We covered the launch of the new startup the Kindle Lending Club last month. The startup takes advantage of the Amazon Kindle’s new lending feature that was introduced in December – the ability to loan (some of) your e-books to another Kindle user for a 14-day period.
But not surprisingly, Amazon has responded to the startup. Amazon isn’t shutting down its service (that’s good news), but it is demanding that the startup change its name. Amazon owns the trademark to “Kindle,” so starting tomorrow the startup becomes BookLending.com.
Both sharing and borrowing are free through BookLending.com. You can browse for the titles that other users have made available, and you can make available the books you’re willing to lend. The site simply matches borrowers and lenders. The rest of the Kindle lending rules stay in place: the loan is for 14 days. You can’t read a title while it’s on loan to someone else. And you can only loan a title once.
The name BookLending.com isn’t nearly as catchy as Kindle Lending Club. And the startup has a number of competitors in the e-book lending business, including LendInk, that connects both Kindle and Nook users.
