kindle app, or their computer. There are plenty of free reading apps out there.

While this is not a new feature, when I had mentioned on facebook this weekend that I had a few books I could loan if someone was looking for a good read, it seemed it wasn’t common knowledge that you could loan ebooks, so I thought I’d share how to do this.

How to Loan a Kindle Book

Log in to your Amazon account.

Under the “Your Account” menu, select “Manage Your Kindle.”

You’ll see all the Kindle books you have purchased. Each book has an “actions” button over in the far right column. Hover over it with your mouse. If the option to “Loan this title” is listed, you can loan the book. Not every book can be loaned, so you need to check each book to see if you can or not.

If the option to loan the book appears, click on it. You’ll be taken to a screen where you’ll enter the email and name of the person you are loaning the ebook to. This does NOT have to be the email associated with their Amazon account- any of their email addresses will work as to get the book, they will click on the link in the email and sign into their Amazon account. The email and link gives directions to them as to how to get the book- it’s super easy.

Once that email is sent, the recipient has 7 days to accept the loan and then 14 days after they accept to read the book before it’s automatically returned to you. If they don’t accept in 7 days, the book is returned to you. If they finish reading before the 14 days are up, they can go to “Manage my Kindle” in their account and delete the book from their account- that will return it to you, though it will automatically happen after the 14 days are up. You cannot read a book on your own Kindle while you have it loaned out to someone else.  Also: you can only loan each book out one time. There are a few that I have been able to loan out multiple times, but that may have been a fluke in the system.