One of the long-standing benefits for Amazon Prime members is officially coming to an end soon.
Amazon has started sending out emails informing customers that the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library will no longer be available starting January 4th, 2021.
The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library first launched back in 2011. It allowed Prime members that owned a Kindle device to borrow one ebook per month from a list of selected titles.
In recent years, KOLL has been greatly overshadowed by Kindle Unlimited and Prime Reading so it’s not surprising to see it go.
If you have Prime you can now get access to a library of free ebooks through Prime Reading without the limitations of KOLL, so you don’t have to own a Kindle device and you’re not restricted to just one ebook per month.
It sounds like customers will still be able to access their borrowed ebook if they have one downloaded through KOLL after January 4th. It says this on the KDP page at Amazon:
We will no longer offer KOLL beginning January 4th, 2021. Customers may continue reading books they previously borrowed from KOLL…
It’s not like they made it easy. You can only get books from someone if you know their email address, I think. Besides, some publishers and authors are freaking out about loss of revenue – even complaining about public libraries!
That is a different feature. This is about the KU precursor service that launched in 2011.
You’re confusing KOLL with regular Kindle ebook lending. They’re two different things.