Amazon Kindle Book Lending opens up

Amazon has opened up a new free service, Kindle Book Lending, which allows owners of eBooks bought from the site to share them with their friends and family. At present the new service is only available on Amazon.com, but is expected to roll-out across the globe early in the new year.

To lend an eBook via Kindle Book Lending, all you have to do is click on the "Loan this book" button next to the details of the title in either your bought books section (under "Manage Your Kindle") or on the product pages themselves. Not all titles are available for lending, however, due to rights issues, so each Kindle book product page will now tell you whether the service is enabled or not.

Once you send a book to a friend, they will have 14 days to read it before the loan cuts off, but they don't need to own a Kindle itself. They will be able to read the eBook on a PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, BlackBerry or Android device - basically, anything that can run an Amazon Kindle application.

Although the service is initially only available in the US, it is understood that certain books will be able to be loaned to people in other countries, although, again for rights issues, the list of permitted titles may be heavily truncated.

To find out more, visit Amazon's dedicated page at www.amazon.com/kindle-lending.

Did you get a Kindle for Christmas? If, so what do you think? Let us know in the comments below...