Go to your kindle account on Amazon - in your kindle library find the book you want to lend - click on actions for that book - if it is lendable it will say "loan this book" and follow the directions. You can only lend it once, I think and for a specific period of time. All that said, you should know that not all books can be lent.

"I had it set for Device." Having it set for Device is just the setting for when you're viewing it right then. It's not the setting for where the books will go when you buy them. (And when I say "buy," it includes books that are free.) Also, you said you "have clicked on the grey arrow for all of them." Did you click on those arrows one right after the other? Or did you wait until one book finished downloading before clicking the arrow for another book? It makes sense that you should just be able to "click away to your heart's content," because, after all, when I buy a bunch of books to be downloaded to my newest generation Kindle they just queue up until they're all eventually downloaded. But, if you have been clicking a bunch of them one right after the other, maybe you should try just clicking on one and then waiting until the download completes before starting another. OK, I just went to Amazon and "purchased" a free book. I chose to have it downloaded to my Kindle Fire. I've got the device sitting on the desk just to the left of my keyboard, and it's turned on, and the wireless is on. When I buy books and choose to have them download to either my newest Kindle or the 2nd Gen Kindle, they download immediately. But I've sat here for over 5 minutes and nothing has downloaded. So, I went to the Settings menu (the starburst looking thing to the left of the wireless icon at the top right of the screen), and tapped on Sync and the book immediately downloaded. But, here's what you can do if you've downloaded all of your books to your computer. Connect the Fire to your computer with the USB cable -- it needs the regular size USB connector on one end to connect to your computer, and the mini USB connector on the other end to connect to the Fire. Follow the instructions on the screen to "disconnect the device" from your computer, but do NOT physically remove the USB cable. The Kindle will be shown in your computer's drive listings as a removable device, but it should show the word "Kindle." Find the books on your computer (hopefully you remember which folder you put them in when you downloaded them), highlight all of them and then copy them to the Books folder on the "Kindle drive."

You can send personal documents to your Kindle as an attachment to an e-mail (your Kindle will have it's own e-email address - username@Kindle.com - which is based on your Amazon account), and Kindle's "Personal Document Service" will convert them to a compatible Kindle format. Currently, the types of documents you can send are: Microsoft Word (.DOC) Structured HTML (.HTML, .HTM) RTF (.RTF) JPEG (.JPEG, .JPG) GIF (.GIF) PNG (.PNG) BMP (.BMP) PDF (.PDF) Microsoft Word (.DOCX) is supported in the experimental category. There is a 15-cent per MB charge for this, but if you don't want to pay the fee, you can e-mail them to username@free.Kindle.com and the converted document will be sent to the e-mail address that you use for your transactions with Amazon (where they send you your order confirmations, shipment notices, etc.). Then, you can transfer the document from your computer to your Kindle using the USB cable. Oh, about sending PDF documents to your Kindle -- if you send a PDF as an attachment to your Kindle e-mail address, the document will be received still in PDF format (yeah, I know that's redundant - Portable Document Format format). But, if you want the PDF document converted to a "regular" Kindle document, put the word "Convert" as the subject line of the e-mail.

While I don't think books in the printed version will disappear, I do think bookshops are under threat (and I work in one). So many people will come in to browse, then buy the book on line, either as a paper format or e-book. Because our market is relatively small, books in Australia are more expensive than the US or the UK, and when you can purchase from Amazon for less, people will do it. Right now the Aussie dollar is over parity with the greenback (10 years ago we were only getting 55c) and it makes it very reasonable, even with the postage (and of course no postage for e-books). I think people will regret losing a shop where you can come in and browse, check out the content of a book, read a few pages to see if you like the style. But competition is fierce and we, with a main shopping centre street front, heating, lighting, escalators and many staff, can't compete with huge warehouses in the middle of nowhere without these costs.