We profiled the Kindle and Nook Lending site eBook Fling in the past and they specialize in both Kindle and Nook book lending. I noticed in the last month they disabled all Nook Lending without much notice. This means if you have a Nook e-Reader you cannot borrow or lend books anymore.
Barnes and Noble recently changed the way Lendme books are listed and delivered to customers via their website. This resulted in both eBook Fling and Lendingbook.com unable to serve Nook Books. Where as Lending eBook fixed their Nook problem in a few days, eBook Fling continues to have problems.
The big problem with ebook Fling is the way they handle and deliver their email addresses. They allowed users to setup whatever email address on their account they wanted and not necessary the one that was associated with their B&N account.
Barnes and Noble delivered the following email to eBook Fling I do understand that a nook user must be validated in order to be granted a license to borrow a copy of the book. But prior to August 26th’s website upgrade, validation of the B&N user would occur when a LendMe recipient clicked the loan offer in his email and logged into his account, at which point the loan would be paired with that user. An example of this is sending a loan offer to John Doe’s secondary email john.doe@gmail.com could be redeemed by simply clicking the loan offer in his email and logging into his actual jdoe123@gmail.com B&N account. Now, as of the 26th, that loan offer email offer sent to John can NEVER be redeemed because it wasn’t sent to his B&N account email address. I know I’d be angry to receive a loan offer notice in my email that I cannot actually redeem!
Whatever the problem with email addresses and the eBook Fling system is, the company seems to be exclusively relying on Barnes and Noble to solve their problems without taking the internal steps nessicary to adhere to their new system. This is punishing users who only signed up with the site to do Barnes and Noble eBooks.
If you use eBook Fling and are disgruntled on the lack of Nook Lending, I encourage you to visit LendingeBook! They fixed their Nook issues within two days and were totally proactive in addressing the problem.
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.
