Category Archives: Free

Kindle Daily Deals

Posted on by

Ever since the Agency Pricing model took effect, most readers of eBooks have seen the prices of eBooks skyrocket. (Case in point: the enhanced Kindle version of Stephen King’s 11/22/63  is currently listed for pre-order at $18.99. The hardcover sells for only $19.98.) That leaves many Kindleowners looking for bargains.

Besides the top 100 paid Kindle books, Amazon lists the top 100 free books  available in the Kindle Store. However, many people don’t realize that Amazon also lists a Kindle Daily Deal, where a Kindle book is available for a day at deeply discounted prices. The deal varies and can be fiction or non-fiction with selections generally priced between 99 cents and $2.99.

Generally, these books are quite a bargain. I have found $13-15 ebooks listed for less than $5.00. Today I picked up The Phoenix Apostles mystery for only $1.99.

As its name implies, the book selection changes daily.

National Academies Press Offers Free PDF downloads

Posted on by

Effective June 2nd, PDFs of reports that are currently for sale on the National Academies Press (NAP) Website and PDFs associated with future reports* will be offered free of charge to all Web visitors.

According to the site:

NAP produces more than 200 books a year on a wide range of topics in science, engineering, and health, capturing the best-informed views on important issues.

We invite you to visit the NAP homepage and experience the new opportunities available to access our publications. There you can sign up for MyNAP, a new way for us to deliver all of our content for free to loyal subscribers like you and to reward you with exclusive offers and discounts on our printed books. This enhancement to our free downloads means that we can reach out even further to inform government decision making and public policy, increase public education and understanding, and promote the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge.

*There are a small number of reports that never had PDF files and, therefore, those reports are not available for download. In addition, part of the series, “Nutrient Requirements of Domestic Animals” are not be available in PDF and future titles in this series will also not have PDFs associated with them.

There has been a real lack of academic books available for eReaders (free or paid), so this is great news for readers searching for academic materials in an ebook format.

Where to Find Free eBooks

Posted on by

Surprisingly, there are a lot more sources for legal free books online than one might think.  You can find quite a variety, ranging from plain vanilla text versions to books that have been lovingly formatted by ebook aficionados. Most of these are DRM free.

Amazon and Smashwords both offer free books fairly consistently.  Most titles that are offered are free only for a short time, so it is best to download them when you find them. Sometimes a book may only be free for as little as a few hours; most titles are free for at least a day or more.

Baen Books Free Library:  http://www.baen.com/library/ and http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/ This is a great site for Sci-Fi fans. Offers both paid and free books.

Public Domain Books:

Project Gutenberg:  www.gutenberg.org  You can choose between ePub, Kindle, HTML and simple text formats.

The Internet Archives: http://archive.org  Offers over 2 million items in a variety of  books and texts of all kinds.

Manybooks: http://manybooks.net Offers many Project Gutenberg books as well as public domain and creative commons works from many other sources.

Mobilereads Forum: The Patricia Clark Memorial Library: http://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=137 Public Domain works formatted and archived by Mobilereads members.

Feedbooks: http://www.feedbooks.com/ Offers free Public Domain and original books as well as new releases from major publishers. Requires registration.

The Free Library: http://www.thefreelibrary.com/ Over 16 million items, ranging from literary classics to periodicals from many fields.

 

WikiBooks.org:  http://www.wikibooks.org/ Offers open content textbooks that anyone can edit.

For the Kindle specifically:

Mobipocket: http://www.mobipocket.com/freebooks/default.aspx Includes a variety of Public Domain non-fiction and academic works.

Free Kindle Books: http://freekindlebooks.org/ Many of the files offered here are Project Gutenberg files that have been reformatted to look better on the Kindle.

Search Engines:

InkMesh: http://www.inkmesh.com/ Ebook search engine to find and compare prices on books for Kindle, Sony, Kobo, Nook and more.

Just Free Books: http://justfreebooks.info/ Audio and ebook search engine.