Amazon Kindle Lending Library Reaches 100,000 Titles

The Amazon Kindle Lending Library, which can probably best be described as Netflix for e-books, now gives subscribers an amazing 100,000 titles they can read for free. The retailer hit the skyhigh milestone after recently releasing a large update of books. It is growing to become one of the best features of Amazon Prime, and of the Kindle platform as well.

Amazon Prime used to offer one thing – unlimited two-day shipping for all Amazon-inventoried items, and $3.99 for overnight shipping. The cost was $79 per year when it was first introduced. Now, Amazon Prime members get access to thousands of streaming TV show episodes and movies for free, and can download one free Kindle book per month through the Lending Library program. The cost? Still just $79 per year.

Book publishers get around $1 every time one of their titles is "borrowed" from an Amazon Prime member, a nice incentive for independent publishers whose books are normally priced at less than $5. That $1 accounts for nearly an entire royalty on a book purchase, and as would be expected, it is those independent publishers who are the most excited. More than one million independently published books have been checked out from the Lending Library.

[via VentureBeat]