Free or low-cost Kindle books - 12-19-09 - Update

Many of these are likely to be short-term.

Paul Carr and TechCrunch are offering his book, Bringing Nothing to the Party - True Confessions of a New Media Whore, in PDF format, for free, in the U.S., under a Creative Commons License though it is for sale outside the U.S., with rights owned by his publisher and it is still available as a Kindle book (for $9.99) at Amazon.  His friends apparently don't tend to have Kindles and I guess wouldn't want to read it on an iPhone, iPod, or on their laptops etc., so he is making the book available for $0.00 in the U.S.

  He still owns the U.S. rights to his books, despite the frowns of his publisher, W&N, and its parent company, Hachette Livre, about releasing one of his books for free -- Hachette has "decreed that they will not allow any ebooks to be distributed for free, or without DRM."  W&N and Hachette have reminded him that foreign readers would be able to download the PDF e-book from the U.S, which would breach W&N's contractual rights.

  But you can download the PDF version now.  He adds:

' Finally it’s worth saying that, for all of my ego, the book is actually quite a hard thing for me to give away: its 275 pages tell the story of a very strange few years of my life – years that cost me my career, my reputation, the love of my life, and very nearly my freedom.  In other words, it’s a real feel-good Christmas romp. '

Read the background article I link to in the beginning to get the full background.  You can also get the HTML version with linked footnotes.

Midnight in Madrid   By Noel Hynd, Kindle Ed. $0.00 U.S.     10 user reviews, 4.5 stars "...With echoes of classic detective and suspense fiction from The Maltese Falcon to The Da Vinci Code..."	My Bondage and My Freedom   By Frederick Douglass, 1818-1895, Kindle Ed. $0.00 U.S.     8 user reviews, all 5 stars (Hardcover, 2008 - $24.95  Paperback, 2005 - $6.95) "...he ...documents the memories of being owned, how slaves coped during these times, and how he managed to pull himself out of it all." -from James Hiller's review.
Metagame   By Sam Landstrom, Kindle Ed. $1.59 U.S.     53 user reviews, 4.5 stars There are several rave reviews for this apparently quite creative science fiction book by a writer new to the readers.	The Voice: New Testament   By Thomas Nelson, Kindle US Ed.   (with book and chapter navigation) $0.00 U.S.   16 user reviews, 4 stars Very unusual translation using modern expressions -- script-like, and with additions that are noted and sourced.  Controversial for those reasons but liked very much by many.

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LINKS FOR SEARCHING FOR FREE OR LOW-COST E-BOOKS
Here is the ongoing set of links for various Searches for free or low-cost Kindle-compatible books.