Amazon Allows Kindle Owners to Share Books

In the last couple weeks, Amazon made good on two announcements made some months ago. One is you can now share Kindle titles with other Kindle owners.

The lending feature has been on the want list of Kindle owners for some time. If you are a Kindle customer you can now be able to share titles you have purchased with any other Kindle user - including those using the free Kindle apps.

While a title is on loan the lender has no access to it and this seems fair, but you can only loan a title once and only for 14 days - which seems far too short. There are also other restrictions,  lending can only be initiated by customers in the U.S and recipients in some countries won't be allowed access to some titles.  Currently, sharing can only be administered via the Amazon website.

In addition, the facility is controlled by the publisher who can opt to enable or disable sharing. As you can guess most publishers see no advantage in letting users share a book with another user and so lose a potential sale. As a result you have to look quite hard to find a Kindle book that you can use to even just test the facility!

Here's hoping more and more books become sharing enabled. I can understand if newly released titles won't be able to be shared, but after a period of one year, most books should be able to be shared.

Amazon's Best Selling Product: The Kindle

The Kindle is Amazon's best selling product, but how many have been sold?

Amazon still isn't up to giving us an actual number. It had no problem letting investors know that it moved 2.5 million copies of the final book in J.K. Rowling's series during its debut quarter three years ago. One can also assume that Amazon has probably sold plenty more copies since its debut.

In other words, we're not necessarily any smarter than we were two weeks ago when an official post in Amazon's Kindle forum revealed that it had sold "millions" of the latest model, but we do now know the Kindle has outsold everything else on Amazon.com.

Reasons the Kindle has sold so well in 2010 include: ease of use, the new smaller size, battery life in unreal, and price.  Since a Wi-Fi Kindle can be had for $139, it is almost a no-brainer.

Will Amazon release the actual number of Kindles sold?  Probably not, but we'll find out soon.

iPad Free App of the Week: Google Books

Here's how the App Store bills the Google Books app:

The Google Books app offers access to over 2 million Google eBooks on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. Take your favorite books with you on the go.

Great Reading Experience

- Change font, search within book, information about book
- Night-reading mode
- Offline reading mode

Discover Millions of Titles

- Millions of books in every imaginable category, from New York Times bestsellers to favorite classics
- Over 2 million free ebooks available instantly
- Over 400,000 ebooks for purchase
- Free preview pages
- Unlimited storage of books in the digital cloud
- Worry-free archive

Syncs With Your Google Books Library

- Find books at http://books.google.com/ebooks and add them to the 'My Google eBooks' shelf to sync
- Access all your ebooks wirelessly from the digital cloud; no dedicated e-reading device required
- Automatic page position synching across devices -- pick up reading where you left off

All that being said, I like the app, but I don't see giving up using the Kindle app for books and reading.  I think the Kindle app on my iPad is the rest of the eBook store apps.  But give Google Books a try, it will continue to grow and get better as feedback comes in from users.

Amazon Finally Lets You Gift Kindle Books

I've been calling for this for almost two years.

Beginning today, just in time for the holiday season, customers can give Kindle Books as gifts to anyone with an e-mail address--no Kindle required. Kindle Books can be read on Kindle devices and free Kindle reading apps for iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, Mac, PC, BlackBerry and Android-based devices. For more information or to give a Kindle Book as a gift, go to www.amazon.com/givekindlebooks.

"We are thrilled to make it easier than ever for our customers to give their favorite Kindle book to a friend or family member as a gift," said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. "We're making this functionality available in time for the holidays to offer an easy, stress free holiday shopping option for anyone - not just Kindle owners."

To give a Kindle Book as a gift, customers simply choose a book in the Kindle Store, select "Give as a Gift" and send their gift to anyone with an email address. Notifications of Kindle Books gifts are delivered instantly via e-mail and the recipient redeems the gift in the Kindle Store to read on any Kindle or free Kindle app.

Kindle Free Pick of the Week: Compromising Positions

This Jenna Bayley-Burke looks like a fun read.

It also remains #1 on the Kindle free book list.  Here are a couple reviews:

With sensual love scenes, flirty repartee, and a man and woman clearly meant to be together, you get everything you could ever want in a romance novel. Overall, I have to say that Compromising Positions is a must read!
~ Long and Short Reviews

Compromising Positions would have to be one of the best contemporary romance novels I have read in a long time. Jenna Bayley-Burke delivers it all, romance, humor, and great chemistry between her hero and heroine. It is so well written. The pace is great, and the story line fantastic.
~ Fallen Angel Reviews

Get it while it is free.