Actually my mom checked out the book on her Kindle. This library uses Overdrive.
I’m just helping her and giving her tech support. 
She’s a fast reader and always returns books within a couple days of checking them out.
I know library books on the Kindle go away after 14 days. Will Amazon delete them using the 3G connection? Mom doesn’t have a wireless connection at home. We use the 3G for books she buys. I had to manually download the library book and copy to the Kindle’s document folder with the usb connection. I’m wondering how it will get removed?
Is there a way to release the book early so someone else can check it out? I noticed a lot of the library’s kindle books have waiting lists.
I’m amazed at how small these kindle files are. A whole book was only 344kb (352,256 bytes). That’s tiny. No wonder Amazon transfers books you buy by 3G for free. Not much bandwidth is needed at all.
Ok, I see under Amazon Your Digital Items, the library book and under actions there’s an option to return it.
But how will it get deleted off the kindle without a wireless connection? 3G? do I need to Sync?
Yes, you have to sync. Or you have to manually delete it. Otherwise it’ll stay there (unreadable) forever.
Thanks Justin.
I’m slowly catching on to this newfangled thing. Amazon did a really good job designing the kindle and the supporting web pages.
The one thing digital doesn’t offer is the browsing experience at a bookstore or library. That’s where you happily stumble upon new authors. There’s nothing more fun than pulling books off the shelf and flipping the pages. Browsing on Amazon just isn’t the same. Amazon is great for looking up books or authors you already know about.
At least using my library connection you can choose 7 or 14 days for the loan. If I “remove from my device” it does not appear to return it and I have to wait until it officially expires if I want to checkout my limit of 4.
I disagree about the browsing because I love, love, love the ability to download a sample. It doesn’t always keep me from buying a clinker but it definitely helps.
There’s an Action button under Amazon, Manage My Kindle for each book. The library books have an Action option to “return it”. Which works. We returned one and about an hour later an email from the library confirmed the return. We’re archiving those emails as proof that the book was returned.
We also checked “My BookShelf” at the library page and confirmed that my moms library account no longer showed that book checked out. Really, a step we didn’t have to do. But this was our first library loan. Mom just checked out two more books and is reading one right now.
Then we had to get on the Kindle and do a Sync to make the returned book go away.