Here’s a wee bit of good news:

When Amazon first made lending available for Kindle books a few days ago, it did not appear that the feature worked with free books. That might not seem like a problem because, well, the books are free, right? But if people are going to get into the regular practice of ebook lending, they will want to be able to lend or borrow as many books as possible, without regard to what price it was at when they acquired it. (My thinking here is that a lot of the lending that folks will do with Kindle books will be similar to what many of us have done for years with dead-tree books: we lend them to people we care about because we hope they will read them. When that’s what is at work, price is often a secondary consideration to content.)

So I’m happy to report that an increasing number of the free books reported each morning in our Kindle Nation Free Book Alerts are showing up with Lending: Enabled under their Product Details heading. This morning I tried loaning a copy of Deadly Sanctuary to my friend Alter J. “Al” Eggo, and although he hasn’t claimed it yet, it appears that the offer reached him.