This morning Amazon launched their Kindle Owners' Lending Library which lets owners of their popular ebook reader, who also subscribe to their Prime service, choose from thousands of free titles to borrow without a due date.
Like with books purchased from the Amazon store, the Lending Library can be accessed directly from the Kindle itself, though, only the Kindle reader. The free library is not available to those using the Kindle apps on other devices, or a PC. And users can't load up on titles for a long trip. Only a single book can be borrowed at one time, limited to just one new title every month. But any bookmarks, highlights or notes created while a book was on loan will be preserved after the book is returned, so users will still have access to them if they choose to borrow it again. At the moment over 5,000 titles are available from Amazon's Lending Library, including more than 100 current and former books from the New York Times Bestsellers' list. As long as you live in the US that is, since at launch the service is not available internationally. [Amazon]