Lend eBooks To Your Friends With Ownshelf

By Dianna Dilworth 

Want to lend a copy of a book you love to your friend, but you only bought the eBook? Check out Ownshelf, a new service that will let you share ePUB titles with your friends across devices. The tool, which is currently in beta, lets you show friends your digital book shelves and look at your friends’ bookshelves, and borrow and loan titles from these digital bookshelves.

You can access the tool through Facebook. Like other apps, you have to give Facebook apps to login in. Using the shelf you can upload ePUB titles for lending to a select group of your personal friends. (It is not clear if you can only lend your digital copy to one person at a time, as with other eBook lending tools). Then you can see which of your friends is using Ownshelf and you can browse the digital books that they have uploaded. 

Rick Marazzani, the founder of the startup, explained the idea of the new service to VentureBeat: “Books have always been very personal. We own and cherish books and show them off in our homes on shelves next to family pictures. The bookshelf in the home is how we learn about our friends, get book recommendations, and borrow books our friends endorse. Ownshelf takes the bookshelf digital to browse, share, and get recommendations online.”

Barnes & Noble and Amazon also have tools to let you lend your eBooks out to friends.