How to Share Kindle Books

Learn how to share kindle books with friends and family easily and quickly with step by step guide. Sharing or lending a Kindle book is not as hard as you think. You just need to follow these simple steps to share, lend or transfer between accounts or access the family library using the app.

Kindle Fire users can also share Kindle books with their friends and loved ones. After reading this article you will learn

  • How to loan e-books.
  • Borrow the books shared from friends and return them when you are done.

What You Need

Having an Amazon account is the only requirement to be able to successfully share books (you have bought) with others. You cannot loan all the books because there are some books that cannot be loaned. Keep reading this article if you want to know which ebooks may or may not be shared.

You should have the personal email address of the person with whom you want to share your Kindle book.

How You Can Share Kindle Books

Sharing Kindle books on Amazon is easy and you too should be able to do so after reading this article. You can share Kindle books using one of the two ways. If you are thinking that there should have been a way to share a book from the Books or Store screen on your Kindle Fire, you are the only one who thinks like that. We can only hope to see that feature in the future.

First of all, navigate to Amazon.com for which you should have access to the Internet. Now login, to your account, using your login credentials consisting of email and password. You can only share the books you own. Now find the book you wish to share.

As stated earlier there are two ways to share kindle books. The two methods will be discussed one by one.

Method 1

You need to find the book you need to share. Search for the book and find the product page for the Kindle version. You can filter your search on Amazon to find the book you are looking for.

  • Touch the “All” drop down button located next to the search field, as a result you should see a list of options.
  • Swipe up, find and touch Kindle Store.
  • Enter the name of the books you are looking for and press the grey colored Go button.
  • The list of search results will be displayed from which you need to select your book. Selecting the book will open the product page details of the book. If you own this book, you should see a note at the top of the page saying that you own this book.
  • You should see a link saying that “Loan this book to anyone you choose” if the title is eligible to be shared. You cannot loan the title if you don’t see this link.
  • Touch the link saying “loan this book”

Important Note: Remember that you need to be on the product page to be able to share the book.

Method 2

  • First you need to sign up and then touch your name displayed at the top right side of the page.
  • You should see a drop down menu from which you will select “Manage Your Kindle.”
  • You will be seeing “Your Kindle Library” where you can find all your digital content. Touch “All items” next to the “View.” A menu will be displayed from which you will choose “books.”
  • It will show you the e-books you have.
  • You can see “Action” button on the right side of any book. Touch the button and you will see a menu showing different options. See the last option “Loan this title”. If you don’t see this title, you cannot share this particular book.
  • If you see “loan this title” option in the menu. Tap it. You will be taken to “Loan this Book Screen.”
  • You can see “Recipient email address” text field in which you will type the email address of your friend or anyone else’ with whom you want to share the Kindle book. (Don’t enter their Kindle email address in this text field.)
  • Fill out the rest of the text fields and click “send now” button.
  • You should see a “thank you” confirmation on your computer screen saying that the ebook has been shared successfully. The recipient must accept the book within seven days. The recipient will be able to borrow the book for fourteen days starting from the day he or she accepted the book.
  • Now you have successfully loaned the book. Go to Kindle Library and you will see that the book is “on loan.”
  • If you just tap the action bar to see the option, you will see that some of the options are missing. As stated earlier the recipient of the book must accept the book within seven days after receiving the book. If he or she does not accept the book after seven days, it will be returned to you. You will be notified through an email.
  • But if the book is accepted, you may have to wait for two weeks or less (if your friend returns the book before fourteen days). You may have to wait for the book for three weeks (if the book is accepted on the seventh day).
  • Again, you will be notified through email when the book is returned.

Important Note: Remember during the time period of the loan, you can neither open nor read the book. If you try to do so you will get a message saying that “title cannot be downloaded because it is currently on loan.”

Borrowing a Shared Kindle Book

If you are the recipient, how you are going to borrow the shared Kindle book. You will check your email and find the message from Amazon. Open the message and touch the links saying “Get your loaned book now.”

  • You should see a new page on your screen. There you should find a link “Accept loaned book” button
  • You will see a thank you screen on the screen.

Returning a Shared Kindle Book

Once you have done reading the book, it is important for you to know how to return the book.

  • You just have to follow the Method 2 mentioned above until you see your list of books. If there is any book you have accepted from someone, you should see “borrowed” in orange.
  • Touch the action button on the right side and you will see list of options.
  • You need to choose “delete from library” option.
  • Confirm your action by pressing “Yes” button.
  • Now you have returned the book. If the book still shows up on your device, it will be of no use because you cannot read it. You better delete it by holding down its icon until you see a list of options from which you will choose,”Remove from device.”

When the fourteen days are up, you and the person you received the book from will be notified through an email.

How to Download a Kindle Book From Family Library

To download a book from the family library, you need full access to your family member’s Kindle books. Visit the Manage Your Content and Devices section of your Amazon account, pick which ones should be delivered to your device, and select Deliver to pick a device.