Kindle Owners’ Lending Library Now Offers Readers Over 100,000 Books to Borrow For Free – As Frequently As Once a Month, With No Due Dates

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library continues to grow rapidly, now offering more than 100,000 books that Amazon Prime members with Kindles can borrow for free—including over 100 New York Times Best Sellers like The Hunger Games trilogy—as frequently as a book a month, with no due dates.

“Finding readers is often the hardest part of an author's journey, and the KDP Select program has been a phenomenal way for me to reach them.”

“Kindle Owners’ Lending Library continues to grow rapidly – with over 100,000 titles, customers can choose to borrow a variety of breakout, best-selling titles for free, including ‘Nobody’ by Creston Mapes, ‘The Walk’ by Lee Goldberg and ‘Abducted’ by Theresa Ragan, as well as Kindle Singles from best-selling authors Andy Borowitz, Karin Slaughter and Mishka Shubaly,” said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President of Kindle Content. “It’s also become a meaningful way to grow royalties for authors like Patricia Hester, who sold less than 200 books in 2011 prior to joining KDP Select and has now earned over $36,000 from KDP Select in one month as readers have discovered her books through this service.”

Recent milestones for the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library include:

Since launching the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library in November 2011, selection has grown by over 20 times.
More than a third of the Top 20 Kindle Best Sellers in February are enrolled in the library and available to borrow for free.
More Amazon customers are reading independently-published books, with over 1 million KDP Select books borrowed through the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library since the program launched for indie authors in December.
KDP authors participating in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library have earned $1.8 million from the KDP Select fund so far, which is an incremental 24% on top of their royalties from paid sales.

Patricia Hester, a semi-finalist for the 2009 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award and author of The Clover Mystery Series, was one of the top ten KDP Select authors in January, earning $5,850 from the KDP Select fund. She also earned over $31,000 from paid sales of her books enrolled in KDP Select. “After a year of marketing ‘Whispers from the Ashes’ in book clubs, genealogical magazines, and local newspapers with steady, but slow results, I joined the KDP Select program,” said Hester. “The results have been absolutely amazing – I have now accomplished every author's dreams: worldwide interest, fan enthusiasm, and wonderful sales. Thank you KDP Select!”

After joining KDP Select and adding her A Modern Witch Series and other books to the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, Debora Geary’s royalties from paid sales grew substantially from December to January, and she earned an additional $9,600 from the KDP Select fund in January. “I published my first book via KDP just over a year ago, and since then, I've been struck by Amazon lightning of the best kind,” said Geary. “Finding readers is often the hardest part of an author's journey, and the KDP Select program has been a phenomenal way for me to reach them.”

In January, independent author Terri Reid, author of several paranormal mystery books, earned over eight times more money from paid sales of her KDP Select books compared to the month before she joined KDP Select. She also earned $8,000 from the KDP Select fund in January. “KDP Select has added a wonderful boost to my sales – many new readers have written to me mentioning they have borrowed my first or second book and then purchased the rest of the books in the series,” said Reid. “I’ve also found that the ability to offer my books for free has brought my sales to a whole new level. I highly recommend the KDP Select program.”

For more information about the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, please visit http://www.amazon.com/kindleownerslendinglibrary. Independent authors and publishers can enroll their books in KDP Select at http://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/KDPSelect. To learn about all of the additional benefits included with Amazon Prime, or to start an Amazon Prime free trial visit www.amazon.com/prime.

About Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), a Fortune 500 company based in Seattle, opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth’s Biggest Selection. Amazon.com, Inc. seeks to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices. Amazon.com and other sellers offer millions of unique new, refurbished and used items in categories such as Books; Movies, Music & Games; Digital Downloads; Electronics & Computers; Home & Garden; Toys, Kids & Baby; Grocery; Apparel, Shoes & Jewelry; Health & Beauty; Sports & Outdoors; and Tools, Auto & Industrial. Amazon Web Services provides Amazon’s developer customers with access to in-the-cloud infrastructure services based on Amazon’s own back-end technology platform, which developers can use to enable virtually any type of business. The new latest generation Kindle is the lightest, most compact Kindle ever and features the same 6-inch, most advanced electronic ink display that reads like real paper even in bright sunlight. Kindle Touch is a new addition to the Kindle family with an easy-to-use touch screen that makes it easier than ever to turn pages, search, shop, and take notes – still with all the benefits of the most advanced electronic ink display. Kindle Touch 3G is the top of the line e-reader and offers the same new design and features of Kindle Touch, with the unparalleled added convenience of free 3G. Kindle Fire is the Kindle for movies, TV shows, music, books, magazines, apps, games and web browsing with all the content, free storage in the Amazon Cloud, Whispersync, Amazon Silk (Amazon’s new revolutionary cloud-accelerated web browser), vibrant color touch screen, and powerful dual-core processor.

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Forward-Looking Statements
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