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
Hi,
ReplyDeleteYour blog is great. Just one note about the "free books". I'm from Portugal, I should receive my new Kindle next week and the books you mention as "free" appear for the region "Europe" with a cost of $2.30 :-( That is a bit disappointing! That is the cost we will pay for a "roaming call" to the US, I believe, when we download the book wirelessly. It would be interesting if we had the option of "buying" those books through the PC, without wireless download, in which case they should indeed be free, right? (I believe that is no VAT, as the VAT applied to $0 is...$0).
JBernard,
ReplyDeleteThanks for letting me know you enjoy the blog :-)
Yikes. I found out this is true for someone in other international areas too, though I can't remember if it was Australia or the UK. I suspect it is true for many countries.
You're exactly right that there should be an option to get the book directly through the PC without wireless download. I suspect there's no such option because some people will be doing that anyway, especially when or where reception is not ideal and that they've factored in the costs to get a price that will cover expected average cost.
*I* would still write Amazon and request that they have a way to let international customers disable wireless download of books to get a lower pricing.
Very good point about VAT being $0 for $0 purchases.
I will try to work this into a post while I'm on vacation but it will certainly come up as others discover that Amazon customers in other countries can't get free books from Amazon but can get free books from other sites like feedbooks.com and manybooks.net by just downloading them to their computers and moving them to their Kindles. And there is always Project Gutenberg's 30,000 books and Google's half a miooion that we can easily convert to Kindle format. I have a blog entry on how to do that and will probably repeat it in the next month sometime.
Be sure to back up non-Amazon books as they don't back those up on their servers for customers of course.
Try the mentioned sites for the free books. Also, see the Amazon forum customer thread I have linked to about how to get tons of other books for your Kindle, especially when so many now will not be available to Kindle International customers from Amazon because of the international setup they have to do to honor publisher agreements in many countries.
Good luck. Would love to get more feedback as you learn more. I will be online sporadically but still somewhat regularly while on vacation.
- Andrys
Regarding the free US books costing something in Europe: Try to enter a US shipping address (no need to use it, ever)..can be a friend or a random valid address. Than change the Region in the "Manage my Kindle" to US and buy the book and choose the "transfer via PC" option instead of deliver to Kindle...after that change back to Europe.
ReplyDeleteBTW: If you can live without whispernet delivery it is a good option to use it all the time. A lot of books are cheaper that way (e.g. NY times bestseller list for 9.99 instead of avg. 12$)
Cheers
DeeKay
DeeKay,
ReplyDeleteThanks. Some people have done this but have been noticed and questioned about it. However, it's similar to what is discussed at http://bit.ly/kroutsusa - non-USA buying with a valid U.S. address and with gift cards (the latter can be bought with int'l cards).
In this case, the books are listed as free for U.S. residents, needing not even gift certificates, and this will work for awhile.
It's a very worthwhile tip, as long as people recognize it doesn't work forever :-)
Thanks for taking the time to write the tip!