eBook Fling lets you swap digital books for free

Amazon
By Suzanne Kantra, Techlicious.com
It wasn’t until I reached third grade and got "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" as a present that I became an avid reader. Now a new, free e-book lending service, eBook Fling, may happily and conveniently add to my reading habit.
eBook Fling takes advantage of the fact that you are allowed to lend a copy of your Kindle book or NookBook one time for up to 14 days. The service acts as a matchmaker, putting together people who have books with the people who want them.
Until now, I've gotten free e-books from my local library, Project Gutenberg, the Google eBookstore?— even Amazon and Barnes & Noble. But the selection is limited and I usually end up buying them. With new releases typically costing between $7.99 and $14.99, it gets to be an expensive habit.
eBook Fling
To borrow a book, you need credits — one per book borrowed. You earn a credit each time you lend a book, or you can buy them (three for $8.99, 10 for $19.99 or 20 for $29.99). Then you can start browsing for books to borrow. For each title, you’ll see the cover art and author, along with a series of buttons: “+Wishlist”, “Borrow Now!”, “Buy” and “My Books.”
When you hit the “Borrow Now” button, eBook Fling contacts the person who owns the book and requests that they lend the book to you. eBook Fling sits in the middle, so the borrower and loaner don’t make contact directly. This ensures everyone’s e-mail addresses remain anonymous and that lending credit is distributed properly.
If the lender accepts your request, eBook Fling sends you a code to borrow the book. In 14 days, the book disappears from your library.
To lend books, you go to the site and list all of your lendable books using eBook Fling’s searchable catalog. Not all publishers let you lend their books, so it’s worth checking to avoid inputting a bunch of un-lendable titles into your lending library.
Amazon
If you have a Nook or the Nook app, your lendable books will have a "lendable" flag on them. For Kindle users, it’s not as easy. The best way to check is by logging into "Your Account" on Amazon.com. ?In the "Digital Content" section you’ll see a link to "Manage Your Kindle." After clicking on it, you’ll scroll down to the "Your Orders" section. Clicking on the "+" next to each title reveals more details, including a "Loan this book" button if the book is lendable.
Ideally, the lending process would work quickly, but it’s all dependent on the lender receiving the e-mail, actually reading it and acting upon it. If the first lender on the list doesn’t respond within a day, an e-mail is sent to the next available lender and so on. If after 7 days there’s no response from any lender, your request is cancelled and you get your credit back.
eBook Fling just launched this week, so the process may take a little longer than it will in the future. I put some requests in yesterday and am still waiting. So whoever is out there holding onto their lendable copy of Iris Johansen's “Eight Days to Live,” please "fling" it my way.
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Chat with Suzanne?on Facebook or get her daily Techlicious Newsletter.
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Kindle, Nook lending site, eBook Fling, goes live

 eBook Fling allows both Kindle and Nook users to lend e-books. Membership is free.

(Credit: eBook Fling)

In the past month or so, a couple of e-book-lending sites, Lendle and BookLending, opened for business. Those sites cater to Kindle users, but Book Swim's eBook Fling, which officially launched today, offers lending to both Kindle and Nook users.

How does e-book lending work? Well, while publishers only choose to make certain e-books lending-enabled, plenty of e-books are available to loan out on a very restricted basis. If you own a lendable e-book (they're labeled as such), you can loan it to one person, one time, for 14 days.

The sites all work in much the same way, each offering free membership into their respective lending "clubs." In the case of eBook Fling, you sign up and list the titles you have available for lending, then wait for requests to come in. You lend an e-book by simply sending an e-mail invite to the requesting borrower and in return, you earn credits for each "successful fling."

If you don't have any credits available, you can pay $1.99 to borrow a book, which is, we assume, how the site makes money, along with earning sales leads from Amazon for embedding links to purchase books when they aren't available to borrow.

While more folks are choosing to check out e-books from their local libraries using OverDrive's Media Console apps for Android, BlackBerry, iPhone/iPad, Windows Mobile devices, and Windows and Mac computers (the Kindle does not support library lending), eBook Fling is counting on Nook and Kindle owners' desire to extract some added value from their e-book purchases.

To avoid privacy concerns, the sites encourage members to create a custom e-mail address just for Kindle or Nook lending activities that's separate from your personal e-mail address or the e-mail address associated with your Nook or Kindle.

A key factor in all this is how many people end up signing up for the lending club and seeding the site with content to borrow. A recent Wall Street Journal article quotes Catherine MacDonald, the founder of BookLending, saying her site has more than 16,000 registered users and the site has a total of nearly 20,000 book loans so far. It will be interesting to see how this submarket pans out and whether publishers, who are wary of e-book lending, embrace it further or continue to proceed very cautiously.

View the original article here

eBook Fling lets you swap digital books for free

 Amazon

By Suzanne Kantra, Techlicious.com

It wasn’t until I reached third grade and got "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" as a present that I became an avid reader. Now a new, free e-book lending service, eBook Fling, may happily and conveniently add to my reading habit.

eBook Fling takes advantage of the fact that you are allowed to lend a copy of your Kindle book or NookBook one time for up to 14 days. The service acts as a matchmaker, putting together people who have books with the people who want them.

Until now, I've gotten free e-books from my local library, Project Gutenberg, the Google eBookstore?— even Amazon and Barnes & Noble. But the selection is limited and I usually end up buying them. With new releases typically costing between $7.99 and $14.99, it gets to be an expensive habit.

eBook Fling

To borrow a book, you need credits — one per book borrowed. You earn a credit each time you lend a book, or you can buy them (three for $8.99, 10 for $19.99 or 20 for $29.99). Then you can start browsing for books to borrow. For each title, you’ll see the cover art and author, along with a series of buttons: “+Wishlist”, “Borrow Now!”, “Buy” and “My Books.”

When you hit the “Borrow Now” button, eBook Fling contacts the person who owns the book and requests that they lend the book to you. eBook Fling sits in the middle, so the borrower and loaner don’t make contact directly. This ensures everyone’s e-mail addresses remain anonymous and that lending credit is distributed properly.

If the lender accepts your request, eBook Fling sends you a code to borrow the book. In 14 days, the book disappears from your library.

To lend books, you go to the site and list all of your lendable books using eBook Fling’s searchable catalog. Not all publishers let you lend their books, so it’s worth checking to avoid inputting a bunch of un-lendable titles into your lending library.

Amazon

If you have a Nook or the Nook app, your lendable books will have a "lendable" flag on them. For Kindle users, it’s not as easy. The best way to check is by logging into "Your Account" on Amazon.com. ?In the "Digital Content" section you’ll see a link to "Manage Your Kindle." After clicking on it, you’ll scroll down to the "Your Orders" section. Clicking on the "+" next to each title reveals more details, including a "Loan this book" button if the book is lendable.

Ideally, the lending process would work quickly, but it’s all dependent on the lender receiving the e-mail, actually reading it and acting upon it. If the first lender on the list doesn’t respond within a day, an e-mail is sent to the next available lender and so on. If after 7 days there’s no response from any lender, your request is cancelled and you get your credit back.

eBook Fling just launched this week, so the process may take a little longer than it will in the future. I put some requests in yesterday and am still waiting. So whoever is out there holding onto their lendable copy of Iris Johansen's “Eight Days to Live,” please "fling" it my way.

More stories from Techlicious:

Chat with Suzanne?on Facebook or get her daily Techlicious Newsletter.

View the original article here

eBook Fling Uses Crowdsourcing to Offer Unlimited eBook Swapping

You can think of eBook Fling as the Netflix of eBooks. With this site, you can borrow thousands of books from other readers across the US for FREE for 14 days through the Kindle and Nook. Don’t have a Kindle or Nook eReader? No problem. eBook Fling also works with iPad, iPhone, Blackberry or Android smartphones using the Kindle or Nook apps. The way it works is that you list your own books and create wishlists for books that you want to read. It’s free to join, and for each book that you lend out, you’ll earn a credit. Each book you borrow, you’ll use a credit. To get started,?you can?purchase 3 book credits?for $8.99. Right now the eBook Fling site is pretty klunky?- if you click on a book title or thumbnail, it will take you right back to the home page. But I think it does show promise. What do you guys think? Would you use this service?

Tagged as: ebook

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