To complete the saga of my experience with Kindle Library Lending through Overdrive, the expiration date of my books arrived over the weekend. Helpfully, I received warning emails about all four books about three days in advance, each with an offer to buy the book included. More importantly, these tipped me off to the opportunity to quickly return them myself and check them out for another couple of weeks, assuming that no one had placed a hold on them.
To go ahead and return them early, I just went back to the Manage My Kindle page at Amazon, where, as we have said, all the action takes place for Kindle Library Lending. By clicking the little plus sign (+) next to the title, all the book information appeared in a drop-down, including the due date and an offer to buy the book. But clicking on the “Actions” button to the right offered me the option I was looking for: “Return this book,” right below an offer to buy the book. I clicked it, confirmed my intention to return the book, and returned to the e-book lending section of my local library site. There, I was able to check the book out again immediately (no holds!), and read on for a couple more weeks.
On my Kindle, each title I had returned now showed a [Loan Ended] notice before the title, and, where I had just checked the book out a second time, the title appeared again below, a completely “separate” copy, although one which retains my notes and marks from the earlier “borrow” (nice, huh?–and that would be true if I took the offer to buy the book and loaded back to the Kindle that way). Same treatment for the one book that I allowed to expire, about which I received a different email the next day, telling me that my loan had run its course and offering to let me buy the book.
Smooth as silk! Again, the Amazon system anticipates and addresses users’ needs–a positively “frictionless” experience. And, just in case those of us who like to freeload and read books that we have not paid for by availing ourselves of the good offices of our local libraries–just in case, I say, that any of us should forget that these books are things that can be bought and paid for, well, every step of borrowing a book through Amazon and Overdrive via the library includes that all-important offer to buy the book.
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