Do you work in a business or organization and have a need to maintain a library of reference books? Or maybe your team reads the same books to stay current with the latest thinking or trends in your industry.
Why not buy one or more Kindles and share the devices? With minor exceptions, six people can read the same book on up to six devices at the same time. And a Kindle costs as little as $79.
Here's how it works:
1. Buy one or more Kindles.
2. Create a new account on Amazon.com and use that account to register the Kindle devices and buy the books. You only need to buy one copy of the book.
3. You can also use the free Kindle reading app but keep in mind that the device you use it on must be registered with Amazon. If this is someone's personal iPad, Android phone or laptop then their device counts as one of the six. (See tradeoff below.)
4. Turn off synchronization between devices.
Now when you buy an eBook simply login to your account and send the book to each Kindle device. It is like a library only instead of checking out books, you check out the Kindle device. Every device would have a complete set of the books in your reading library.
Another great benefit is that you can download company information to the devices. These can be Word or PDF files and transferring them to each Kindle can be as easy as sending them via email. Most text documents require no special conversion process beyond what Amazon does automatically.
It comes down to developing an effective device-loaning program.
Are there tradeoffs? Yes, but they are more like inconveniences:
1. Because your books are shared each reader will see everyone's highlights and bookmarks. Although this isn't necessarily bad it could be distracting.
2. If there is a sharing limit you will see the message “Simultaneous Device usage: Up to X simultaneous devices, per publisher limits” on the detail page.
3. If you decide to replace a device you will need to deregister it. Once deregistered you must delete the content from that device and you cannot reregister it again in the future.
4. Subscription content like blogs and magazines can only be downloaded to one Kindle at a time and cannot be accessed from Kindle for iPhone.
Contact us about getting your library started. We offer training, consultation and conversion of corporate eBook content to Kindle, Nook, Sony and Apple iBook formats.
Ajith S says
September 25, 2012 at 10:15 amHi,
I work for a company which spans across the country.
We would like to have an e-library from which employees can lend.
The books must be issued for a limited period of usage only and employees would be using their own e-book readers. Kindly suggest if you could help us in finding a solution
Regards
Ajith S
M J Barczak says
March 11, 2013 at 1:03 pmI do not see a response to your query. I have the same question.
Is anyone out there to answer it?
Thanks,
David Wogahn says
March 11, 2013 at 11:00 pmMJ, feel free to ask here or give me a call (760-942-4227).
THarris says
May 30, 2013 at 9:24 amMJ, If you only have 6 locations (or even employees) you can register one device per location and still follow the advice from the article.
Each account can also loan each book they purchase, but they can only loan each book ONCE for a period of 14 days, so this is pretty much useless in the corporate scenario.
GKent says
August 28, 2014 at 8:54 amI have a personal Kindle and it is very easy to order from the kindle. How can you control that is this scenario? Is there a way to stop others from buying books etc..?
David Wogahn says
August 28, 2014 at 11:09 pmThere is no way to stop someone from ordering but in the workplace this probably isn’t an issue.
JPenn says
September 5, 2014 at 3:02 pmWill this work with Kindle Unlimited? ie. could all devices access that service?
David Wogahn says
September 7, 2014 at 6:46 amAssuming all the devices and/or apps are registered to a single account, you should be in good shape. In terms of limitations, Amazon states that “You can access up to ten books at a time from the Kindle Unlimited catalog and read each on up to six devices or reading apps.”
Michelle Hafford says
March 31, 2015 at 10:22 amInterested in more information about creating a corporate lending library using the kindle
David Wogahn says
April 1, 2015 at 5:19 pmMichelle, you can use the contact form on authorimprints.com to ask your question.
Gia says
August 26, 2015 at 10:40 amwe need the same content to be available on 24 Kindles. I understand that after 6 copies we need to repurchase. Does Amazon limit the number of purchases that can be made?
Samuel Scheer says
September 2, 2015 at 9:18 amHi! I just vowed to my team that I’ll set up an Amazon kindle lending club. Is this still possible and do you have a step by step guide on how to do it? We only need to share/read books we’ll buy on Amazon.
David Wogahn says
September 2, 2015 at 10:52 pmAmazon is a retailer and i’ve never heard of them limiting purchases. But an account which is a user, is limited as to the number of copies of ebooks they can share among their apps and or devices. So if 6 is the limit, and you need 24, you’ll need 4 users accounts.
David Wogahn says
September 2, 2015 at 10:54 pmHi, households can share books between members of the household. And books, when permitted by publishers, can be loaned to another person for two weeks. After that, no loans for that book. You should look this all up on Amazon because it can change at any time.
Damon says
January 6, 2016 at 9:50 pmGreat article, this is really helpful. How does this sharing differs from lending/loading books though?
Is it possible to create a master account for say 20 devices? We wouldn’t mind paying for for the same books multiple times, just makes it much more convenient.
David Wogahn says
January 8, 2016 at 5:04 pmThe key thing to find out is how many apps can one account support. You can buy one book and read it on multiple devices and that’s the limit. i suppose you could claim there is a family member and possibly double that number but you are describing a business environment and family is specifically defined in the agreements.
Kelly says
January 10, 2016 at 7:41 pmIs the six device limit for the Amazon account or for each book? Meaning, can there only be six devices connected to an Amazon account or can there be more?
David Wogahn says
January 13, 2016 at 6:54 pmIt is an account limit and 6 sounds right, but you need to double check with Amazon. I believe 2 adults sharing the same home and bank account (sometimes called husband and wife) can share an account, so that doubles it.
David Hurley says
June 15, 2018 at 7:35 amHi I am a president of a special interest club in Ireland. We have a physical library of books but it is under used and takes up a large amount of space. I want to turn this into a digital library that our members can access easily. I dont think buying kindles would work for us as there is a good chance that they could be stolen.
Is there anyway in which we can create a kindle library that will loan books to individuals for a set period of time and doesnt involve us giving the log in details of our account to several hundred members?
David Wogahn says
June 19, 2018 at 12:10 pmNo, not unless you publish books yourself. Then you can share those any way you like since you own the copyright.