(And legally, too.)
Let’s pretend that you’re new to the Kindle Fire. I know some of you are, at any rate. In the grand scheme of things, the predecessors weren’t all that attractive, after all. Sure, they might have been a convenient way to circumnavigate the task of carrying enormous textbooks but they weren’t cool. They weren’t iDevices. They weren’t shiny. And they certainly weren’t the sort of thing you could whip out during a date without drawing a slightly raised eyebrow. But then, things changed. The Kindle Fire came along. You decided you wanted to re-cultivate a reading habit. You wanted a new toy. Regardless of the reasons, you bought one.
So, now what?
You have the Kindle fire but you’re not really willing to fork out another hundred bucks for that lavish set of Sandman comics you’ve always wanted. What do you do now?
Not too long ago, we took a peek at a crafty tactic that Gesture Theory introduced. Today, however, we’ll look at something less potentially damaging to your permanent record:
Mutual ownership.
The fine art of non-permanent barter. Temporary custody. In short, we’re talking about the old tradition of book lending. Yes, it works with electronic things too. No, it doesn’t involve handing over your tablet. We’re playing nice.
You see, Amazon has this pretty snazzy feature that allows you to loan a book to a friend. The problem here is that it’s often hard to find exactly what you’re looking for. You could, of course, always use the Kindle forums but that’s kind of like excavating Craigslist. Fortunately for the new Kindle owner, there are certain websites that will allow you to easily determine if the book you want is up for loan, put your own precious volumes up for perusal and occasionally get a few extra gift cards while doing so.
Curious? Here’s four of our favorite sources:
Lendle.Me is kind of awesome. Built in HTML 5, this highly popular service is amazingly user-friendly and very fair The principle here is something like this. When you first join Lendle.Me, you’ll be asked to put one of your books on loan. Once you’ve done so, you’ll be given two borrow requests. This, of course, isn’t a one-time thing. You’ll need to put books on loan to be able to borrow books. Why is this so? It’s because Lendle.Me wants to ensure that their supply of books does not get depleted.
(For those unaware of this, you can only ever loan out a book once. Ever.)
You can also earn borrow requests via other means but book lending is the fastest way to go. You get credits after a 21-day period once you’ve loaned a book and these are paid out in the form of $10 gift cards. Nifty, ne? (There are also a few other things to discover but I’ll let you read the FAQ yourself.)
Booklending.Com, in comparison, is a lot simpler. Want a book? Borrow a book. Want to offer your library? Put it up. Want to get extras out of it? Good luck. It’s not going to happen. However, it’s also something that works tremendously well for Booklending.Com. It’s simple, it’s fast and it’s efficient. Try to think of it as a one-night stand sort of thing, eh?
EbookFling.com is Lendle.Me’s capitalist cousin. Okay, maybe it’s not that bad but here, you’ll be able to purchase credits, something that is made amply clear in the ‘give a gift’ section. Depending on how you look at it, things can either be really good or really bad. Take your pick. More importantly, however, the interface feels a lot less intuitive compared to Lendle.Me, something that worked against its favor in this particular line-up.
I’m sort of cheating on this one. It’s not exactly a website for book lending, after all. However, it also offers something that the other forums do not: immediate attention. The other sub-reddits are rife with people, people constantly poking about and exchanging thoughts and ideas on books. A chance comment can derail into a discussion of useful books and so forth. The KindleLend subreddit is better suited for those with time to spare but for those of you interested in venturing outside of your comfort zone, this is the one for you.
About the Author
