Thursday, November 3, 2011

New Service for Kindle Owners by Amazon

Are you an owner of a Kindle device?  (I am an owner of the 2nd Generation Kindle, which I've had for 2 years)  If so, Amazon has announced a new service for Kindle owners who are also subscribers to Amazon's Prime membership program.  This latter program, for $79 per year, offers free 2nd business day shipping on all orders, $3.99 overnight shipping per item, access to hundreds of streaming movies and TV shows, and now, the ability to 'borrow' books, including NY Times bestsellers, for the flat rate subscription.

Also, as a resident of LA County, I have the ability to borrow from the LA County website books to download to my Kindle for a set period of time (2 weeks).  The ability to borrow books adds more value to these devices.

When the Kindle was released, it's primary competition was the Barnes & Noble Nook.  Since I've been a Prime subscriber and long time customer of Amazon, as well as someone who has had nothing but postitive experiences when I had to deal with Amazon, it was a easy choice to pick the Kindle over the Nook.  Given the price difference (my $249 purchase of the Kindle) to the iPad2 when it was released ($599 for the 32GB model that is comparable to my iPhone4), this also was a huge incentive to go with the Kindle.

With this new program, I can supplement my reading materials with borrowed books to add to my daily and monthly subscriptions as well as the 26 books I currently store on my device.  This is a real competitive move by Amazon and one that has me really looking forward to getting the Kindle Fire as I upgrade my device and move the 2nd generation on to my daughter....

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