Amazon.com launches book borrowing program

Gadget Herald: Amazon.com Inc. has launched a new digital book lending library on November 3, 2011. The library will be available only for users of its Kindle and Kindle Fire devices and also those who are the subscribers of the Amazon Prime program.

In the initial phase, the program will be limited in terms of the availability of the book that has to be borrowed. Amazon will be offering more than 5,000 titles in the library which will also include 100 current and former best sellers of the nation.

For now, none of the six major publishers of the US will be participating in this library. Some of the senior publishing executives stated that a digital lending program could even harm the future sales of the older titles or could even damage the ties with the other book retailers.

Amazon has assured that it would restrict the users to borrow one book at a time in a month. The users can keep the book as long as they can, but when they borrow the next title then the other book will automatically vanish from the device. However, the program cannot be accessed from the apps on the other devices which clearly means that it will not be working on the Apple’s iPad or iPhone.