Showing posts with label science fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science fiction. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Free Kindle Books page: Low-Cost also. Revised. VERSION 4a - Dec. 19-21, 2011 Update

Update - 12/15/11 - Amazon has changed the coding of the display of Kindle books -- types and sorting methods -- so I am changing the various links.

UPDATES for Dec. 20-21 include adding links for Classics + Public Domain ONLY, as they include latest governmental and organizational information books and documents, and some of the latter are intriguing.  Also updated Feedbooks info.

UPDATE Dec. 19, 2011 to change all links and add some
First notification Dec. 15 was not complete and it's ready now (US books).  Please Let me know of any errors in the links. 

The Interim post said: Here are the latest correct links for current free non-classics, for the last two months, and then by various sorts for all free non-classics.

Nov 2011,  Dec 2011 (re-done)
   Also, all currently free non-classics sorted by:
   Publication Date   Bestselling    High ratings

   Adding, for interim alert, Highly rated, under $1

And, of course, here's the Kindle Daily Deal, which changes shortly after midnight each day.

Amazon Top 100   (Also, UK-only)  along with Amazon's own Limited Time Free Promos.


ALL REVISED LINKS FOR FREE KINDLE BOOKS PAGE ARE BELOW
  The various links below are now revised to work with the new coding, Monday the 19th  In the meantime, the information on free book sources remains accurate. The UK links at the end still need revising though.


This long-standing blog entry, Free Kindle Books (begun in 2009), was revised April 10, 2011 to remove most of the chronological changes made over the last two years as it became too confusing to read.

  It was also updated again soon after that for the many changes to the free and low-cost Kindle books area at Amazon.  Besides the 33,000+  free, complete books (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

  UPDATE-2:  NOTE that as of Nov. 2011, Amazon Prime customers can borrow one book per month from a selection of 5,000+  (Link: amzn.to/kprimebooks) which includes over 100+ New York Times Bestsellers, with no due-dates and no waiting lists.

  And as of September 21, 2011, Amazon Kindle customers can borrow Kindle books from 11,000+ public libraries in the U.S.
 [ End of Update-2, added Nov. 10, 2011.]


Find Free Kindle books plus Lower-Cost Kindle Books
Click here first for most recently published NON-classics under $1 or try that list sorted by bestselling.  There are more new temporarily-free books or discount-promos on most days, but also prices do change back, so check them regularly.

  UPDATE-1:  NOTE that the Amazon book promos tend to be temporary and when the price goes back up, Amazon updates the product page $-amounts faster than they update the pricing amounts for the database used for the Amazon searches.  You'll note that they're in flux often, so ignore the few that are higher than $0.99 the search-value.

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,  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, although 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'll try later to again 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.
  I'll test these more before giving links to Kindle book lists that show no Chapters or Previews or Excerpts, with the downside that titles of full books which include one of these words won't be on these lists.
  But later on this particular set

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 always 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 best-selling free nonclassics -- as these can change in a couple of hours and there are about 6 pages of them at any given time.

Another Amazon Change - "Relevance," which I've called "LateListed."
It shows up now only in certain circumstances and sometimes is called 'default' so I'm ignoring it at this point.
"By Relevance" ('default') or Late-listed ebooks tended 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.  I'll watch what they're doing it with it these days and see if I can make sense of it.

  With the links below you can  quickly see only the small selection of currently-free contemporary Kindle books sorted also by Publication Date, Bestsellers (linked just above) or by the Average Customer-Rating, as that's made easier with the prepared links on this page.

  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.

  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.

SUMMING UP:
MAIN FREE KINDLE BOOK SEARCH LINKS
1.  INCLUDING CLASSICS & PUBLIC DOMAIN (12/19/11)
    Amazon's now almost 33,000+ 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.


   UPDATE 12/20-21 to include Public Domain (Classics included) titles ONLY
2.  CLASSICS & PUBLIC DOMAIN ONLY
    The Public Domain ones include later books or documents that are offered to the public by government or informational organizations.
    As of today, 12/20/2011, there are over 29,000 Classics and Public Domain offerings.  These are sorted by:
      Bestselling or by Highest Rated   or by Publication Date
    The last, publication-date, sort is best for latest free government or organizational information releases on quite esoteric subjects. [End of Update]


3.  NON-CLASSICS ONLY (mainly)
 Amazon's CURRENTLY FREE Non-Classics sorted by Bestselling, or by Highest Rated, or by Publication Date.

    UK links added:
    Recently published free books and bestsellers


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

This should help with finding Amazon's Kindle Digital-Text Platform (DTP)-published authors' new self-published books and other-publisher Kindle books that are discounted):

        (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 (From $0.01 to $1)
    a. For Under $1.00     Non-Classics sorted by NEWEST publication date
    b. For Under $1.00     Non-Classics sorted by BESTSELLING books
    c. For Under $1.00     Non-Classics sorted by CUSTOMER RATINGS.

    and links for non-classics FROM $1 to $1.99 (mostly)
    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
    c. From $1 to $1.99     Non-Classics sorted by CUSTOMER RATINGS

    and links for non-classics FROM $2 to $2.99 (mostly)
    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
    c. From $2 to $2.99     Non-Classics sorted by CUSTOMER RATINGS

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

4.  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.

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

6.  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 re-flowed text of ePub and Kindle-Mobi books may be easier to read than original layout PDFs.


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.

FURTHER UPDATE 12/20-21, 2011
Feedbooks Dedicated Kindle Guide
Commenter Tom Semple pointed out that Feedbooks.com discontinued the Kindle Guide but has instructions for downloading the Kindle-compatible editions as well as a link for downloading them direct to the Kindle. [End of Update]

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.

  That lists contemporary Kindle books priced from $3.00 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.
  These start at $3 because $0 to $2.99 range is already covered above.
  When at the page results, you can sort by low-to-high or high-to low also, using the options in the top, right-hand corner.

  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.
  And here's Bestsellers in Kindle books for 2011 so far (Dec. 19 Update).


*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 Touch 3G   Kindle Touch WiFi   Kindle Basic   (UK: KBasic)   Kindle Fire
Kindle Keybd 3G   (UK: Kindle Keybd 3G)   K3 Special Offers   K3-3G Special Offers   DX

Check often: Temporarily-free recently published ones
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.  Liked-books under $1
UK-Only: recently published free books, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

  *Click* to Return to the HOME PAGE.  Or click on the web browser's BACK button

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

F. Paul Wilson's LaNague Fed'n Series Exclusive on Kindle

NYTimes bestselling F. Paul Wilson, noted for his horror and science fiction books, has decided to make available, exclusively at Amazon for the next year, 5 books in his LaNague Federation series

The books have not been available in e-book form until now, and Wilson chose to use Amazon's self-service Digital Text Platform to upload these books and make them available to Kindle customers globally.  This means that in July when the new publisher price arrangements are effective (and his may be starting now), he will be getting 70% of the price.  All of these books are $2.99.
  This is more attractive for authors who own the electronic rights to their books than the 20-25% (or less) they get from the large traditional publishers.

MarketWatch quotes Amazon: "One of the great things about Kindle is the ability for authors to make previously out-of-print titles available for their readers again," said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President, Kindle Content.  "For the first time ever, F. Paul Wilson's fans will be able to discover their favorite titles electronically, and new fans can find these previously out-of-print titles more easily than ever before."

The titles from the LaNague Federation series are:
-- "An Enemy of the State," winner of the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award
-- "Wheels Within Wheels," winner of the first Prometheus Award
-- "The Tery"
-- "Dydeetown World," on the American Library Association's list of "Best Books for Young Adults" and on the New York Public Library's recommended list of "Books for the Teen Age"
-- "Healer," winner of the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award

F. Paul Wilson has won the Stoker, Inkpot, Porgie and Prometheus awards and has written more than 40 books, translated into 24 languages.  'His work has been adapted for film and TV: his novel "The Keep" was made into a 1983 film directed by Michael Mann, and many of his stories have been adapted into teleplays that have aired on Showtime and the Sci-Fi Channel (now called SyFy).'

Amazon's press release includes a quote from author Wilson:
' "I'm thrilled that I'm able to make all five novels of the LaNague Federation series -- including an additional five bonus short stories -- available for the first time in digital, and for the first time all together as a series," said F. Paul Wilson. "The result is a giant roman à thèse exclusively for Kindle readers.  It's wonderful that Kindle and the Digital Text Platform provide a convenient channel for authors like me to reintroduce classic titles to a whole new audience." '
NOTE:
Amazon now has a new number quoted for books available for the Kindle, as they are counting, as they should, the books that are Kindle compatible and available at places like The Internet Archive, Project Gutenberg, and other sites.

  After citing the 450,000 books available at the Kindlestore itself which they describe as "the largest selection of the most popular books people want to read" they add that "Over 1.8 million free, out-of-copyright, pre-1923 books are also available to read on Kindle..."



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.

Sunday, February 7, 2010

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.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Weekend books reminder: free, lowcost, and $ - Update3

Something a bit different for this (late) weekend-reminder pon mostly free and low-cost books. This week I'm including the 4-1/2 to 5-star rated books (customer-rating system) which have made it to the 25 Amazon Bestsellers of the current hour (this does change hourly).

  Most are free, but some aren't.  If the few $-ones are doing that well against the free books, they're probably worth a look.

  The usual free- or low-cost book links will follow this new listing (mainly for newcomers who may not have checked the bestseller lists yet  The Lost Symbol isn't on this particular list although it's selling best.  This just lists the ones with more than 4 stars average received.

Urge To
Urge To Kill, by John Lutz
4.3 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)

Kindle Price: $0.00
According To
According To Jane, by Marilyn Brant
4.6 out of 5 stars (12 customer reviews)

Kindle Price: $0.00

The Autobiography
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, by Benjamin Franklin 1706-1790
5.0 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)

Kindle Price: $0.00

The Help
The Help, by KATHRYN STOCKETT
4.8 out of 5 stars (911 customer reviews)

Kindle Price: $9.99


The Last
The Last Song, by Nicholas Sparks
4.3 out of 5 stars (27 customer reviews)

Kindle Price: $9.99

Say Youre
Say You're One of Them (Oprah's Book Club), by Uwem Akpan
4.6 out of 5 stars (39 customer reviews)

Kindle Price: $6.99

The Adventures
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan, Sir Doyle
4.4 out of 5 stars (55 customer reviews)

Kindle Price: $0.00

Pride and
Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
4.5 out of 5 stars (881 customer reviews)

Kindle Price: $0.00


The Girl
The Girl Who Played with Fire, by Stieg Larsson
4.4 out of 5 stars (229 customer reviews)

Kindle Price: $9.99

The Art
The Art of War, by 6th cent. B.C. Sunzi
4.5 out of 5 stars (8 customer reviews)

Kindle Price: $0.00

MetaGame
MetaGame, by Sam Landstrom
4.4 out of 5 stars (18 customer reviews)

Kindle Price: $0.01

The Legends
The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights, by Sir James, Knowles 1831-1908
4.3 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)

Kindle Price: $0.00


Here are Mobile Reference Kindle books:
. sorted by bestselling
. sorted by "low to high" price
. sorted by avg. customer review
. sorted by most recently published
. sorted by relevance


As ever, the weekend reminder highlights the "Free [or low-cost] Kindle books box from this page's right-side-column.


For Kindle newcomers especially:  In addition to the usual new $$$-books, we can enjoy Classics for free, both from Amazon and from other book sites, many directly downloadable to the Kindle.  A few are promotional and free for only a while.

1.  Amazon's 7,000+ free books, sorted by:
        "Bestselling" or by "Avg Customer Review"

2.  Amazon's currently free  Non-Classics - This one changes.

    a. That link above is to Non-Classics sorted by BESTSELLERS.
    b. Here are Non-Classics sorted by NEWEST books first.

3.  "Big Deals on Kindle" - This one doesn't change enough.

4.  Project Gutenberg e-books (MOBI ed) catalog for Kindles.  You can 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 this site.

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




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.

  Michael Rubin is still offering, for an unspecified time, the full text of his $35 "Droidmaker" book on George Lucas and Lucasfilm via a set of 3 PDFs.  The photos from the book are included.

Some of this will be redundant, but at least there are a lot of choices for people on a budget.

Friday, September 4, 2009

Weekend books reminder: free and under $1 ones - Update2

UPDATE 9/4/09 - Two featured free books 8/29 are back to $9.60 as of today.
  So, if at all interested in a newer free book, download it while you can.
  I'll look for other interesting ones this weekend.

REGULAR UPDATE: 8/29/09 - Original posting was 7/26/09.
    These two books were free but now cost $9.99.  They're here for the record.

I'm not around much on the weekends - so, for the many new readers who visit each day and for those who don't usually have time to explore the right-hand column of more permanent links to useful tips and information, I'll highlight the "Free [or low-cost] Kindle books box from that side-column.

The book above is Raising Jake by Charlie Carillo, and the book on the left is The Sari Shop Widow by Shobhan Bantwal.

  Click on the images to get the details for each book.
      Both are $0.00 currently. As of 9/4/09, these are both $9.60 now. The free books that are newer ones are often temporary promotional items by Amazon, and it's hard to know which ones are.


Besides the usual new $$$-books, we can enjoy Classics for free, both from Amazon and from other book sites, many directly downloadable to the Kindle.  A few are promotional and free for only a while.

1.  Amazon's 7,000+ free books, sorted by:
        "Bestselling" or by "Avg Customer Review"

2.  Amazon's currently free  Non-Classics - This one changes.

    a. That link above is to Non-Classics sorted by BESTSELLERS.
    b. Here are Non-Classics sorted by NEWEST first.

3.  "Big Deals on Kindle" - This one doesn't change enough.

4.  Project Gutenberg e-books (MOBI ed) catalog for Kindles.  You can 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 this site.

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




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.

AND remember Michael Rubin is offering, for a limited time, the full text of his $35 "Droidmaker" book on George Lucas and Lucasfilm via a set of 3 PDFs.  The photos from the book are included.

Some of this will be redundant, but at least there are a lot of choices for people on a budget.



Updated 8/29/09

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Amazon's most-popular free books and "big deals"

For those new to the Kindle or thinking of getting one, here is Amazon's listing of
the most popular free books at Amazon, both classic and non-classic, and about 7,000 other free books that are available there.

Here are their free non-classics, sorted by most popular titles and the same free non-classics, sorted by most relevant.

Earlier I recommended a few that I've downloaded, including a few others that were not free but which are less than $1, and recommended a forum thread where you can find out how to get books from other sites.

Don't miss their "Big Deals" page that highlights the latest (and often temporarily) "Free on Kindle" books.
Random House is offering a "free library" of books to download at no charge until October to introduce new readers to popular and acclaimed science fiction and fantasy series, including John Birmingham's Weapons of Choice, and Michael Moorcock's Elric: The Stealer of Souls.
Amazon's also currently featuring 16 books in the "Romance" genre.

It's a page you should check often, as they change the featured items regularly.

Also note they are featuring elsewhere another free book that explains how Green initiatives actually are a great way to cut costs in this economy - Green Cost Cutting: Five Ways to Get Lean Now