By Tim Conneally , Betanews

One of the major advantages Barnes and Noble’s Nook e-reader offered over Amazon’s Kindle was the ability to lend other users e-books that you had purchased. Today, Amazon closed that gap when it announced Kindle Book Lending .

Just like Barnes and Noble’s Nook , Kindle users can now share certain books they have purchased with friends for a period of 14 days. From the “Manage Your Kindle” menu in your Amazon account, you can select “loan this book,” and then enter the recipient’s e-mail address and name. They do not have to own the Kindle hardware, and can read the book in any of the free Kindle applications. If one receives an e-mail alerting you that someone has loaned you a book, you have seven days to initiate the loan and start the 14 day loan period.

Not all Kindle books can be loaned to other users. A book’s eligibility for sharing is determined by the publisher or rights holder, just like their ability to be endowed with text-to-speech . To find out if a book has lending enabled, you have to scroll to the product details section of a book’s Amazon page, or from within your “Manage My Kindle” list of purchases. Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

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