Sharing Kindle books on one account

The ability to share books under one account with up to 5 other Kindle-related devices is a popular topic on the various Kindle forums, as Amazon allows a Kindle book to be shared by up to 6 Kindle-related devices under one person's account, with the owner of that account responsible for all purchases/downloads of Kindle books for those devices.  When the device is registered to that owner's account, the understanding is that the account owner owns the device.

  This arrangement involves a lot of trust as the others sharing the account can purchase a Kindle book while the account owner pays for it.  I've mentioned in an earlier article that some take care of this with reimbursements via Paypal if the account owner has no interest in the book someone sharing that account ordered.

THE KINDLE CHRONICLES PODCAST THIS WEEK - Sharing a Kindle Account
The main weekly interview for Len Edgerly's popular Friday podcast, The Kindle Chronicles, this week is with Len's wife Darlene and her friend/sister Deb, and the focus is on how they share their Kindle books on Darlene's account.  It's a spirited and detailed conversation.  Also interviewed is Tom, who uses the third device on Darlene's account.

They all explain how this works for them under Amazon's guidelines.  For the record, here is Amazon's language:

' Can I share content with other Kindles?

Books can be shared between Kindles, Kindle for PC, or iPhones that are registered to the same account.  There may be limits on the number of devices (usually 6) that can simultaneously use a single book.  Subscriptions to newspapers or periodicals cannot be shared on multiple devices. '

In the "Learn more" sections they add:

' Downloading to Multiple Devices

Content purchased from the Kindle Store can be downloaded to your Kindle, iPhone, or iPod touch as long as you've registered the device to the Amazon.com account that purchased the Kindle content.  There is no limit on the number of times a title can be downloaded to a registered device, but there may be limits on the number of devices (usually 6) that can simultaneously use a single book.

That means you can download and read your books on any Kindle device you own as long [as] you've registered each device to the Amazon.com account where your Kindle library is stored.

  You can see the items in your Kindle library and send downloads to your registered Kindles from the "Your Recent Orders and Individual Charges" section of the Manage Your Kindle page.  (Here's the Guide to using the management page.) '

One of the other "Learn More" links (written for the Kindle DX but applicable to the 6" Kindles and reworded a bit when the DX was released):

' You can see the items in your Kindle library under Archived Items on your Kindle and send downloads to your registered Kindles from the "Your Orders" section of the Manage Your Kindle page. '

TIP: SHORTCUT TO HOME SCREEN PAGE FOR ARCHIVED ITEMS
It was mentioned in the broadcast that the Archives are at the end of the HOME screen listing of books and that you can scroll through pages to it.

  There are two shortcuts for the HOME page for this:
  1.  Set your Sorting to Titles (rather than Most Recent, say)
and type only the first letter of the 'book' or folder (in this case, Archived Items folder) -- and after inputting the first letter ("A"), click on the 5-way button. That'll take you to the first entry for that letter and you can NextPage until you see it.
    or
  2.   Look at the bottom left of the screen.  Mine says "Page 1 of 18" and type the number for the last page.   In my case, I input 18.  Then click on the 5-way button and you'll get right to your last page of listings where you'll find Archived Items.

  That's the folder for Amazon-purchased books that you have in your library at Amazon but which are not on your Kindle.  Clicking on an item will download that book if wireless is turned on.  This will work only in areas where wireless is accessible by your Kindle of course.

TIP: HOW TO PERMANENTLY DELETE A TITLE
  During the podcast, they explain that Darlene's request to be able to delete forever a purchased book from your Kindle Library at Amazon has been granted recently (right after her request on another podcast - powerful gal!).  This was requested by many on the forums too, and there had been thoughts that Amazon could get some flak if someone requested a deletion and then had a change of heart and wanted it back after Amazon had deleted it but now the customer would have to pay for another copy.  They put language in that we understand we'd have to pay for the book again if we need it after doing the permanent removal of the title.

But now a book you hate or might not want others on your account to see can be permanently deleted on the Manage your Kindle page.

  Additional Kindle owner experiences and more tips on how to use the Sharing-on-one-account feature are discussed at this Amazon Forum Kindle thread.

TURN OFF SYNCHRONIZATION IF  2+ KINDLE DEVICES ARE READING THE SAME BOOK
 One obvious thought is that if 2+ people are reading a book at the same time, you don't want to be using the same Last Page and bookmarks, so you'd need to turn off Whispersync, which is Synchronization between Devices (ON by default).  Here's how:

1. Go to the Manage Your Kindle page.
2. At the bottom of the page, look for "Manage synchronization between devices.  Learn more."  Select "Learn more."
3. Select "Turn Synchronization off." '

This would mean that you couldn't, though, read a book on one of the Kindles, stop, and resume reading at the same page on your other Kindles or iPhone/iPod or PC later.

I probably should have broken this up into a couple of separate articles but it all seemed related to me.  Tomorrow's entry will be shorter.



Check often: Temporarily-free recently published Kindle books
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.  Liked-books under $1
UK-Only: recently published free books, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

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Amazon's sharing policies confuse its own reps - Update

UPDATES added near the bottom Original posting 7/17/09 - 10:16 AM - It was a system error, now being "fixed" per staff.

The Net has seen some heated writing about Amazon's DRM (Digital-Rights-Management) policies in that a first-tier customer service representative had told a customer-blogger that there was a limit as to how often we can re-download an Amazon-purchased book when the Amazon ads blare that a Kindle owner will be able to re-download a book at no added cost anytime the book is needed again when the customer has deleted it to save space.  Also re-downloaded with the book would be your highlighting and notes if you allowed Amazon to back them up.

The actual quantity limitation by Amazon is on the number of devices on which one Amazon-purchased book can be be simultaneously accessed under one person's account.  The limit that Kindle forum participants are used to mentioning to new members is "up to 6 devices," usually meaning Kindles or Kindle-compatible units like the iPhone and iPod that use the Kindle App.

Here's the Amazon FAQ statement in reply to the question: "How many Kindles can I use to access titles in my library?"

Most books and other non-subscription items you purchase from the Kindle store may be simultaneously accessed for your personal use on to [sic] up to six Kindles (or Kindle compatible devices) [emphasis mine] registered to your Amazon.com account.

If you reach the device limit and wish to replace one of your current devices with a new one, you must first deregister and delete the content from the device you wish to replace before you can access the content in question from your new device.  Please see the "Registering Your Kindle" section of our Managing Your Kindle Settings Help page to learn how to register/deregister your Kindle.  There is no limit on the number of times a title can be downloaded to a registered device.  [Emphasis mine.]

Subscription content can only be downloaded to one Kindle at a time, and only the seven most recent issues will be available for redownload from your Kindle or from the Manage Your Kindle page. '

  My own addition to Amazon's statement is that you don't really have to "deregister" a Kindle to do this -- you just have to Remove or Delete the book from that Kindle.  I've done this many times as I have many Kindles so that I can write with first-hand knowledge of the models.

There's now an Amazon forum thread about the finding that those who use Amazon's self-publishing books feature ('DTP' or Digital Text platform) have wording in their product-info areas that the number of digital devices able to share the book simultaneously is '5' rather than '6'... that's been confirmed by a few Kindle book authors.

It's possible that an error was made when placing this info with the DTP books and that someone meant to put "up to 5 other devices" (Bufo Calvin is asking Amazon about this), but maybe Amazon, which is the "Publisher" in those cases, wanted to have a lower device count for those, but that would be very strange and a confusing inconsistency it really doesn't need.

Karen of Books on the Knob also points out that Wiley had a limit of 4 devices months ago, apparently mentioned in the product description.

 She reminds forum readers that we can download a book "hundreds of times (costing Amazon 12 cents or more, each time)" so is puzzled (as are any of us) why Amazon, as 'Publisher' would choose 5 devices for authors who publish under Amazon's DTP publishing area.  Perplexing, but she also notes that it's been evident that most customers don't appear to care that much that they might be able to share books with only 4 other Kindles under their accounts.

---

UPDATE 7/18/09 - see Karen's update in her comment to this post.  This seemed to have been an error on the part of a staffer who may have posted the number without authorization.

UPDATE 7/18/09 #2 - Here is the forum page on which the Amazon staffer ("dtpadmin") responds to Bufo Calvin's question about the 5-device limit:

" Hello,

We have identified an error in our system. We are fixing the problem to remove the device limit for DTP titles. We apologize for this error.

Thanks!"

---

I find that most people just want to be able to read a book.  The ability of a family or very good friends to share books on the same account paid for by one of them is considered a nice feature.

But Amazon has to get clearer about the policies, if nothing else, and wiser about them if they would keep a better focus on the customer experience.  I enjoyed a description of the Kindle the other day as a "vending machine" for products Amazon needs to sell us.  The long-term relationship needs more clarity and less fear that the customers want to steal books.  Most of us have had very good experiences with Amazon's customer service but there needs to be a way to give all the customer service representatives the same policy information and to place in the online-support areas more detailed and consistent information.

Amazon is a company that seems to have a lot on the plate.

Image Credit:  6-booksteps image from Improve-Reading-Skills.Com Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
-- The Send to Kindle button works well only on Firefox currently.

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(Older posts have older Kindle model info. For latest models, see CURRENT KINDLES page. )
If interested, you can also follow my add'l blog-related news at Facebook and Twitter
Questions & feedback are welcome in the Comment areas (tho' spam is deleted). Thanks!