Last week, not long after the mid-October addition of PBS and Fox shows to Amazon Prime’s free streaming video lineup, the online retailer announced the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. This additional benefit, according to Amazon, allows Kindle-carrying Amazon Prime members to borrow a book at a time for free, from a selection of “thousands of books.” Said to include “over 100 current and former New York Times Bestsellers,” this new feature provides public library-like services – without the drive or the due dates and late fees. But does it make Amazon Prime worth the annual $79 membership fee?
While the list of Prime-eligible e-books reaches an impressive 5,376 in number, the books themselves may not be what avid readers expect. A few relatively current hits make the cut – including Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games Trilogy and Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants – but there are also many that are not traditional reading material. In the top 100 list alone, TIME Techland’s Jared Newman found nearly 30 e-book titles that were more instructional than literary – including video-based workout e-books and help books like “Angry Birds: Video Game Guide.” As for the novels that remain, quite a few are enhanced versions of classic works, the original versions of which can also be downloaded for free by non-Prime members through Amazon or Project Gutenberg.
There are, as Newman notes, “some gems” in the list of e-books eligible for Amazon Prime’s Lending Library, though they take some searching to find. And while even the cooking and instructional texts will have their fans, the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library alone probably isn’t persuasive enough to convince book lovers to spring for the $79 membership – even if they already have a Kindle. Still, on top of the free two-day shipping on eligible items and the Amazon Instant Video library, the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library makes for attractive icing on the Amazon Prime cake.
(Via Techland, Image via Amazon)
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