How Do I Borrow a Book From the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library?

The Kindle Owner's Lending Library is one of the lesser known benefits of Amazon Prime where Kindle-owning Prime members can borrow a free ebook each month from a catalog of over 1.7 million titles.

This benefit is also available to Fire tablet owners, but it can be hard to find. Amazon explains Kindle Owner's Lending Library features on its website, and also lists the available ebooks you can borrow through the KOLL, but you can't actually use the service through Amazon's website.

You can only borrow a book in the Kindle Owner's Lending Library from your Fire tablet or your Kindle.

I recently helped a reader find out why they couldn't access KOLL, so here is a refresher for those who have not used KOLL in  awhile or may be completely unaware of this freebie feature because Amazon promotes paid services like Kindle Unlimited instead.

The Kindle Owner's Lending Library started with only around five thousand titles and is currently at over 1,780,000 Kindle ebooks, according to my Kindle's all-categories display for the lending library.

You can read one Kindle ebook from the KOLL per calendar month, without dealing with waiting times or due dates, but the only way to do so is from your Kindle or Fire tablet.

How you find KOLL has changed over the years as Amazon updated software and released new models. Older models running older software don't have the same navigation process as later units, but the general steps should be the same.

Here's how I accessed KOLL on my Paperwhite 3 and late model Fire tablet.

Kindle

After I turn on my Kindle and navigate to the home page, I press the "cart" symbol on the menu bar. Once in the Kindle Store, I select the "three dot" menu option, ans then select KOLL from the drop down menu.

This takes you to a page that defaults to showing all the titles in KOLL. If you select the "Refine" option you can drill down to specific categories.

Fire tablet

It is a lot harder to explain where to find the Kindle Owner's Lending Library on the Fire tablets due to the significant menu changes Amazon made with each major firmware update, but if you keep looking you will find it.

Turn on your Fire tablet, then navigate to the Books menu, and select the option to visit the Kindle Store.

The next step is to open the menu and select the option for KOLL, but the location of that menu varies from one Fire tablet to the next.

On my mother's really old Kindle Fire 8.9, the menu was on the front page of the Kindle Store along the right edge of the screen - I just had to scroll down to find it.

But on my late model Fire tablet, I had to swipe my finger from the left edge of the screen to open the menu, and then scroll down to find the option for KOLL.

Where do you find the Kindle Owner's Lending Library on your Fire tablet?