Lendle was one of the first ebook lending websites on the internet that focused on Kindle Books. The company announced today that they were putting their business up for sale and getting out of the Kindle segment.
Amazon initially launched their lending program a few years ago that allows users to share ebooks with their friends. Select digital book titles are flagged lending enabled and are allowed to be loaned out one time, for up to two weeks. Lendle has fulfilled over 70,000 loan requests and has 330,000 books available for loan.
The essence of the company’s service is to facilitate the process of posting and borrowing books. Often, when you have a Kindle, you might be the only one in your circle of friends that has an e-reader. Lendle provides a bright and vibrant community that posts reviews and shares content with each other.
The sale of Lendle will be absolute and will entail the brand, website, and all of the code. The admin team said in a company blog post that “Lendle means a lot to us. We’ve put over a year of our lives into growing a great community and implementing new features and we’ve done our best to put a unique spin on social-lending to ensure that Lendle stands out amongst the competition. Even so, there’s still a vast untapped market for social-lending that is millions of potential Lendlers strong, and we think a nimble and innovative home for Lendle can only lead to great things.”
There is no word yet on the price, but this should be a viable investment. Amazon is entering the publishing segment and actively marketing their own books published under their own banner. Undoubtedly a fair portion of these will be flagged “lending enabled” and allow users to lend books to each other.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
