There have been many questions surrounding the Barnes & Noble Nook and book loaning. Someone over at the Barnes & Noble help board asked the question:
The FAQ says, “You can lend many of your eBooks one time for a maximum of 14 days.” Does this mean you can only loan the book out once, PERIOD, and once you have loaned out a book you can NEVER loan it out again, even after the 14 day loan period expires?
The reply from Kristin S. (administrator) is this:
Yes, that’s correct. You can loan each eBook (providing the publisher allows this) one time only, for a period of 14 days, to any B&N eReader-supported device, including nook, Mac, PC, iPhone, iPod Touch, and BlackBerry. During this time you cannot read the eBook yourself. Hope that helps, and thanks for your question.
As I suspected, the lending feature is indeed dependent on publishers allowing their books to be shared, much like the kindle Text to Speech feature is dependent on publishers. Given the current attitude of many publishers towards e-books, I wonder just how many will be allowing their books to be shared? On top of that you can only share it once of the lifetime of owning that book? And only for 14 days? Yes many of us bookaholics read a book in a day or two, but most mortals need more than 14 days to finish a book. It will be interesting to see how this feature plays out once the device is released.
