Sharing Your Amazon Kindle Library: A Guide on Lending E-Books Among Relatives & Pals

Posted by Iris Yan on 4/3/2024 4:33:39 PM.

Can I share a Kindle book? I have finished some interesting kindle books, but I don’t know how to share them with my family.

In digital world, sharing experiences has become easier than ever, and that includes sharing the joy of reading. Amazon’s Kindle Family Library feature allows users to share their digital book collections with family members, fostering a shared literary experience within households. This innovative feature not only promotes a sense of togetherness but also allows family members to explore diverse genres and authors without the need for separate purchases. In this article, we’ll delve into the benefits of sharing Kindle books with family households and provide a step-by-step guide on how to share kindle books with family members.

My husband gets a Kindle today and I already have one, is there any way to share kindle books so that if he buys a book on his account I can read it as well?

How to share kindle books with family? Try out Amazon kindle family sharing. Amazon allows you to create a six-person household family library that lets you share your audiobooks, ebooks and apps easily with your family members. You can link your account with another adult and up to four children.

Cost Efficiency: Kindle Family Library helps families save money by allowing them to share purchased books. Instead of buying individual copies for each family member, one purchase can be enjoyed by all.

Shared Reading Experience: Families can create a shared reading experience by exploring books together. Parents can easily share age-appropriate content with their children, fostering a love for reading from an early age.

Diverse Reading Choices: Kindle Family Library encourages the exploration of diverse genres and authors. Family members can discover new interests by browsing through each other’s collections, leading to a more varied reading experience for everyone.

Convenient Accessibility: With shared access, family members can conveniently read books on their own devices without the need to transfer files or make additional purchases. This seamless accessibility enhances the overall reading experience.

1. The Kindle family library only can contains two adult account and up to 4 children account.
2. You can only share Kindle books to the one who is joined to your Kindle family library.

Step 1 Log in your Amazon account and then click on “Settings“ under “Manage your Content and Devices “ tab.

Step 2 Go to “Households and Family library“ option and then click on “Invite an Adult“ button. A new page will pop up, you can fill in the name and the email address of the one you want to invite. Then click on “Continue” button to go to next step.

Step 3 You will be asked if you agree to share your wallet. Click on “Agree and continue“ button.

Click here

Step 4 Then choose what you’d like to share with your family or friends, check the option according to your own requirement.

Step 5 A new page will prompt for sending out your invitation.

Step 6 Your family or friend will received the invitation notification as below. Just click on “ Get started“ button to join in the family library.

Step 7 A new page will prompt up, just click on “Continue“ button to go to next step.

Step 8 Your family or friend also have to agree to share the wallet. Click on “Agree and continue“.

Step 9 The one you invited also needs to select which item he/she wants to share with you. Then click on “Continue“.

Then go back to “Manage Your content and device“, you will see all books in your family library as below picture.

As Amazon has a full list of device and apps that can access the shared content, you can easily read and download the shared books.

One thing to be mentioned is that the Family library sharing is off by default for the Kindle reading apps. You need to enable it by going to the “Your device” tab under “Manage your content and devices “. Then click action menu (“…” icon) before the reading app, and then check the “Show xx’s content”.

Restart your Kindle reading apps, and you will see all the books in the Family library.

Frequently Asked Questions on Kindle Family Sharing

A: If any of you has purchased any book or audiobook, it will be shared automatically. Both of you can read or listen to it. Of course, you can pick up which book you want to share with others or not. Just go to “Manage my Kindle Content and device“. Click on three dots before your purchased book, and then click on “ Manage Family Library” and then click on “Add to Library“. Your picked Kindle books will be shared with your family.
![share picked books](https://www.epubor.com/images/uppic/share-individual-kindle books-family-library.png)

A: If you are using the same account on Amazon, or otherwise sharing the book electronically, you should be able to read the book on both devices. Unfortunately, if you are on the same account, it may sync your reading progress onto both devices if you are reading at the same time, so you may have to set a bookmark after you read.

A: Yes, you can stop sharing your kindle audiobooks, ebook or apps. The setting to have All books Automatically shared is defaulted to ON. If you don’t want that, turn that setting OFF in Content and Devices . You can then pick and chose which of your books will be included in the Family Library list.

If you have some specific book that don’t want to share with your family member’s, you can just go to Content and Devices , click the “More action” next to the title you don’t want to share, choose “Manage Family Library” and when the names of everyone in your Household pop up, just click “Remove From Library”.

A: Yes, the Amazon Household allows you to share your Kindle library, including Kindle Unlimited, between two accounts. It is important to note that sharing Kindle Unlimited doesn’t mean unlimited reading. Only one person can access and read the same title from Kindle Unlimited at a time.

What if the person you want to share books with is not a member of your Kindle Family Library? Besides Kindle Family households, there are still many other methods that you can follow to share your Kindle books. In the follow part, I will share 5 methods of sharing kindle books without kindle family households.

Amazon enables you to access your Kindle library on up to 6 devices, including Kindle e-ink devices, Kindle desktop, Kindle Tablets, Kindle for Android/iOS. Thanks to this policy, you can share your Kindle account information with friends so that they can register their Kindle devices or reading app with your kindle login credential.

1. You may have already registered your Kindle account on up to 6 devices or apps.
2. Amazon account information is private and personal. Once someone has logged into your Amazon account, they will have full access to all your purchased eBooks, not just the one you want to share. Furthermore, your Amazon account information, including purchase history and payment details, will be exposed to others.
3. Furthermore, if you have set up 1-click payment, others will have the opportunity to make purchases using your Amazon account credentials.

Method 2: Can a Kindle Book Be Shared? Yes, Lend a Kindle Book.

Updated: Amazon hasn’t made an official announcement, but I’ve noticed that the ‘Load this title’ option has disappeared from all of my purchased Kindle books. So, I assume this method will not work anymore.

**Can I lend my kindle books to another kindle user?**Sure, you can lend Kindle books to your family or friends. However, I want to clarify all limitations for lending and borrowing before you take any further action.

Limits of lending kindle books are listed as below.

1. You can lend a Kindle book to another person for up to 14 days.
2. The borrower does not need to own a kindle device to read the Kindle books, but can read the book after downloading a free Kindle reading app.
3. A book can only be loaned once.
4. Magazines and newspapers are currently not available for lending.
5. You are not able to read the book you loaned in the loaning period.
6. Not all Kindle books can be loaned. It depends on the publisher.
7. This “Loan” option is only available in USA currently.

After learning about the limitations of lending Kindle books, do you still want to lend out your Kindle books? If yes, the following guide will walk you through the whole process.

Steps for lending Kindle books to others

Step 1. To loan a book, visit “Manage your Content and Devices “ at Amazon.com.

Step 2. Click action menu before the book title, select “Loan this title”.

Note*: If “ loan this title” is not an option, lending is not available for that title.

Then “Loan this book” page will pop up and enter your friend’s email address to “Recipient E-mail address”. Then click on” Send now” to send out the notification.

Note: The recipient email address should be your friends email address, not their “send to Kindle” email address.

Steps for loaning Kindle books

If someone has loaned you a Kindle book, you will received a notification via email.

Step 1 Open the email message “A loaned book for you”. Then click on “Get your loaned book now” button, the web browser will launch to Amazon so that you can accept the loan.

Step 2 Sign in Amazon Account and then select which device you want to deliver this loan book to. Then click on “Accept loaned book” button.

It is not necessary to own a kindle to read the kindle books. You can either download kindle app for PC/MAC/Android/iPhone, or even only read them on online with Kindle Cloud Reader .

Step 3 Log in your Kindle apps or Kindle device, you will see the book you borrowed from your friends is in your library now. You can click the book title to download and read it.

Frequently Asked Questions on lending kindle books to others

Q: How can I check whether a book can be loaned before purchasing it?

A: Head to the product details on product page and check the lending option. If the lending option is “Enabled“, this book can be loaned.

Q: How to return a loaned book?

A: Go to Manage Your Content and Devices page at Amazon and select Actions next to the book in question. Choose Delete from Library and confirm the deletion, the book will be returned.

Q: Almost all my books are purchased from Amazon, but I didn’t see one which has the lend option. I live in UK.

A: This lending option is only available in USA so far. If you are living in UK, please try other method. I recommend you remove Kindle DRM with Epubor Ultimate and share kindle books with your family.

You can lend your Kindle eReader to your friends so they can read the book you want to share. But the biggest drawback of this method is that you cannot access any of your Kindle books until your friend return your Kindle device to you. However, you can still read kindle book on Kindle apps that registered with your Kindle account.

Recently, Amazon has released a new feature–buying Kindle books for others. If you want to share Kindle books with your friend, just purchase a copy for him.

Step 1 Go to Kindle books’s product detail page on Amazon as below. You will see “Buy for others“ section at the right corner as below picture.

Step 2 Select the quantity you want to buy and provide your order details, then click “place your order“ button to finish the order. If you only buy single copy, Amazon will email the book to the recipient on your behalf. If you purchase multiple copies, please send redemption links to your recipients. This is definitely a workaround to share Kindle books with your friends and family, but it costs too much.

It will cost extra money to purchase a new book if you choose to buy for others.

You may have noticed that the above-mentioned methods are limited by different reasons. Is there anyway to share Kindle books without any limitation? The answer is definitely “yes”. Here you will learn how to share kindle books without restrictions.

It is universal known that the Kindle books are protected by DRM which restrict kindle books from sharing and copying. If we can break up DRM restriction, sharing Kindle books will be a piece of cake. To remove kindle drm, Epubor Ultimate, the best ebook drm removal and ebook converter, is highly recommended here. With it, you can remove drm from kindle books and convert kindle books to any ebook format.

Step 1 Download and install Epubor Ultimate.

Download Epubor Ultimate for free

Step 2 Launch Epubor Ultimate, and the Kindle books you downloaded to your computer will be listed at the left column under “Kindle” tab. Just drag it from left to the right, and all DRM will be removed.

Step 3 Click the “Decrypted“ at the end of each book, you can open the folder stored the DRM-free Kindle books. Now you get the DRM-free Kindle books and you can share your Kindle books with your friend or family without any limitations.

Warning

Epubor software doesn’t encourage piracy. Please don’t share your DRM-free ebooks online or distribute them.

Q1: Can my friend read my Kindle books on Kobo?

Answer: Then you need to use Epubor Ultimate to remove kindle drm and then convert Kindle books to Kobo Epub format with Epubor Ultimate.

Answer: Yes, you can share your kindle unlimited books with one adult of your Family Household members. To share the kindle unlimited books, you need to create a Kindle Family Household first.

1. Navigate to the Home screen of the Kindle App and click on “Share Your Kindle Content.”
2. Choose the Household member you wish to share with from the list provided.
3. Select the books you want to share.
4. Click on “Share Items” to complete the process.
5. For automatic sharing, repeat steps 1 and 2, then opt for “Share Future Purchases and Kindle Unlimited titles by Default“. This setting ensures that future borrows and purchases are automatically shared.

Q3: Can Link my kindle to Amazon account at the same time?

Answer: Keep in mind that a kindle can only be registered with one account at a time. Therefore, it is impossible to use a single kindle device with multiple Amazon account. To register with a new account, you need to de-register and then register with another account.

You can share kindle books with other kindle users with Amazon family household. If the other kindle user is not the member of your Amazon family household, here are 5 methods to share kindle books without Amazon households .

Q5: How to set up an Amazon Household?

1. Navigate to “Content & Devices” on Amazon website, go to “Preference”, and select “Households and Family Library”.
2. Click on “Manage Your Household”. Here, you can include a second adult as well as up to four teens and four children to your household. To add an adult, choose “Add adult,” input your friend or family member’s email address, and send them an invitation. Follow the prompts and agree to share e-books on your account.

Q6: How to set up Family Library?

Click on “Manage Your Household” —> “Manage Your Family Library”. Toggle on the “Sharing” button next to “e-books”.

Q7: Why can I not leand a kindle book?

This occurs because only specific Kindle books qualify for the lending feature. To check a book’s eligibility, access its product page on Amazon and navigate down the page until you reach the ‘Product details’ section. If it indicates ‘Lending: Enabled,’ you can lend the book without any issues.

If there are items you prefer not to share with the other adult in your household account, you can access “Content Libary” on Amazon. Click on the three dots next to the title you wish to exclude, select “Manage Family Library,” and when the list of everyone in your Household appears, simply click “Remove From Library” next to the desired name.

Final Words

With the assistance of Epubor Ultimate, sharing your Kindle books with your family members has never been easier. If you have any other good ideas on sharing Kindle books with family or friends, please leave comments below so that we can update the article to benefit more users.

Download Epubor Ultimate for free

Iris Yan has been a passionate member of Epubor since 2017. Her mission is to enhance your ebook reading experience by sharing insightful tips and tricks. Join her on a journey towards reading excellence today!

SHARING IS GREAT!

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11 Comments

Doug

Re:How to Share Kindle Books with Friends and Family

01/29/2019 00:46:15

I have an Amazon Fire and a Kindel reader. Is there a way I can set them up so the share my books.

Epubor Angel

Re:Doug

01/29/2019 14:31:34

Method 1: Use the same Kindle account to sync your books and download them.

Method 2: Remove DRM from your Kindle books, and then transfer those drm-free files to your other Kindle. This is also a good method to back up your Kindle contents.

Micha

Re:How to Share Kindle Books with Friends and Family

04/15/2019 22:18:48

I would like to lend someone my kindle-ebook (not the book, the hardware) and have access to just one or two books out of my complete collection. He should not be able to see all my other books or access to them, just the few selected books. Is that possible?

My idea was to create a family-account and this person should get either the second adult account or a child account. But after that, can I, the from my main adult-account select singular books this person should have access to?

Thanks a lot,
Micha

Epubor

Re:Micha

04/16/2019 09:37:26

I think you can creator a child account and share the selected books with this new account. Then register your software with this new account. The one borrowed your hardware only can see the book you want to share with the child account.

Will

Re:How to Share Kindle Books with Friends and Family

12/27/2019 07:01:10

One step to add before step 6. Each Amazon account allows up to 6 devices to be registered. By signing into your own Amazon account using friend’s ereader tablet or computer. This option gives primary user to send selected books to friends or family member without exhange of sharing wallets or limits to lending. Surprisingly, only on Guardian website, in the UK thinks breaking bank laws on Amazon is questionable for family sharing. It does seem intrusive and not clear why the options are not simpler. Such as, when lending in a public library. They do not ruin the book after one lend, but that is what happens with Amazon’s lending. After one lend, your book is useless. So if you wish for a parent & sibling to check out a specific book. Only one person can look at it. One of them will have to find a copy or sample elsewhere. For me, it’s like destroying your copy after one lend. Which library in the world does that?

Milton17

Re:How to Share Kindle Books with Friends and Family

02/26/2020 14:48:45

I think removing DRM from my purchased books would be the best option to share with my family and friends. Please advise if this method breaches copyright or any other form of infringement. I need to be sure I am acting responsibly.

StraightTalker

Re:Milton17

07/1/2021 02:41:55

What do you think?

Of course it does!

Janick

Re:How to Share Kindle Books with Friends and Family

05/7/2022 00:24:33

I want to share a book from my kindle account with my teen, however I cannot find the way to share it with her. Can you help me with this?

Epubor

Re:Janick

05/9/2022 10:23:05

Please try the family Library sharing.

Tn_SaPpHiRe

Re:How to Share Kindle Books with Friends and Family

10/20/2023 07:24:06

My daughter, whom lives with me, has Kindle Unlimited. I do not. Both of us love to read. I already have the Kindle app on my phone with all of my books. Can my daughter still add me to her family account, without losing my books? Or can I add them to my account after I accept my daughters invite?

Epubor

Re:Tn_SaPpHiRe

10/23/2023 14:03:02

Hello,

Yes, you can. Please follow the steps in the article and give it a try. Thank you.

Any other questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us via support@epubor.com .

Best regards,
Epubor Team

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Sharing Your Amazon Kindle Library: A Guide on Lending E-Books Among Relatives & Pals