eBook Lending For Kindle Feature Coming This Year

Amazon has confirmed that a "lending for Kindle" feature will be launched later in 2010, allowing readers to loan their Kindle ebooks to other Kindle or Kindle app users.  As with Barnes & Noble's NOOK lending functionality, titles can be loaned once for a 14-day period, during which time the lender will be unable to read the ebook themselves.

"Later this year, we will be introducing lending for Kindle, a new feature that lets you loan your Kindle books to other Kindle device or Kindle app users. Each book can be lent once for a loan period of 14-days and the lender cannot read the book during the loan period. Additionally, not all e-books will be lendable – this is solely up to the publisher or rights holder, who determines which titles are enabled for lending." Amazon Kindle team

As is also the case with B&N, Kindle books can only be loaned once; it's unclear from Amazon's announcement whether that's once per person or once in the lifetime of the ebook.  Meanwhile the company also confirmed that newspapers and magazines will be added to the Kindle apps rather than limited to the Kindle hardware itself.