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