Special Japan Earthquake 'Aftershocks' book temporarily free again

2:46: Aftershocks: Stories from the Japan Earthquake, by The quakebook community, edited by Our Man in Abiko, 24 customer reviews, 5 stars

  Although the file was available via Amazon for $0.00 for one morning, on May 20, via the one-click box, it was already no longer free later that day and was listed as $9.99.  So, this lasted barely half a day last time.  They may have had an unanticipated number of downloads that day.

From the Product Description: "In just over a week, a group of unpaid professional and citizen journalists who met on Twitter created a book to raise money for Japanese Red Cross earthquake and tsunami relief efforts.  In addition to essays, artwork and photographs submitted by people around the world, including people who endured the disaster and journalists who covered it... contains...work created specifically for the book by authors William Gibson, Barry Eisler and Jake Adelstein."

“The primary goal,” says the book's editor, a British resident of Japan, “is to record the moment, and in doing so raise money for the Japanese Red Cross Society to help the thousands of homeless, hungry and cold survivors of the earthquake and tsunami. The biggest frustration for many of us was being unable to help these victims..."

Amazon has highlighted this book for weeks.  Now that it's free again for however long, there's no revenue during this time that they'd normally just forward to the Japanese Red Cross Society, the ebook's product page points out that a donation can still be made to American Red Cross Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami fund.  The many customer reviews are worth a read if you're wondering whether to download the book.


LONG, with UK
Kindle 3's   (UK: Kindle 3's)   K3 Special ($114)   K3-3G Special ($164)   DX Graphite

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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, a few, mostly-temporary - 5/20/11

UNUSUAL, MOSTLY TEMPORARILY FREE, and under $1 BOOK OFFERINGS HIGHLIGHTED
These don't include previews, teaser chapters, or individual short stories.  With an occasional exception, these are usually informational books that may be lost in all the larger listings you can see in the links-box below.

2:46: Aftershocks: Stories from the Japan Earthquake, by The quakebook community, edited by Our Man in Abiko, 24 customer reviews, 5 stars

  UPDATE As of 2:55 PM PST, I received an alert by firedawn in the Comments area: Although the file was available via Amazon for $0.00 this morning, via the one-click box, it's already no longer free and is now listed as $9.99. End of Update.  So, this lasted barely half a day.  They may have had an unanticipated number of downloads.

From the Product Description: "In just over a week, a group of unpaid professional and citizen journalists who met on Twitter created a book to raise money for Japanese Red Cross earthquake and tsunami relief efforts.  In addition to essays, artwork and photographs submitted by people around the world, including people who endured the disaster and journalists who covered it... contains...work created specifically for the book by authors William Gibson, Barry Eisler and Jake Adelstein."

“The primary goal,” says the book's editor, a British resident of Japan, “is to record the moment, and in doing so raise money for the Japanese Red Cross Society to help the thousands of homeless, hungry and cold survivors of the earthquake and tsunami. The biggest frustration for many of us was being unable to help these victims..."

Amazon has highlighted this book for weeks.  Now that it's free for apparently a few days and therefore there's no revenue during this time that they'd normally just forward to the Japanese Red Cross Society, the ebook's product page points out that a donation can still be made to American Red Cross Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami fund.  The many customer reviews are worth a read if you're wondering whether to download the book.
[ Again, Amazon's $0.00 price lasted only 1/2 day]

A couple of other new free books that caught my eye
1. How To Publish An Ebook On A Budget - An Author's Guide to the Free Yet Professional Way to Get Your Writing Up For Sale on Amazon Kindle, Apple iBooks, Barnes & Noble NOOK, Smashwords and more, by Stephanie Zia, 3 customer reviews, 5 stars

From the Product description: "Written in a straightforward, chatty, easy-to-understand style by a journalist and author of print published fiction and non-fiction.

Includes a step-by-step guide to making ebook covers and thumbnails suitable for the digital stores using free links and the free software that's already in your computer.

With integrated links throughout to help you on your way and for further study."

2. Ashes, by Scott Nicholson, 17 customer reviews, 4 stars

From the Product Description: DRM-free and 99 cents for a limited time [but $0.00 temporarily as of 5/19], professionally formatted by Dellaster Design.  A collection of 12 supernatural stories by bestselling author Scott Nicholson, including "Scarecrow Boy," "Dog Person" and "Sewing Circle."
  Said to be more like melancholy ghost stories.
 

As before, check the below whenever you can:

Temporarily-free books - Non-classics - USA: by: NEW: Last 30+ days  May 2011    Publication Date   Late-listed    Bestselling   High-ratings UK: PubDate   Popular TIP: Battery-use advice from Amazon

Most Popular Free K-Books U.S. & Int'l (NOT UK):    Top 100 free UK-Only:    Top 100 free USEFUL for your Kindle (U.S. only, for now):   99c Notepad,   99c CalendarPro,   99c Converter

Google's Person Finder (Japan) + the Kindle 3G lookup for emergencies. UPDATE

At the left is Google's new Person-Finder: 2011 Japan Earthquake tool.   Like others, I added it in the top area of the webpage yesterday, and Google already has a database of over 40,000 names in it.

 You enter the  name of the person you're looking for or the name of someone you have information about.

  In connection with that, I saw a story last night about a Melbourne family looking for their son/nephew, Jason, who was visiting Sendai and had called his mother to say he was fine, after the earthquake, but then the tsunami hit and they didn't hear from him after that.  Disconcerting.

  There are several stories included but that's all there was about him, so I put his name into the Person Finder web form and found information from someone about Jason -- that he was okay, and it also let the family know where he was staying.  Phones weren't working on Sendai of course.  You can click on the image at the right to see the web page result.

That was offtopic.  What about the Kindle?
   It was hard to think about the Kindle last night but someone sent me a story from the Instapundit.com site that does involve the use of the Kindle's free 3G cellular wireless capability, which often comes in handy.  Glenn Reynolds's article was about reader Mary Forman's note "in praise of the Kindle":

' “We have been unable to reach our daughter in Morioka, Iwate Prefecture, since the earthquake struck almost 20 hours ago.  We just received an email from her (she’s fine) which she sent from a friend’s 3G Kindle!  Put that on your disaster list!”

  Noted.  As a test, I blogged from my Kindle once. It worked, but it wasn’t easy with that tiny keyboard. . . .

  UPDATE: Reader Matt Potter emails: “Just a follow up to the Kindle email comms. My friend’s daughter was a missionary in Haiti at the time of the earthquake.  They primarily used text messages to arrange evacuation.  The layering of communications in the modern world now offers these kind of capabilities.” Yes, text-messaging often works when regular calls won’t get through. '

That was actually done via email with the experimental free 3G web-access feature, in its 4th year, included in the purchase-price of the Kindle (UK: K3).  And I agree with Reynolds -- I wouldn't want to blog on the Kindle, but it's great for needed web lookups wherever you happen to be.

UPDATE
Web-lookups you can do almost anywhere
  . Get step by step directions to drive, walk or bicycle to your destination (when lost).
  . Free, downloadable Kindle Bookmarks or WebLinks file for sites optmized for the Kindle.  In book form, this has workarounds for various oddities you might encounter when using gmail and other Google features and includes good links to mobile-device optimized sites, with some links that are to menu trees of many good links.

On this Kindleworld website, I also have links, near the top, to BBC's very informative live reports and constant video of the situation in Japan, as the situation is overwhelming.

 HuffPo also has aggregated news updates and video at the bottom of their Japan earthquake page.  Amazon has Red Cross donation boxes on their pages if you'd like to help in that way.


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

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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.