Showing posts with label free kindle books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label free kindle books. Show all posts

Free Kindle Books page: Low-Cost also. Revised. VERSION 2

This long-standing blog entry, Free Kindle Books (begun in 2009), has been revised April 10, 2011 to remove most of the chronological changes made over the last two years as it became too confusing to read.  (See the blog article for April 8, which explains a bit and has two experimental links to lists of contemporary Kindle books listed during the last 30 days or so.)

  It was also updated again the other day for the many changes to the free and low-cost Kindle books area at Amazon.  Besides the 28,000+  free, complete books (no previews and only the ones in English),  there are links to find Kindle books that are $0.99, $1.99, and $2.99, as a lot of authors are publishing in that price-range and they're not easy to find.  Some are books by indie authors and others  are popular books for which the price has been dropped by Big6 publishers after a couple of years or when they want to introduce new readers to authors who have

Click here first for most recently published NON-classics under $1 or try that list sorted by bestselling.  There are more new free books each day also..

To limit your search to only the FREE non-classics, check directly below:

This resource contains prepared links that you can click on, at any time, to find, for example, the most recently published free non-classics,  late-listed free non-classics,  or  you can choose to see these according to bestselling or highest rated ones as they appear, on a daily basis or more.

  These are usually temporarily free, on a short promotional basis, and a click will show you the latest ones though Amazon displays free books on various listings and they don't all show up any one list

  On your computer's web-browser, you can of course bookmark this page to get here more easily.  The short URL is http://bit.ly/kfreelow3.

Chapter, Excerpts and Previews
   Since most Kindle owners seem interested in complete books, I've tried to avoid search results for books which offer only certain chapters, excerpts and which are, essentially, previews.   You can see the previews, in any event when you go to the Amazon Kindle book pages, as they're not hard to find.

Free Kindle-Compatible books at Non-Amazon  websites
  This guide to Free and Low-cost Books page also includes links to most of the other (non-Amazon) Web site that have a strong offering of free Kindle-compatible books, many of which are directly downloadable to your Kindle at no added cost.  Let me know about good (legal) ones I haven't included.

Important advantages to downloading Kindle versions of free books
Bear in mind that when you download free Kindle books from Amazon, they can be
  1.  Sync'd with your other Kindle-compatible devices and
  2.  Included in your private-password protected Annotations webpage on Amazon servers,
         which can be accessed at kindle.amazon.com

Kindle Edition blog-subscribers
Subscribers to the Kindle blog-edition have found that when following blog-links to a book or other Amazon product, the Kindle Edition is not enabled to make clickable orders through the Kindle-version of the Kindle Store.

.  So I recommend a drop-in to the webpage when you feel like checking the latest published free nonclassics and late-listed free nonclassics -- as these can change in a couple of hours and there are about 6 pages of them at any given time.

Late-listed ebooks tend to include books that were published some years ago but which were recently added to the temporarily-free non-classic Kindle book listings.   "By Publication Date"-lists would show these books, published some years ago, lower down in the listings when sorting by more-recently published, at the top.

  With the links below you can  quickly see only the small selection of currently-free contemporary Kindle books sorted also by Publication Date, Bestsellers. or by the Average Customer-Rated, as that's made easier with the prepared links on this page, and you can  avoid the hundreds of  books that are only previews.

  Each Kindle Edition blog has the last 25 blog articles, searchable on the Kindle so that you can find items of interest more easily within the 25 articles while offline.  I think many will find it useful despite my penchant for giving source-links for data.  I try to include enough info from the news sources so that Kindle Edition blog-subscribers for A Kindle World don't have to click links to get the main points.

Free Non-classics -- Contemporary Kindle books
There are usually about  250+ free contemporary Kindle books at any given time.  I found that many ebooks in German were included this last week, and I've revised the links to not display these, as there is a section for foreign language books as the blog's audience .  So I revised the lists to specify English-only and further added parameters to try to avoid excerpts and previews in favor of complete e-books.

  Again, a few newer books are promotional and free for only a while.  Sometimes for only a couple of days.

  So it's a good idea to bookmark this page, in addition to other resources you use, to check out, when you're able, what might be new to you, with the ready-links to categories of available free or very low cost books.

MAIN SEARCH LINKS1. CLASSICS
    Amazon's now 28,000+ free books (complete and in English), sorted by:
      Bestselling or by Highest Rated   or by Publication Date
    These include both the classics and non-classic books, but does not include Previews, Chapters, or Excerpts.

2. NON-CLASSICS
 Amazon's CURRENTLY FREE Non-Classics sorted by Bestselling, or by Highest Rated, or by Publication Date or by late-listed date.

  The free Non-classic Kindle books list changes almost daily, sometimes hourly.

To help with finding Amazon's Kindle Digital-Text Platform (DTP)-published authors' new self-published books and other-publisher Kindle books that are discounted):     Here are FREE NON-Classics sorted by Most Recent publication date or by Late-listed date.

        (NOTE:  SOME higher prices will appear in each set because their prices changed but they are
           still tagged somewhere as the lower price.)

    These are links for non-classics UNDER $1
    a. For Under $1.00 Non-Classics sorted by NEWEST publication date
    b. For Under $1.00 Non-Classics sorted by BESTSELLING books
 
    and links for non-classics FROM $1 to $1.99
    a. From $1 to $1.99     Non-Classics sorted by NEWEST publication date
    b. From $1 to $1.99     Non-Classics sorted by BESTSELLING books

    and links for non-classcis FROM $2 to $2.99
    a. From $2 to $2.99     Non-Classics sorted by NEWEST publication date
    b. From $2 to $2.99     Non-Classics sorted by BESTSELLING books

  You can change the Sort on the Amazon page, at the top-right.

3.  The Project Gutenberg e-books catalog (MOBI editions) for Kindles.  You can browse or search the catalog on your Kindle and click on one to have it downloaded to your Kindle from the site.
 There are no Amazon charges on a download from the Project Gutenberg site.

4.  A humongous Amazon Forum thread on a million or so books readable on the Kindle - How to get them (mostly free).

5.  How to convert, in 2-3 minutes, any of Google's half million free books.  They are available in ePub format.  But you can now download instead the PDF versions although the reflowed text of ePub and Kindle-Mobi books may be easier to read than original layout PDFs.

6.  Here's a link to quick search-results for free PDF books.

ALSO, previously featured free non-fiction books that are free or under $1.00
1. (Recommended under-$1 books)

2. Amazon's most popular free books.  (These include Classics as well as Non-Classics.

OTHER SEARCHES
I need to add these days that some international Kindle users in Europe and some other countries are in high wireless-cost areas, so Amazon charges about $2 more in some countries for the otherwise free book.  They've removed the additional charge in a few countries though.

  FREE CLASSICS AND PUBLIC DOMAIN BOOKS AVAILABLE ELSEWHERE
  For these Amazon customers and any Kindle owners interested in finding mostly free, direct-to-Kindle e-books at other sites -- these sites can download direct to a Kindle, at no cost:
You can also download to your Kindle or computer, for later transfer to your Kindle, free "mobi" or "prc" format books from feedbooks.com, manybooks.net, fictionwise.com, and as I've often mentioned, any of 30,000 well-formatted books from the Project Gutenberg set.

  Recommended also are the 2.5 million+ free Internet Archive books and documents plus other offerings from the January 24, 2010 blog article.
  The Internet Archive folks are responsible for Open Library -- "Open Library is an open, editable library catalog, building towards a web page for every book ever published."

  Mobileread Forum books makes very well-proofed e-books.  This links to their listing of e-books, sorted by Amazon-readable 'PRC' format and by most recent first.  These tend to be very well formatted, with linked table-of-contents page when applicable, and mostly free.  Some of their ebooks are sold at Amazon and I think more of them will use the self-publishing feature of Amazon in the future.

  Baen.com.   Baen's Free Library offers science-fiction in ".prc" (MOBI) format, which is essentially the Kindle format without rights-protection.  While Baen's e-books might not be directly downloaded to the Kindle  (they offer you the choice to email their e-books to your Kindle instead) -- and if you get a book that way, it incurs costs of about 15c per megabyte of a file.  Books that are mainly text seldom are more than a megabyte so the cost would be 15c).

But you can choose to, instead, download Baen's e-books to the computer and transfer them via USB cable to the Kindle's "documents" folder (or use the USB cable to attach the Kindle to your computer and download direct to the Kindle's "documents" folder.  Here's their Guide to doing that.
  Baen.com also sells non-rights-protected commercial offerings (in addition to offering free classics) in that format.

NOTE: Again, Kindles with 3G Cellular wireless or using WiFi networks CAN download books direct-to-Kindle from several book stores (see above) using the Kindle web-browser. 

If wondering what the differences are between the '3G' and 'WiFi' capabilities, a short blog article here may help.

Feedbooks Dedicated Kindle Guide
The feedbooks.com page linked to above, offers a dedicated Kindle guide that you can download to the Kindle to use for browsing and then downloading books to your Kindle.

Mobile Device-Optimized Pages
  For those who can and do use the wireless feature to look up information on the Net, there are links to the mobile-device-optimized versions of the webpages for feedbooks.com and manybooks.net.
  The Kindle can access these two sites more easily using these links::
    (1) feedbooks.com-mobile: http://www.feedbooks.com/?format=mobile and
    (2) manybooks.net: http://mnybks.net.

  Some of you might want to use the free, downloadable 'book' file I put together which is made up of mobile-device-friendly links to various popular websites and which explains some workarounds for problems that might be encountered using webpages such as the one for gmail.

AMAZON'S Free Book Collections webpage
As of March 2, 2010, Amazon added a new page with pointers to Free Book Collections on the Net, all of which are included here. This ongoing blog article includes other large, Kindle-compatible book sources as well and has pointers to and links for such things as how to get the Project Gutenberg books on your Kindle directly, without needing to use a computer vs the method described at Amazon's page.

  That new Amazon page also includes a link to its own Amazon Free Classics listing. There are over 15,500 free classics at Amazon.  Again, annotations made on these Classics can be kept on your private, password-protected webpage on the Amazon servers, and you can sync Amazon books between your Kindle-compatible devices, including smart phones, tablets, and with free apps for them and for your PC or Mac.



NOT FREE
 For those interested in an easier-to-remember shortcut to Amazon's current 100 Bestsellers (the majority seem to be free but there are regular-priced ones in the list as well), try http://bit.ly/kbsellers.

Here's a search some have requested on the forums -- non-classics under $10, for a time when the Big6 publishers (with Apple iBookstore as driving force) have successfully pushed Amazon to the "Agency" model and to prices too often from $13 to $15 for newer books.

  This lists contemporary Kindle books priced from $0.00 through $9.99, and sorts by bestselling books, with most popular books first, as Kindle owners on forums have wanted to be able to easily find e-books that are priced below $10.

  Also, a popular item for browsing has been the Bestsellers in Kindle-books for 2009.  This was first noted in the blog entry for Amazon's Best of 2009.   Later added Bestsellers in Kindle-books for 2010.

*NON*-KINDLE - These are paper books, but the 40% discounts should be noted.
  As of March 3, 2010, Amazon has created a new page that highlights what they consider "the best new books" to read every month.  These feature "editors' picks" and "reviews of the best new reads in fiction, nonfiction, and books for young readers, available at 40% off all month long."  The new page is titled Amazon's Best Books of the Month Store.
  Again, these are *NOT* Kindle books, but some books are not in Kindle format and some readers don't have Kindles, yet :-)


Kindle 3's   (UK: Kindle 3's),   DX Graphite

Check often: Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.
UK-Only: recently published non-classics, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.


    CLICK HERE to return to the top page of A Kindle World.

Free Kindle Books -Special links, English-only, Contemporary - UPDATE9

From the Top 100 Free Kindle Books list, U.S.   (UK: here)

UPDATES 1-9. - Am updating lists and links because Amazon added tons of German books to pages 2 and on.  Have done them for U.S. and later revised the UK list somewhat, explained in the updates.

  NOTE: I'm trying to include only free full, contemporary books.  But in the UK, they also include, from what I can see, the classics also.

  NEW experiment: Amazon has new Kindle books in various categories and they don't all get caught in the various lists.  Here are attempts at still-free ones in  Last 30+ days and  Apr 2011.  I'll need to change these at the start of each month.

  Have updated quite a bit today the ongoing Guide to Free Books and Resources and am moving it up to the top, as the changes are fairly extensive.  Will reorganize it later to remove Logged detail, as it confuses eyes and mind.


Original Post, with revisions
About 70% of visitors here each day are new to the page, arriving after a search on a specific topic, and won't know about the popular Top 100 free listing on Amazon.  The top-selling free Kindle books are shown alongside those that are not free, but Amazon gives them equal space on that page.

  I've included just a few at the top which have had a good number of customer reviews, which guarantees many of them will be identified as an 'Amazon Verified Purchase.'  Some were added to the Kindle store too recently to have much customer feedback yet despite receiving many downloads.

  Click on any image above to get details on the specific book.

  Backstage Pass was added as a free book about 3 days ago, probably as a temporary promotional listing, so if interested, get that one earlier.  A good number of contemporary books, non-classics, tend to be free for a short time.

  Last week, Amazon had about 16,000 free Kindle books, and they have doubled that this week, as now there are about 33,600 free.   Most would be new versions of public-domain classics and it's reported that the formatting tends to be somewhat better than on the earlier ones submitted to Amazon.
  Amazon currently has over 905,000 Kindle books.

Less known is the section for Foreign Language eBooks.

There's also a probably fairly lucrative section for Oprah's Book Club Series for Kindle.   :-)

  At the Kindle Store, browse the left column to see a lot more.


ONGOING LINKS TO TEMPORARILY FREE BOOKS AND 99 CENT PAGES
On this webpage, there are always links at the top right to temporarily free non-classics (contemporary) sorted by latest or bestselling.  I'll include some here, for those who spend more time with the Kindle Edition of this blog, which doesn't include the reference column on the right:

Kindle-Edition subscribers should go to the website via computer to use these:
    http://kindleworld.blogspot.com
Any of these can be bookmarked on your computer if you find them useful.
  Thanks very much for the subscription support.

TEMPORARILY-free books -
Non-classics
- USA: by
  Last 30+ days and  Apr 2011.
      Those last two above are experimental, and I'll need to change those each month.
    Publication Date   Late-listed
    Bestselling   High-ratings

Also, 99c Kindle books page
  and 99c products page
  + 99c Notepad, for Kindle

  UK:
  Am flying blind in the U.S.- Can't see prices, but free ones seem to be at the front of the long list, which doesn't use U.S. search process.  Also, I can't see the number of stars for highest rating, so removed that link.  Have added one for 5 GBP and under, as many ask how to find these at the Amazon-UK Forum.  By:
    PubDate   Popular   £5 Max


Also check out the 30,000+ Project Gutenberg books and the "Magic Catalog" that you can download directly to the Kindle, where it can be browsed or searched, and ebooks of interest downloaded directly to the Kindle also.

Another blog article to bookmark shows you how to either get a free conversion to Kindle format of any free book(s) from Google's 1.5 million or more eP+ub books, as well as describing how you can do it yourself and customize it to your preferences, a conversion that after a set-up takes only a few minutes.

The footer of each article will have some of these links, plus one to to the guide to many sources for free books as well as pre-made searches for Amazon's Kindle books in the lower-cost ranges.  It's a lot of information, quite jumbled and will be reorganized soon.


Kindle 3's   (UK: Kindle 3's),   DX Graphite

Check often: Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.
UK-Only: recently published non-classics, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

Free Kindle books, more info. Are new e-book royalties cheating authors?

A REMINDER RE ONGOING FREE AND LOW-COST KINDLE-BOOK LINKS

At the end of most recent posts here you'll see a section of links like the one just below, so you won't have to wait for a blog entry to see the latest free nonclassics at Amazon.

  You can check for yourself at any time:


' Check often: Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.
UK-Only: recently published non-classics, bestsellers, or highest-rated ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers. '


I recently added to the reference section a newer Amazon page of Kindle books that are tagged by Amazon customers as "99 cents kindle" to make these easier to find.

  A problem there is that e-book prices are always subject to change, so the tags on some are no longer accurate.  Amazon asks that customers use the tagging system to "vote down" those that are no longer related to the "99 cents kindle" tag.

  Kindle books that are tagged only "99 cents" might be missed using the link above, depending on other tags involved.  This link is to the shorter-tag results for Amazon products in general because the word "kindle" is not part of the tag and may interest those looking for low-cost products in general.

The ongoing Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources includes links to non-classic/contemporary ebooks that are within the range of $1 to $2 as well as free.

More important to many will be the section titled:
FREE CLASSICS AND PUBLIC DOMAIN BOOKS AVAILABLE ELSEWHERE,
as many, if not most, gadget columnists are unaware that Kindle owners can download e-books from other sources.

KindleClassics
New to me is a guide to some of the better editions of the classics blog that will be useful for many who may not know where to start with all that's available or who have been frustrated by the bad formatting too often seen in public-domain e-books.  Marilyn Sue recommends (for both US and UK readers) classics she's enjoyed and also warns of the downsides of some releases.  The blog header explains "Because some conversions are sloppily done, a free download can be a waste of time." The blog is ranked #1 on the Amazon UK Literature Blogs list & is in the Top Ten listing of Amazon US Literature Blogs.

NEWS: "How E-book Royalties are Cheating Authors"
andyrossagency writes that the Authors Guild posted an analysis of the dynamics of competition in the e-book market and "came down very hard on Amazon" but that they posted another analysis, this one showing how "the prevailing formula for author royalties on e-books unfairly diminishes authors’ income even as publishers earn more for each e-book sold."

  Many of us cautioned authors about this when their publishers sent them to the Kindle forums to explain how customers, publishers, and authors would be much better served under Apple's Agency model.  We explained in detail how the traditional reseller model used by the online bookstores was better for authors.

  The Big5 execs explained in interviews that the pricing of e-books was too low and "devalued" their books (their hardcover or paperback books).  They were also worried about the power that Amazon could have over publishers, explaining to us that Amazon, once they owned the market, would raise prices on us all.

  Their solution to that was to raise prices now.   :-)

The reality is that publishers were primarily concerned about Amazon's power over publishers, of course, and that's understandable.  What's not is their decision-making on e-book pricing and their open disinterest in what today's book customers want.

  At the end of the blog article, andyrossagency gives a breakdown on the numbers, as they read them, from the Authors Guild analysis (emphases mine) :
' Here’s the math:

“The Help” has an e-book list price of $13 and is sold under the agency model.  Publisher grosses 70% of retail price, or $9.10.  Author’s royalty is 25% of publisher receipts, or $2.28.  Publisher nets $6.32. ($9.10 minus $2.28 royalties and $0.50 encryption fee.)

“Hell’s Corner” is also sold under the agency model at a retail list price of $15 list price.  Publisher grosses 70% of retail price, $10.50.  Author’s royalty is 25% of publisher receipts, or $2.63.  Publisher nets $7.37. ($10.50 minus $2.63 royalties and $0.50 encryption fee.)

“Unbroken” is sold by Random House under the reseller model at a retail list price of $27.  Publisher grosses $13.50 on the sale.  Author’s royalty, at 25%, is $3.38. Random House nets $9.62.  ($13.50 minus $3.38 royalties and $0.50 encryption fee.) '

However, other analyses have shown that because Amazon took a loss on $10 bestsellers (making this up elsewhere) while guaranteeing publishers 50% of the list price set by the publishers -- under the traditional reseller model -- both publisher and author would tend to make less under the Agency model.

  The brouhaha has actually been over control rather than current profit-taking.  One publisher focus was to try to slow e-book sales because they hurt hardcover sales, and if customers were willing to buy e-books at those higher prices, all the better.



Kindle 3's   (UK: Kindle 3's),   DX Graphite

For New and Olde Kindlers Wanting to Do More with their Kindles

CREATIVE USES OF THE KINDLE
Well, pleasurable reading is good enough for most, but there is a lot more that can be done with the Kindle, as shown in the short list just below.
  (I recommend bookmarking this for quick access later.)

  1. an old, continuing favorite forum thread about the more unique uses of the Kindle's capabilities thought up by members of the Amazon Kindle Community, and I saw another idea added today.

  2. a newer forum thread of favorite tips for new Kindle owners from Kindle oldtimers.

NOTE: If your web browser (especially Firefox) drops you onto the Amazon forum list of topics instead of bringing you to the forum thread, click on Refresh or Reload to get the message thread itself -- or click on the link again.  I don't know why a 'retry' is often needed, but it is.

  3. The Kindle Chronicles
  This is a very informative, fun resource for Kindlers at http://thekindlechronicles.com, a weekly podcast hosted by Len Edgerly who, each Friday night, brings us a roundup of the latest news (with links), excellent tech tips, an interview with someone from the Kindle world at large and some from just outside it who are of course in the Kindle net then :-)  Len also presents video reviews as well.  At the site are summaries of what is included in the latest podcast report.  Links are given there for items mentioned in the podcast.

  4. the new Kindle book by Stephen Windwalker, who has been explaining what can be done on Kindles since the Kindle 1, and this just-released book that includes info for the Latest Generation Kindles is only $0.99, which is more than a bargain.


STARTING GUIDE - BY AMAZON KINDLE SUPPORT TEAM - TOP10 FAQs
To START, though, Amazon has made a new 'Announcement' in the forums which introduces Kindlers to Kindle Top Ten FAQ's, and oldtimers add to the thread, explaining some of it from their experience and helping some there who have specific problems starting out.

Here is a regular WEB version of Kindle Team's TOP10 FAQs with active links (bracketed comments are mine).

  I'll keep a link to this post in the right-hand reference column of the web blog).
'                       Last edited by the author on Dec. 25, 2010 10:35 AM PST

Amazon Kindle Customer Service says:
(AMAZON OFFICIAL)

Did you recently receive Kindle as a gift? Welcome to our growing family of Kindle users!  To help you quickly get started with your new Kindle, we've created a list of some of the most common questions new users have:

1. How can I start reading on my new Kindle?

Visit our Getting Started page to see the simple steps (including videos) to start reading on your new Kindle right now:

  http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_200580340_gettoknow?nodeId=200580340


2. How do I set up the Wi-Fi connection on my Kindle (Latest Generation)?

Kindle (Latest Generation) automatically detects nearby Wi-Fi networks and hotspots that broadcast their network name.  You can watch a video about how to connect to a Wi-Fi network here:

  http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=200588130#connect

For more information on how to connect to a Wi-Fi network see our guide here:

  http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200505540&#setupwifi

  [Note that you can click to get larger videos, if wanted, at the video pages.]


3. How do I apply and use a gift card to purchase Kindle titles?

To use an Amazon.com Gift Card for purchases from the Kindle Store, redeem the gift card in Your Account (http://www.amazon.com/your-account).  Any gift card balance available on your account will be applied to purchases from the Kindle Store, except for content with recurring subscription charges.

To successfully complete your purchase, you'll need to establish your home country or region and set a valid 1-Click billing address.  You can set your billing address at the link below:

  http://www.amazon.com/gp/css/account/address/view.html.

  [The billing-address page sometimes takes a while to load.]


4. How do I register/deregister my Kindle?

From Amazon.com, you can register or deregister via the Manage Your Kindle page

  (http://www.amazon.com/myk).

From your Kindle, select Home > Menu > Settings > Register or Deregister.


5. How do I start shopping in the Kindle Store?

You can shop in the Kindle Store directly from Kindle or from Amazon.com.  Shopping the Kindle Store on your Kindle is a convenient way to find and buy Kindle books, newspapers, magazines, and if you are a U.S. customer, Kindle active content and blogs for your Kindle.  If you are in your wireless coverage area, your purchases from the Kindle Store are delivered to your Kindle, typically in less than 60 seconds.

  [KINDLE SHORTCUT: If on the Kindle, press Alt-Home keys at the same time.]


6. How do I give a Kindle book as a gift or redeem a Kindle book that I received as a gift?

To gift a Kindle book, click the Give as a Gift button located under the Buy button on Kindle Store product detail pages, and follow the prompts to complete your order.

You can find more information about Kindle book gifts here:

  http://www.amazon.com/help/kindlegift


7. Are there any free books available for Kindle?

The Kindle Store contains the largest selection of the books people want to read.  This includes the most popular classics for free with wireless delivery in under 60 seconds to your Kindle, computer, or other mobile device.

Learn more: Free eBook Collections (http://www.amazon.com/b?node=2245146011)

  [Also see this blog's Free Kindle Books for more.]


8. Can I read Kindle books if I don't have my Kindle with me?

You can read anywhere with our free reading apps, no Kindle required. Whispersync technology saves and synchronizes your last page read, bookmarks, notes, and highlights across your devices.

To download: (http://www.amazon.com/kindleapps)


9. I have the Kindle (Wi-Fi), but I don't have a Wi-Fi network at home.  Can I still buy and download books from home?

  If you don't have a Wi-Fi network set up in your home, you have the following options for receiving Kindle content:

I. If your Kindle was recently ordered, you may return the Kindle (Wi-Fi) and purchase the Kindle 3G (Free 3G + Wi-Fi).  The added convenience of 3G enables you to download books anytime, anywhere, while on the go-without having to find a Wi-Fi hotspot connection.

  The full Return Policy is posted on the Kindle Support pages
    (http://www.amazon.com/kindlereturnpolicy).
  You can process your return and print a mailing label by visiting our
    Online Returns Center (http://www.amazon.com/returns).

II. Even without a home Wi-Fi network, you can still buy content from the Kindle Store and access your Kindle items Archived on Amazon.com through your computer and transfer them via USB to your Kindle.  Information about transferring content to your Kindle with USB is available on our Kindle Support pages here:

  http://www.amazon.com/kindletransfer

III. You can purchase a home Wi-Fi router to establish a Wi-Fi network in your home with which the Kindle can connect.


10. I have a problem with my Kindle, what should I do?

If you're experiencing software or hardware issues with your Kindle, please reach us by phone for personalized support.  You can reach us by phone directly and toll free from many countries by clicking the Contact Us option in the right-hand column of our Kindle Support pages at:

  http://www.amazon.com/kindlesupport

Contacting us through the website allows you to verify security before a call is placed and ensures we have your account information ready when we call you.  If your country isn't listed or you're unable to take advantage of the Contact Us feature, you can call us directly at 1-866-321-8851 or 1-206-266-0927 if you're calling from outside the U.S.


Still have questions?

Additional information, including answers to frequently asked questions, how to use Kindle, and the Kindle User's Guide can be accessed from our Kindle Support pages here:

  http://www.amazon.com/kindlesupport

Happy Reading! '

The "Do More" idea is represented by an overview, at the top, of what Kindle owners have enjoyed doing beyond reading a book and there'll be more detail in the new year.

Be sure to check the reference-section in the right-hand column of the website version of this blog, for guides to making Collections, using the Send Passage to Facebook and Twitter features, and many other tips.

  In the coming weeks, I'll be updating those and streamlining them a bit in newly modified blog articles that can also be read on the Kindle edition of the blog for those with not enough time to get here regularly.

NOTE: At the end of each more-recent blog entry, you'll see ready-made links to getting the very latest temporarily-free Kindle books available whenever you're curious about what has been offered since you last checked, sorted by publication date, most recently posted, best-selling, etc.  These are links to both the Amazon-US and Amazon-UK sites.  Also there are links to information on all free books available for your Kindle.


Kindle 3's   (UK: Kindle 3's),   DX Graphite

Check often: Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.
UK-Only: recently published non-classics, bestsellers, or highest-rated ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

Tips: PDF Scissors tool - and reminder re non-Amazon free books - Update

I couldn't be here the last day and a half, and I hope any tips from this blog's comment areas and from my visits around the Kindle world will help.  I'll be doing more of these with one or two tips at a time so people can focus on those and have time to work with them, rather than tossing a bunch of them in one blog article which might be put aside until there's time and then forgotten.

TIP:  PDF SCISSORS
This is a new free tool to help enlarge the essential portion of a PDF when the words are too small to read and to divide the pages to ease navigation when viewing the results in Landscape mode.

PDFs with content too small to read
I JUST saw a comment at the a Teleread.Com comment area, offering a new free tool (on a good site) to help with PDFs that are comprised mostly of image pages and therefore cannot be converted to normal Kindle text format since there are no text fonts to enlarge while keeping within the screen frame.

This would be for the most adventurous among you as it is new and he feels people may find bugs, but he wrote it so he could get rid of margins in his PDFs to see the words on the pages better as they'd be larger, whether using a text-based or image-based page (images of a book's pages).  There are other tools that do this kind of thing, but using them requires comfort with Perl, Python or other scripts and files.

  Remember that mostly-text PDFs can be converted by Amazon (or by yourself using a free tool I've written about earlier) to text using standard size fonts which are of course larger and re-flowing the text lines to fit the a small e-reader screen.

Image-based PDF pages
  With pages that are actually pictures of pages, however, rather than actual text, that's not possible with the type of PDFs which are merely images of a physical book's pages.

  Images enlarged would just be larger than the screen and while we have zoom-in tools on the Kindle  (UK: K3), those are always awkward to use even on a computer with a large monitor but rewarding when you just need to look at an occasional table, figure, or diagram with tiny words inside them. Using Zoom-in and scrolling for each page is a no-go.

  The basic thought is that if the words of an image'd page are too small to read, we can put the Kindle into Landscape mode with the Aa key, which might help enlarge the image to fill the wider space across while keeping everything visible, requiring no scrolling to read it.   But until very recently, what we got instead was usually the same sized image with much wider margins on each side.

  The latest Amazon software for the Kindle 2, DX's and Kindle 3 (July 2010) included enhancements that can crop margins when viewing in Landscape mode so that the image or text can expand to fill the wide-screen mode.  That can make quite a difference.

  However, when the images have words that are really tiny, sometimes they're just not helped by rotating the page to Landscape mode unless there are margins we can crop, AND some images are of pages which themselves have humongous margins and a bit of text in the middle.

  With image-based pages there's no way to have something meant to be on 8-1/2" x 11" paper be highly readable on a 6" screen.  If you just enlarge it in vertical/Portrait mode, the lines go off the page.

  BUT, if there are wide margins, then if the margins ARE cropped, the image can enlarge to fill that new added space and the resolution will usually still be good because they were usually made for larger physical pages.

  It'd be nice if we could do this for Portrait mode too the way Amazon does this for Landscape mode.  The free utility utility offered may help with that although the video tutorial shows a person doing this for Landscape mode.

PDFS USING MULTIPLE COLUMNS
  You may also find yourself with a PDF with multiple columns that continue vertically for so long that you have to press Next Page to get the rest of the first column and then press Previous Page to go back to see the top of the 2nd column, etc. Very awkward and confusing too.

How PDF Scissors might help
  So, the new tool offers some help if it works well.  PDF Scissors by Gagan Mazed at SourceForge.net offers the following, in the author's words:
' What:

In short, It's a tool to crop pdfs.
Objective to create this, was to read pdf files (specially the scanned ones) easily in ebook readers, like kindle.
And by the way, it's a free tool! '
That's followed by a short, fast videoclip showing how it's done.  I used the Pause button to see the video'd procedure better, after clicking on it to take me to the larger version at YouTube since, ironically, it's too small on the PDF Scissors page to see what's happening.

The idea seems to be to crop out HALF of any given page (in Portrait mode), enlarge the width of the page-image by omitting or drastically minimizing the margins and then having the software batch all of these half pages together based on your cropping, ultimately putting each half-page onto a Landscape mode page, which will be especially helpful for multi-column pages as you won't have to scroll down and then back up with the awkward Next/Previous page button procedure.

I don't have time to try it myself tonight, but be sure to keep a copy of your PDF of course and try the utility on another copy.  Mazed goes on to say:
' How
  • Create crop areas to drop the white margins or crop columns.
  • Show all pages together in a stack.
    • Pages will be see-through with transparency.
    • This will help you a lot to decide how much to crop .
  • Create crop areas easily
    • Draw, resize, move crop areas
    • Copy / paste crop areas using usual Ctrl +C / Ctrl + V
Why:

I myself faced a lot of difficulties to read pdf in kindle (and mobile phones / internet tablets), specially the image based pdfs (scanned image pdfs). Got tired of zooming and scrolling while reading a nice book. So created this to help me 'dive into the reading'. I hope it helps you too.
'

This will be more work than many will care to put in, but if you have a PDF that's very important for you to read on an e-reader, it could be worth it.  And some will have assistants who can do the cropping for them.
  I think, though, that if Amazon ever lowers the price on its 9.7" Kindle DX Graphite (which is a beautiful reader), there'd be a run on them by people just needing a good-sized, extremely easy to read e-Ink based PDF reader.  See reactions by some hard-nosed Mobileread forum members who had long felt the Sony PRS-505 text contrast was the one to beat.  It's a very entertaining read.

UPDATE - See the FOLLOW-UP info from author PDF Scissors author Gagan Mazed and feedback from those who have tried the new tool so far.


TIP: REMINDER RE HOW TO FIND NON-AMAZON FREE BOOKS
This was written today in answer to someone who asked a question in the Comments area and is mildly modified for the blog.

Q:   I am in the UK and and trying to find all the free books everyone is talking about.  So far I only know how to get books directly from Amazon.  Are there other Kindle-friendly sites.  A friend told me I have to download free stuff from my computer and then use my wires to switch it from my computer to my kindle.  Is this correct?
  Thanks for your help.

A:   Anonymous in the UK,
At the bottom of every post for the last few months I include a link to free book sources and and how to find them everywhere.
  The shortcut for that is http://bit.ly/kfreelow3 .

  You'll see a lot of non-Amazon sites linked there (as well as the usual Amazon ones).
  (BUT I haven't added the Amazon UK free book links there yet though they are seen at the bottom of each recent blog post).

  Remember that when you get a free book from Amazon, it can be sync'd with your other Kindle-compatible devices because Amazon has the book on its servers.

  There are the usual good sources, such as feedbooks.com, mnybks.net, etc., but you can read about them at that free-books source/guide page.

  Also see (mentioned on that linked page):
  Project Gutenberg books downloadable from Project Gutenberg direct to your Kindle (no charge) using 'the Magic Catalog':
  http://bit.ly/kgutenb

  and
  How to convert any of 1 million or so free Google books to Kindle-readable books:
  http://bit.ly/milkbooks

  and
  The Internet Archive's 2 million+ free texts, most of them made readable on Kindle - see the article here at
  http://bit.ly/kwarchiveorg

That should get you started. There is also a link on that http://bit.ly/kfreelow3 page to the Amazon Kindle Community message thread in which other Kindle users give you information on how to get Kindle-readable books from other sites.


Kindle 3's   (UK: Kindle 3's),   DX Graphite

Check often: Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.
UK-Only: recently published non-classics, bestsellers, or highest-rated ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

Free Kindle Books - an update. Amazon-UK free non-classics added also

This blog tends to focus on the Kindle  (UK: K3) and its world of auxiliary apps, updates, and competitor devices.  Unlike most Kindle blogs, it has a technology-oriented view.

Because of that, rather than regale you with lists of linked free Kindle books that become available each day, I've added, into the footers of each blog article, the links where you can see at any moment the new, temporarily-free Non-classics that are available that day, or that hour.

  I know that many people use these links regularly, but I also imagine that some ignore footers, so I am doing a reminder here.  This way I can focus on news and/or tips each day, with an average of 5 articles a week.  I spend a lot more time researching than writing, as that involves reading most Kindle news articles published (often adding information in the comment-areas) and visiting several forums each day, where I also contribute in exchange for what I learn from those.

  As I've mentioned, if you're interested in general e-reader-world news that I'm monitoring as well, I use Twitter to send or retweet alerts on some of those and even, at times, more general odd news such as health-related information, and it's probably easiest to use Tweetree to see those.

 Today I'm adding links, for the temporarily-free Amazon-UK books, to the article footers.

  Unfortunately, for those of us in the U.S., the U.K. Kindlestore products are available only to UK customers.

  As with the U.S. ones, use them at any time to see the latest. These will be by bestselling, publication date, and average rating.

  This is the line that will be added to the footer for temporarily-free Non-classics:
  UK-Only: recently published non-classics, bestselling, or highest-rated ones

  The continuing Free Kindle Books page that explains the many sources available (and which I'll organize better someday) will be updated this coming week to include the UK links also.

  I generally don't list the books because (for me) it can look almost like an endorsement, so I prefer to just give people the source links.

  I hope those in the UK will also find these helpful, and the rest of us can watch the differences in offerings and pricing, although, as mentioned in an earlier article here, Amazon is resisting the Big5 movement to use the Agency model in the UK also, with fixed-prices of their choice, to be the same at all online UK e-book stores.  That article links to the UK forum discussion of this and there are currently 452 notes of reaction, pro and con on the situation.


Kindle 3's   (UK: Kindle 3's),   DX Graphite

Check often: Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.
UK-Only: recently published non-classics, bestsellers, or highest-rated ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

Free Kindle books (non-classics). See them easily anytime. UPDATE2

UPDATED April 12, 2010 - Original posting April 4, at 10:42 PM
  I added a 2nd method of seeing latest free non-classics (latest free contemporary) but also needed to add that some international Kindle users in Europe, Canada and some other countries are in high wireless-cost areas, so Amazon charges about $2.30 for the otherwise free book, sorry to say.  Amazon hopes to be able to change this someday with low-cost local arrangements.

If you want to always be able to see the latest currently free non-classics Kindle books without waiting for someone to tell you which are free today, do bookmark these two pages:
  (1) the Latest Free Nonclassics page (shortcut http://bit.ly/latestfreenonclassics)) and
  (2) the Late-Listed Free Nonclassics page (shortcut http://bit.ly/latelistedfreenonclassics), to see the 55 to 65 non-classics or non-public domain books that are free at any particular time (very often only briefly)

 This set, in two views, is the main source for free-book information used for blogs though many will prefer newest ones pointed out daily.  However, you can catch them even earlier this way if you use the link before the new books are reported.  The free non-classics usually last a few days, some less, and some stay on for quite some time.

  While I omit the hundreds of 'excerpts' for the ongoing Amazon contest, be aware that a very few of the new free non-classics displayed on these pages are promoting a "Chapter" or two.  They are clearly marked but can still be missed.

  Although the first group is sorted by 'publication date,' Amazon's publishers will sometimes offer for free -- suddenly and temporarily -- books that were published even a year to 3 years ago.  So latest free ones can be in the middle.
  Often they're so new that they're listed as least-selling of course, so I've added a link for that method also.  Use these links whenever you want to, and you'll see quickly which ones are new though.

ALTERNATE VIEWS OF THE SET
  While at the page, you can choose at top right to see them sorted by Bestselling and Average Customer Rating as well.  I've used only one image for this article, as you will quickly see which currently free e-books might be of interest depending on genre and product descriptions there.

The new free books are dominated by the Christian Fiction genre, and some will find those inspiring while others are looking for more general-interest books or for other genres.

FREE BOOK HIGHLIGHTED IN IMAGE ABOVE
The book whose image you see for this blog article is Bite Me, by Parker Blue who is offering the book free as a promo for his more recent book.  Bite Me has 9 customer reviews averaging 4-1/2 stars.  The paperback is listed at $12.78 and the Audible audio version at $13.10.

The book is described as "An edgy book for teens that spans the gap between YA and adult fiction..." and, as with so many bestseller books today, it has a vampire-hunter theme.

[From original posting, unchanged]
FREE BOOKS THAT DISAPPEARED WITHIN A DAY, AND AGENCY-PLAN SOFTWARE CHANGES
There were temporarily-free Kindle books released as free the last couple of days which are currently missing from the Kindlestore lists -- there may have been a glitch that caused the listing of a bunch of HarperCollins free-books that are currently missing.  There are also longer-term free books that are temporarily missing due to the rather huge programming changes needed to convert the store price calculations to Agency for the Big5 publishers and all their many imprints, not easily identifiable usually as under the big tent of the larger publishers.

 So, missing books are likely due to programming changes being made (or errors) in the rush to program store-wide price calculation changes needed by the time of Applestore's opening Saturday to make sure prices are as high as Apple and Big 5 publishers insist they be from now on.

  The big switchover to Apple's Agency plan requires that iBookstore publishers get all other online bookstores to change to the higher-pricing Agency plan for their e-books as a condition for their inclusion in Apple's store.
  In previous blog entries I've noted there will be taxes on these also, as that is based on states where the publisher of the book has a presence.

 The larger publishers have been very pleased to find a new bookstore willing to (and even recommending that publishers) raise prices 30-50% while demanding that other online e-bookstores do as well.

 But that meant that other bookstores like Amazon's and Fictionwise are having to switch to the Agency plan with its higher customer-pricing.
 "Competition" has brought on non-competitive prices that are, coincidentally considerably higher.

 Therefore it's not super likely that HarperCollins, who just made an Agency agreement with Amazon, would be likely to have lots of free books for more than a day or two.  If they do bring those back, as a promo, it'll be a nice surprise, but they disappeared after one day -- and if they're not brought back, then it was entirely a network programming error.   We'll see.



See the ongoing Guide to finding Free or Low-Cost Kindle books and Sources
 There is also a page of links that confine searches to mid-range priced e-books for those looking for a larger selection of non-classics below $7.

New Free Kindle Book(s) late March 2010

(Had to make a new, separate entry for this, as the RSS-feed Google Reader does not move the recent new free Kindle books to the current date on the feeds.  Click for other recent books.)

NEWLY/TEMPORARILY FREE BOOKS - NOT Recommendations, but only Alerts
UPDATED 3/26/10 (Orig'l post was dated 3/13 at 11:50 AM)
Publish on Amazon Kindle with the Digital Text Platform, by Amazon.com.   315K size (small)   Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, March 14, 2010
No customer reviews yet, current price $0.00

Text-to-speech: Enabled.  Genre: Desktop publishing, Graphic Design, Reference
From Product Description:  "A guide to publishing your book on Kindle with Amazon’s Digital Text Platform (DTP).  DTP is a fast and easy self-publishing tool that lets anyone upload and format their titles for sale in the Kindle Store.  If you have an Amazon.com account, you're already signed up with Digital Text Platform. ...  Digital Text Platform gives you everything you need to become your own publisher today."

Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus: How the Jewishness of Jesus Can Transform Your Faith, by Ann Spangler.   802K size (normal)   Publisher: Zondervan, June 1, 2009 & March 23, 2010
42 customer reviews with 4-1/2 stars out of 5, current price $0.00

Current hardcover price: $14.95.  Audio: $15.59 Genre: Christology, Bible, Faith
From Product Description:  "What would it be like to journey back to the first century and sit at the feet of Rabbi Jesus as one of his Jewish disciples? How would your understanding of the gospel have been shaped by the customs, beliefs, and traditions of the Jewish culture in which you lived?"

UPDATED 3/24/10 (Orig'l post was dated 3/13 at 11:50 AM)
The Twelve Sacred Traditions of Magnificent Mothers-in-Law, by Haywood Smith.
6 customer reviews with 5 stars out of 5, current price $0.00

Current paperback price $9.95. Genre: Family Relationships
From Product Description:  A very Southern mother-in-law's humorous advice to mothers-in-law everywhere. From the multiple New York Times bestselling author of The Red Hat Club.

New Free Kindle Books 3/13-3/14 Updated 3/26

NEWLY/TEMPORARILY FREE BOOKS - NOT Recommendations, but only Alerts
UPDATED 3/26/10 (Orig'l post was dated 3/13 at 11:50 AM)
Publish on Amazon Kindle with the Digital Text Platform, by Amazon.com.   315K size (small)   Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, March 14, 2010
No customer reviews yet, current price $0.00

Text-to-speech: Enabled.  Genre: Desktop publishing, Graphic Design, Reference
From Product Description:  "A guide to publishing your book on Kindle with Amazon’s Digital Text Platform (DTP).  DTP is a fast and easy self-publishing tool that lets anyone upload and format their titles for sale in the Kindle Store.  If you have an Amazon.com account, you're already signed up with Digital Text Platform. ...  Digital Text Platform gives you everything you need to become your own publisher today."

Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus: How the Jewishness of Jesus Can Transform Your Faith, by Ann Spangler.   802K size (normal)   Publisher: Zondervan, June 1, 2009
42 customer reviews with 4-1/2 stars out of 5, current price $0.00

Current hardcover price: $14.95.  Audio: $15.59 Genre: Christology, Bible, Faith
From Product Description:  What would it be like to journey back to the first century and sit at the feet of Rabbi Jesus as one of his Jewish disciples? How would your understanding of the gospel have been shaped by the customs, beliefs, and traditions of the Jewish culture in which you lived?

UPDATED 3/24/10 (Orig'l post was dated 3/13 at 11:50 AM)
The Twelve Sacred Traditions of Magnificent Mothers-in-Law, by Haywood Smith.
6 customer reviews with 5 stars out of 5, current price $0.00

Current paperback price $9.95. Genre: Family Relationships
From Product Description:  A very Southern mother-in-law's humorous advice to mothers-in-law everywhere. From the multiple New York Times bestselling author of The Red Hat Club.

UPDATED 3/14/10 (Orig'l post was dated 3/13 at 11:50 AM)
Take One (Above The Line Series #1), by Karen Kingsbury.
34 customer reviews with 4-1/2 stars out of 5, current price $0.00

Current hardcover price $14.99; paperback price $6.00.  Digital List price was set at $11.99. This Kindle book is published by Zondervan with a displayed date of March 10, as a free Kindle book promo, I guess.  As with so many of Amazon's faster-selling Kindle books lately, this is labeled Christian Fiction.  It's about two who decide to make a feature film in Hollywood and their travails with that process.  There aren't any external newspaper reviews cited though.


The Dark Tide (Free for a Limited Time - With Bonus Material), by Andrew Gross
55 customer reviews with 4 stars out of 5, current price $0.00.

This is a pre-order for March 23 release date (Harper Collins)
At its former Amazon Kindle listing (without the bonus material) where the reviews are shown, the Kindle price is listed as $7.99. The free copy will be, as usual, temporary, for a relatively newer book (2008).


Rides a Dread Legion Free, with Bonus Material, by Raymond E. Feist.
33 customer reviews, with 4 stars out of 5, current price $0.00

This is another pre-order for March 23 release date (Eos)
At an alternate Amazon Kindle listing (without the bonus material) where the reviews are shown, the Kindle price is listed as $7.99 although the little box underneath the main header says that the Kindle Edition is $12.59. A new paperback edition, with the extended title of Rides a Dread Legion: Book One of the Demonwar Saga (Mass Market Paperback) is being released on April for $7.99 according to that little box.
The free copy will be, as usual, temporary, for a relatively newer book.




Stopping Time, Part 1
by Melissa Marr
March 16 pre-order
Temporary price $0.00
Stopping Time, Part 2
by Melissa Marr
March 23 pre-order
Temporary price $0.99 - now $0.00

Young adult novels, fantasy genre. Her Ink Exchange for Harper Collins received a positive review by The Washington Post's Mary Quattlebaum: "As the sequel to last year's popular Wicked Lovely, Ink Exchange is even more compelling, thanks to Melissa Marr's more nuanced characterizations..."

HarperCollins is putting a lot of teen-market money behind Marr. See the video they've produced.



See the ongoing Guide to finding Free or Low-Cost Kindle books and Sources
There's also a page of links that confine searches to mid-range priced e-books.

British Library's 65,000 free books for Kindle: Update3

This is an update to (1) the detailed original report, the (2) follow-up story on reactions and questions about the file format used and (3) a look at what the Penny Dreadfuls collection is.

Information Today's Barbara Quint reports on The British Library's press release of February 23.

Much has been written about the final product looking exactly like the copies of the original editions, but in my mind it hasn't been totally clear from the Library whether that pertains to the Kindle edition or to just the print-on-demand copies that one can buy.  In an earlier update I wondered about the file-format and how they would retain the look of the originals without their being images rather than text.  I still haven't found anything solid on that, though I did quote NextWeb as writing that "...users of their Kindle eReader" would be able to "access historically accurate digital representations" but that could mean the printed copies available on-demand (and for $) to Amazon Kindle users.  Let us know if you hear anything definitive on that.

 Will the subsidiary of Amazon that provides printed copies be printing from Kindle copies or the copies that Microsoft originally scanned?  Could be the latter.  The Kindle copies are being made secondarily.  I guess we'll know fairly soon as they're due out in the Spring and the Library's press release is otherwise full of info. The provider of printed copies will be CreateSpace.com (originally CustomFlix Labs and BookSurge, Inc. and now a DBA for On-Demand Publishing LLC).  BL will receive some revenue from the Print-On-Demand sales, which will help it fund more digitization.

Quint writes:
'  How would you like to read a copy of a book by Charles Dickens or Jane Austen that looks exactly like the copies those authors held in their hands, ink fresh from the printers?  How would you like to read some of the books that the first readers of those books probably wouldn't admit they read-the so-called "penny dreadfuls"?  Last year, Microsoft completed its digitization obligations to The British Library (BL; www.bl.uk) and handed over 25 million pages in 65,000 19th-century books.  As yet the digital copies, like the hard copies, have only been readable by visitors to The British Library Reading Room.

  Later this spring, however, the digital copies will be available to any and all users of the Amazon Kindle ebook reader for free. A print-on-demand service will provide optional paperback copies to readers in the U.S., U.K., Germany, and France. Expect to see the digital collection appear elsewhere as well. The Amazon arrangement is nonexclusive. '
As was said in the first newspaper report, "To meet the ever increasing demands of our users the library is negotiating with other key industry players to ensure we maximise potential for access."
  The Kindle is just the first e-reader for which an agreement was reached.

Today's article by Quint explains how it happened that Microsoft arranged to digitize the books, begun in 2005-2006.  After they halted their "Live Search Books" project, which was begun to compete with the new Google Books project at the time, they finished the scanning of the books and, per BL, completed the agreement but "gave us the content to do with what we wish and waived all their rights."
  Jacob Lant, The British Library's press officer, pointed out that BL "...provided the space and expertise in preservation and collection management, while the third-party scanning was paid by Microsoft."

As we know, about 35-40% of the items are unique to the Library or inaccessible in major libraries elsewhere.   The 65,000 Kindle books will cover, Quint writes, philosophy, history, poetry, and literature.

You can go to the Library press release and the Information Today article (links above) to read much more about this, including details of the offerings

Dame Lynne Brindley, chief executive of The British Library, again referred to the deal with Amazon as a "landmark agreement" in many ways.  The Library is talking to other potential partners, and they expect to supply more content to Kindle and Amazon.

NOTE:
  Interestingly, Lant mentions that Google had approached them in the past but the Library didn't agree to the terms.  "In the future, we might talk to them, but all deals must be on our terms as rightsholders."

New post to make an update show up in Google Reader

Google Reader is not seeing the Update (10th) to the Free and Low Cost books made today.  So this is just a link to the blog update for people using that reader.  Apologies for the eye-sore

The Motley Fool on Apple's $15 e-book price plan / Free Kindles?

The Motley Fool is a website that gives investment advice.
  Wikipedia says of Motley Fool: "According to Mark Hulbert of The Hulbert Financial Digest,  for the past five years the brothers have earned an average return of 22%, annualized, versus a comparable return of 7% for the Wilshire 5000."

  The Wikipedia article also points out that in 2003, The Motley Fool Investment Guide was called the "#1 All-Time Classic" by investment club members of the NAIC

A couple of days ago, they posted a column by analyst Rick Munarriz, titled Don't Put Up With a 50% Price Hike."

Some choice excerpts (they don't mince words at that site):
' The e-book revolution is about to be tested. Now that Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) has apparently caved to one publisher's request for higher selling prices, the days of $9.99 digital best-sellers may be numbered.

Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) has to be loving this.   It's the one that has been feeding publishers with dreams of pushing e-books for $12.99 to $14.99 a pop when its iPad comes out in a few weeks.

It's a brilliant move on Apple's part.  No one is going to pay at least $500 for an e-book device.  If the iPad succeeds it will be because it's a jack-of-all-leisure-trades...

Apple's new pricing, though, is a dagger to dedicated e-book readers.  Publishers will make sure that its digital reads are priced identically across platforms, and that means that it will be harder for Amazon, Sony (NYSE: SNE), and Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) to market their gadgets...Buying a digital book for slightly less than a physical hardcover won't be a difficult economic decision.

The thinner the pricing disparity, the less likely that consumers will make the switch.  Bibliophiles aren't dumb.  I hear they're well read.  They will also be quick to realize that digital books can't be resold, swapped, or shared like physical reads.  This will make it even harder to justify the higher prices.

Next of Kindle
Amazon can fight back. It can reach out to newspaper companies and offer highly subsidized -- perhaps even newspaper-branded -- Kindles for folks committing to long-term digital subscriptions. [See 2nd article below.]
. . .
Ultimately, consumers will rebel.  They won't pay $14.99 unless ALL publishers play along.  Even then, there are the free public domain or nearly free indie author works put out through the store.
. . .
This doesn't mean that Apple will get away with this tricky feat.

If the digital migration of music and video taught us anything it's that CDs and DVDs got cheaper and still sold fewer copies.  Physical book prices will gravitate lower and sales will begin to shrink.  If $9.99 is the magical price point for books -- as it was digital albums -- the marketplace will make it happen. If not, say hello to the playing field leveler's little friend: Piracy.

Consumers always have the last laugh

There is no law that states that publishers need to sell digital books at the same thin margins as their leafy reads.  However, $15 for an e-book is going to be harder to swallow than a bowl of poi.
. . .
Publishers should be embracing $8-$10 price points for digital books for many of the same reasons (lack of reselling, swapping, or permanent sharing) that will drum up incremental sales.  It's also hard to deny the huge costs savings of not having to print, ship, and gobble back returns on physical books.

If the publishers don't get it now, readers will let them know.

However, the move to inch prices higher after Amazon has already sold millions of Kindles isn't right.  Folks will rebel.  Apple may laugh now.  Real world superstores Borders (NYSE: BGP) and even Nook daddy Barnes & Noble may be chuckling on the sidelines.

But it won't end that way: Amazon -- and more importantly e-book readers -- will have the last laugh here. '

FREE KINDLE WITH AMAZON PRIME BEING CONSIDERED??
The TechCrunch article by Michael Arrington of CrunchPad infamy has been reposted by what seems hundreds of blogs and tweeters.  The article is based on information from "A reliable source " that Amazon "wants to give a free Kindle to every Amazon Prime subscriber," once they "work out how to do it without losing money."

Yes that could be an obstacle.  One clue is that in the earlier trial, in which they gave heavy Amazon buyers a chance to buy the Kindle but KEEP it for a full refund if they didn't like it, they chose what some called "best customers" and in that case it included having bought many books from Amazon, showing an interest in reading.

The article explains:
' Amazon Prime is a subscription product that gives customers free two day shipping on everything they buy from Amazon. The current fee is $79/year.  

These are Amazon’s very best customers – the ones who tend to make multiple purchases per month.  And they are also likely to buy multiple books per month on their Kindle devices.  If those users buy enough books, and Amazon gets the production costs of the Kindle down enough, Amazon can get Kindles into “millions” of people’s hands without losing their shirt.  At least when the goal is to break even or better over the course of a couple of years, the expected lifetime of a Kindle. '
My first thought a few days ago was what a good idea it might be to leak this, as many might join Prime right away and I wasn't sure I wanted to contribute to that.  After a couple of days, I felt it is probably worse to not even mention the possibility, so here it is.  On the Amazon forums, customers are saying they'd love to have another Kindle for the spouse, family, etc.  In that case they'd be sharing e-books on one account often, so that's probably not the ideal situation for Amazon, for almost giving away the device.

As for the Prime membership feature, "Up to four household members may share this membership."  The normal free-trial period is one-month but they sometimes offer a longer trial to those who buy a lot.  Other aspects of it are explained under the Amazon Prime FAQ there.  But I would not get one just because an unnamed source said that eventually a free Amazon Kindle might come with it.  The plan makes sense for heavier buyers who want their products right away.  It would not be ideal for people who buy only e-books from Amazon :-).

 Still, if they can swing this somehow, it'd be nice, though I guess some large publishers and competitors wouldn't agree.

The British Library and Amazon: forgotten literary gems for free on the Kindle

Amazon Kindle owners discussing in the forums how the Kindle is like "literary crack" for them will find a bit more to enjoy now that the The British Library’s new joint venture with Amazon will make more 19th century fiction available for free through the Kindle ebook reader.

Dame Lynne Brindley, writing for The Times (UK), describes it as opening up
' a new global readership for forgotten literary gems.  Kindle users will be able to download, free of charge, 25m pages of digitised books, from noteworthy editions of well known authors like Dickens, Conan Doyle and Thomas Hardy to rare early 19th century fiction and even the UK’s best collection of ‘penny dreadfuls’.
  People who want their own copies can also have them despatched direct through Amazon’s print-on-demand service. Super Saver Delivery meets the gothic novel. '
Microsoft worked with the Library to digitize 65,000 out of copyright books and to develop enhanced online offerings of collected works.

Partnerships with higher educational organizations also made possible the digitizing of the Library's historic newspaper collections, already online.  Click on the link to see what that's like.  In describing the importance of the latest partnership, Dame Brindley writes:
' Looking back 10 years from now, the agreement with Amazon could represent a significant landmark on the journey that is now underway.  Freeing historic books from the shelves has the potential to revolutionise access to the world’s greatest library resources. '
A second story at The Times gives additional details.  The 65,000 newly scanned works are available for free download to the Kindle this spring and will be readable online by the public for free.
' Like the onscreen versions, the paperbacks, costing £15-£20, will look like the frequently rare 19th-century editions in the library’s collection — including their typeface and illustrations. Originals of works by Austen and Dickens typically cost at least £250.
. . .
  Altogether, 35%-40% of the library’s 19th-century printed books — now all digitised — are inaccessible in other public libraries and are difficult to find in second-hand or internet bookshops. '
UPDATE - The Next Web describes it this way:
' As for Amazon, not only will they enable users of their Kindle eReader to access historically accurate digital representations of thousands of famous books, but Amazon customers will also be able to order printed copies for between £15 and £20 including original typefaces and illustrations. '
UPDATE2 - Here's a follow-up article with more information on the books.

In the meantime, a weekend reminder:
LINKS FOR SEARCHING FOR FREE OR LOW-COST E-BOOKS
  As ever, here is the ongoing set of links for various Searches for free or low-cost Kindle-compatible books.

  I've added a search there for non-classics or non-public-domain books which are under $9.99 and are sorted by bestsellers.  This search is for a time when Macmillan and others of the Big6 publishers (and Apple iBookstore as driving force) have pushed Amazon to the "Agency" model of prices from $13 to $15 for NY Times best sellers, which means they probably won't sell that many.