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Comment by thomasgerbe | Hacker News Reader

“One book can be borrowed at a time, and there are no due dates. You can borrow a new book as frequently as once a month, directly on your registered Kindle device, and you will be prompted to return the book that you are currently borrowing.”

Hmm only once a month? That seems rather low.

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12 free books a year say at average cost of $10 is still $120 of added value to a Prime subscription.

Plus that's still more books than the average American reads every year.

I'd wager the average Kindle owner is not the same as the average American in this regard.

What makes you think that? With the low price of the Kindle, I could see even very casual readers picking one up and not using it much.

Average American is not even a casual reader.

Does anyone have any real data about the reading habits of the "average American?" I know several people, including my parents, that read many books a year but do not have Kindles. I also know several people who own Kindles but do not read many books a year.

Consistently, quarter of Americans claim not to have read any books in the year preceding the poll. My guess is that a real percentage of people who do not read books is in 35-45% range -- admitting not to read books is kind of shameful in western culture.

This article (from 2007) indicates that ~25% didn't read any, while the rest read a median of 9 books each/year.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08...

... but not more books than I read in a year.

The problem with that stat is that it includes the great number of people who read zero books in a year, which skews the average pretty significantly.

Well, they would still like you to buy books. But this is a great supplement. I can also get free ebook "loans" from my local library, but with a 2 week loan period and there's often a waiting list to get popular books.

I find that 2 weeks isn't enough time for me. So, the no due date idea is quite compelling. Grad. school + fatherhood makes for little reading time.

Once a month seems extremely reasonable to me, but obviously it all depends on your personal reading habits. I read every day on the train to work, and it takes me about 2 months to finish a 1000 page novel.

Yes, and '5000 books' is a pretty low number, all things considered.

Although choose 12 out of 5000 makes it not so bad.

It's not a bad start, though. I'm pretty sure that this number will go up over time.

I'm sure it will, I'm just surprised they started with such a small number, something like less than 1% of all their Kindle books if I'm not mistaken.

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