Kindle Lending Club Plays Matchmaker for Bookworms

Jan. 19, 2011— -- When Catherine MacDonald got a Kindle last August, it was love at first download. There was just one problem: the e-reader didn't allow bookworms to lend or borrow its digital documents.

MacDonald briefly celebrated when Amazon announced on December 30 that it would enable lending between Kindle users, but then she was disappointed again.

Sure, it was a great that people could share their e-books -- but MacDonald, a 40-year-old Canadian native who lives in Malta and Tunisia, said she didn't know a single soul with a Kindle.

That night, she had a Eureka moment.

"I was just going to sleep and told my husband, 'Please, in the morning, remind me to start a Facebook group to find people to lend books to,'" she said.

The next day, MacDonald launched the Kindle Lending Club (KLC) Facebook page and, in short order, learned that there were thousands of people, just like her, who were hungry for the opportunity to share their e-books.

Since the page's launch, the KLC Facebook page has attracted more than 6,500 "likes" and facilitated the exchange of about 1,000 books, she estimated.

"It just sort of took on a life of its own really fast. It just seemed like a lot of people were having the same idea, they loved lending books as much as they love borrowing," she said.

Given the immense interest in her idea, MacDonald decided to expand the club beyond the Facebook page. In less than two weeks, she raised start-up capital, hired Web developers and launched a dedicated Kindle Lending Club website. She was not starting cold; she had prior experience in the Web development world and her husband, she says, has social media chops.

The site launched to the public Friday and has already registered more than 4,000 users and nearly 3,500 lendable books.

Anyone can register and either post books that they want to lend, or submit a request to borrow one. The site searches for matches and when it finds one, it sends the lender the borrower's e-mail address. That e-mail address is enough to put the lending process in motion.