Alternatives to the Kindle Library Lending

^{Photo courtesy of kodomut, via Flickr}

Last week, Amazon announced a new feature for their Prime program. Now, in addition to unlimited 2nd-day shipping and access to a collection of streaming movies and TV shows,  Prime members will be able to borrow e-books without having to pay anything over and above the $79 annual Prime membership fee.

Here's how it works: users will be able to have one book from the 5,000 title-strong lending library out at a time, and will be allowed to borrow one new e-book per month. If you take longer than a month to finish a borrowed book, there will be no late fee. The program feels like a logical next-step for e-books--and may even do for books what Netflix did for movies or what Spotify is doing for music.

As of now, however, Amazon's program has some problematic limitations. For one, users must own an actual Kindle in order to read the borrowed books. If you've been using the Kindle app for iPhone, iPad, Android, Mac or Windows, you're out of luck. Another drawback is that, so far, the six largest publishing companies have not agreed to allow their books into the program.

If you think the Amazon Prime e-book lending program isn't ready for prime time--no pun intended-- here are some alternative free and legal ways to borrow e-books.

Public Libraries

As Rick wrote back in April, Amazon already has a Kindle library lending option. There are about 11,000 public libraries that participate in the program, and users can take advantage of it without needing to invest in one of Amazon's Kindle e-readers. All you need is the Kindle app, available on just about any platform.

Back when Rick reported on Amazon's announcement, the company had planned to partner with OverDrive, a company that already allows you to read borrowed library e-books on a number of platforms. The details of Amazon's library lending program have since changed, so there's a chance that your local library supports OverDrive e-books and not Amazon. If that's the case, be sure to download the free OverDrive app for Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Blackberry or Android. As an added bonus, OverDrive will play borrowed audiobooks.

e-Book Lending

Whether you own a Kindle or not, users of the Kindle app are allowed to lend e-books to one another, as long as the original e-book was purchased through Amazon. The borrowed books can be kept for up to two weeks, and there's no charge for the service.

In Rick's original post, he recommended eBook Fling, a site that allows users to find other users who have the books they want to borrow. eBook Fling uses a credit system, where each book lent gives the user credit that can be used to borrow a book. If the user has no credits, then a book may be borrowed for $1.99.

Since that post, other e-book lending sites have sprouted. Another worthwhile option is Lendle.me. Lendle works a little differently. For one, it doesn't have a strict 1-to-1 borrowing policy. After a user joins and puts a single book into the lending pool, he or she will be eligible to borrow up to two books. From there, an algorithm will determine how many books the user can borrow. The site has another advantage: Lendle encourages lending by rewarding active lenders with $10 Amazon gift cards.

If you don't want to deal with credits and rewards and algorithms, there are more informal ways to take advantage of Amazon's lending program. BookLending.com, is a straightforward, well-designed site that allows users to borrow or lend books without a lot of fanfare. An even simpler approach would be to join the Kindle Lending forum on the book-based social network, GoodReads.com.

Free E-Books

If a book is so old that it belongs to the public domain, you can often find the e-book for free. The Google eBookstore has a good selection of free e-books, including many that are obscure or hard-to-find. Amazon also has a great selection in their Free e-Book Collections, including many that are not even public domain. For a huge selection of all public domain e-books in a variety of formats, you can't do better than the always-awesome Project Gutenberg.

Have your own tips for finding cheap or free e-books? Still prefer to do your reading the old-fashioned way? Please share in the comments.