Wow! Kindle Owners’ Lending Library E-Books Have Been Borrowed, Downloaded, or Sold More Than 100 Million Times

It appears that Kindle owners (who also subscribe to Amazon Prime) take advantage of the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library (KOLL).
What does this mean (now and in the future) for library ebook programs as even more titles are added to the KOLL especially for bestsellers and other popular material? We wouldn’t be at all surprised to see the number of items a user is allowed to checkout each month grow to two or three. Right now, it’s one title per month.
In about 10 months the program has grown from about 5000 titles to more than 180,000.
Today, we learned that the titles exclusive to the KOLL have been borrowed, downloaded, and sold more than 100 million times. KOLL is currently only available to U.S.  The library also includes all seven Harry Potter books and over 100 current and former New York Times Best Sellers. All books can be borrowed at any time. In other words, there is no waiting list for a title.
From Today’s Announcement:

Amazon.com today announced that its catalog of over 180,000 exclusive Kindle books have been purchased, downloaded, or borrowed from the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library more than 100 million times. Nearly all of these exclusive books are available for Kindle owners with a Prime membership to borrow for free, as frequently as once a month, with no due dates.
Popular Kindle-exclusive titles include “War Brides” by Helen Bryan, which has been purchased or borrowed over 270,000 times and has remained on the Kindle Top 10 list for the past 8 weeks; Karen McQuestion’s books “A Scattered Life,” “Easily Amused” and “The Long Way Home,” which have been purchased or borrowed more than 500,000 times; and Ed McBain’s classic and long-running 87^th Precinct series, which debuted in 1956 and is now published for the first time in digital and has been purchased more than 250,000 times since December. Other best-selling exclusive books include several titles from Debora Geary, particularly “A Modern Witch” which recently hit #1 on the Kindle best seller list (briefly unseating “Fifty Shades of Grey”) and “Our Husband” by Stephanie Bond, which has been on the Kindle best seller list since July. Both of these authors have sold at least 200,000 copies of their books.

Read the Complete Announcement
See Also: Harry Potter Titles Coming to Kindle Owners’ Lending Library and What This Should Mean For Libraries (May 10, 2012)
See Also: Some Thoughts About the New Kindle/OverDrive Library Program (September 21, 2011)

Filed under: Libraries