ONGOING FREE PLUS DISCOUNTED KINDLE BOOKS DISCOVERED BY FORUM MEMBERS
After today, the forum alerts for temporarily free books as well as discussions of newly discounted Kindle books will be on a separate page.
Amazon's own ongoing listing - of LIMITED-TIME OFFERS Promos
Amazon sorts these by Bestsellers first.
I've added a separate sorting by Low-to-High pricing.
Other forum threads on books that might interest some
. What have been your favorite public domain books not so well known?
. Best "Free" books you've read (many are no longer free, however).
. Highly Recommended Books That I Didn't Like
ONGOING UPDATES
This blog entry regularly changes the forum-topic-links below, updating them to the most recent forum recommendations, especially since the message threads are often difficult to find. The dates are in Red to make them easier to see. These will be kept for about 3 weeks (unless they're reported to be no longer free or discounted) and then scroll off.
NOTABLE DISCOUNTED BOOKS
Am regularly pointing you, with this changing blog entry, to the latest messages on Kindle-customer recommendations for newly-found discounted Kindle books:
7/18-7/20, 7/20-7/21, 7/21-7/22, 7/23-7/25, 7/25-27, 7/27-29, 7/29-30, 7/31-8/2, 8/2-3, 8/4-6, 8/6-8, 8/8-9
8/3 - Publisher Harper Perennial: sale of 20 titles for $20, for August
reported by Emily Bronte.
8/2 - Macmillan's Kane & Abel series, $2.99 is a popular entry.
7/25 - Amelia Peabody, now all $4.44
Many of the ones mentioned in June are still discounted. While you're reading the message threads with links to the discounted Kindle books in them, Kindle customers will be adding new recommendations there for ones they've found while you're reading the thread. I can check these daily and give a good starting point for the day. It's been suggested (and I agree) that I remind people that on the first visit there they should go to Page 1 of the message thread (you can click on the number while there) and read the opening post by RandomizeME, which includes
' This thread is NOT a book promotion thread for authors, or for people to post about indies. (And it's not for posting freebies either.) This thread is to post discounts and price drops that readers find for books from publishers." 'Amazon made a separate forum for "Meet Our Authors" where authors can talk with customers about their books.
Some here will just follow the discounted-books forum thread daily.
On a couple of posts there, I saw that people had seen a couple of books drop even further right after they bought them, partly due to people noting that the two were lower at B&N's sales, and Amazon has given (with no problem, they say) $credits on those further drops in that short time.
THE KINDLE COMMUNITY FORUM'S NEW-FREE-BOOKS RECOMMENDED BY OTHER CUSTOMERS
(Mainly contemporary books) - Main Finder: Happy Reader "Joyce"
These are almost daily, and I'll link you to these also, so you can quickly see the latest that other Kindle owners have found from various sources. Will keep them here for about 3 weeks.
Here are: July 19, July 19 - afternoon, July 19 - add'l, July 20, July 21, July 21 - afternoon, July 22, July 24, July 25, July 26, July 26 - afternoon, July 26 - late, July 27, July 27 - afternoon, July 28, July 28 - evening, July 29, July 29 - midmorning, July 29 - afternoon, July 30, July 31, Aug 1, Aug 1 - Evening, Aug 2, Aug 3, Aug 4, Aug 4 - afternoon, Aug 5, Aug 5 - Evening, Aug 5 - Very Late Evening, Aug 6, Aug 6 (later), Aug 7, Aug 7 - Evening, Aug 8, Aug 8 - evening.
Additional info for the dates above:
Customer "A" at the forum reminds everyone that the "Vook" series includes some "enhanced" books with video and says those are listed for iPads and iPhone apps and not for the Kindle e-reader, and they tend to have file sizes of 100-500 megs (an average regular Kindle book is less than 1 meg).
Luckily, some Vook books are regular and not "enhanced" books.
July 19 - 1 book (Innocent Monster), 9 books (afternoon), 4 add'l in horror/fantasy
July 20 - 3 books
July 21 - 6 books, 2 books (afternoon)
July 22 - 3 books
July 24 - 10 books + 31 Vook Kindle-app books w/Audio/Video content for Apple devices
July 25 - 6 books
July 26 - 4 books (2 "Enhanced", for iDevice apps), 1 book (afternoon) Children's, 1 book (late) Christian.
July 27 - 1 book (1st of Fey series), 14 books + 1 game (late morning)
July 28 - 1 book (morning), 10 more-diverse books (evening)
July 29 - 7 books, including Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith #7
July 29 - 7 more books (mid-morning), 14 books (afternoon)
July 30 - 1 book (short mystery-thriller)
July 31 - 3 books
Aug 1 - 20 books (some repeats + some with good reviews), 10 more (evening)
Aug 2 - 5 books
Aug 3 - 4 books
Aug 4 - 23 books (a.m.), 2 books (afternoon)
Aug 5 - 14 books (a.m.), 1 book (evening), 9 books (very late evening)
Aug 6 - 3 books (a.m.), 1 book (later)
Aug 7 - 4 books, 1 book (evening), the 2nd book of 3, for
The Days and Months We Were First Born-Family By Fate is back after being free only a few hours last week, but it's $2.99 now. Book 1 is still free
Aug 8 - 8 books (a.m.), 19 books (evening)
The main (speedy) free-book finder is Happy Reader "Joyce", and she lists them each day and is the originator of that regular topic thread.
While you're reading the latest there, other customers and Joyce tend to find more that day.
ONGOING, NEW FREE KINDLE BOOKS - MANY TEMPORARILY FREE (mostly contemporary)
On the usual free Kindle books, the links in the box below will give you most of them with several sorting methods, and the listings are usually limited, to eliminate previews, chapters-only, and single short stories to save people time (although some of the lists linked to in the box will point to the most popular free Kindle books and you'll see some short-stories there), so they are doable when short on time.
Some of the free contemporary Kindle books are growing by 30 to 70 free books per day and it's not practical to list them all, and I must say, there are free ones which aren't of the highest potential as seen in the writing just for the product descriptions!), but you can see those books in lists via the links-box at the bottom of this and other blog articles here and can decide quickly -- with Amazon summary product info -- which might be worth trying.
For daily free ebooks, check the following links:
| Temporarily-free books - Non-classics - USA: by: NEW: June July Aug 2011 Publication Date Late-listed Bestselling High-ratings UK: PubDate Popular What is 3G? and "WiFi"? Battery Care Highly-rated under $1, | 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, currently): 99c Notepad 1.1, 99c Calculator, 99c Calendar, |
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Andrys -
ReplyDeleteHave you ever compared the speed of internet access on the kindle 2 with the kindle 3 (when the kindle 3 is not using wifi)? I have been wondering about that - thinking that I might be able to justify to myself buying the kindle 3. (My kindle 2 works so well that I feel a little guilty buying another kindle.)
Always enjoying Kindle World -
Thank you
EO,
ReplyDeleteHave you tried using my http://bit.ly/kmobiweb file for the Kindle that points you to mobile-device-optimized sites and gives some workarounds?
The speeds are not that different. Part of the hold-up is the e-Ink screen speed when it comes to images and how many of them there are. The K3 sometimes seems zippier to bring up pages though. Depends on signal strength.
The Kindle 2 gets two types of modes - Basic and Advanced and so it's a bit more complex, but Basic is fast and leaves you saddled with going through the left column of links first but gives you normal fonts and normal black & white with good contrast.
Advanced lets you see it the webpage as it appears, width-wise (Landscape is better for this) but with small fonts then and some grays translated from color that are just too light or too dark but it can run javascript while Basic can't. Sometimes it is slower than Basic mode for that reason.
The Kindle 3 defaults to Fit to Width, which means TINY fonts and then you need to zoom in to see a segment of the web page enlarged.
Then you can click on an article. When the article comes up with all the side goop, you can press Menu/Article mode and that makes a column of beautifully readable text with no distractions, good sized fonts (that can't be adjusted), good contrast and it's like reading with Readability or Instapaper or SendToReader.
The Kindle 3 has been quite fast on the street for non-image-laden versions of websites. But it's very slow when there's a lot of material on the page. My blog is the worst offender. I do it because people seldom want to click on Next page and this makes it easier for people browsing articles on the web.
I use 3G web lookups when on the street or cafe mainly when I want to see a review of a restaurant or a product I might want to buy that is on sale or to look for movie locations and times locally. I don't use it to just browse the web as that would be masochistic.
But it has saved me many times when not knowing the way somewhere or even the name of a restaurant I know is nearby) and not having my GPS with me. The step-by-step Google Map TEXT directions, once you've set up your locale (easier to do that with your computer when logged into google maps) to a destination, are worth a LOT to me. I use that probably once a week.
The only thing I have against my Kindle 2 is that the fonts are just not dark enough after I've become used to the Pearl display.
If you're happy with the K2, you shouldn't buy a new one. It seems possible that a new Kindle e-Ink may come around September (per David Carnoy of CNet but he's the only person saying so).
But if you still want to see a K3, go to an AT&T store(they have them near the back of the store, next to MiFi units) or Best Buy, Staples, Walmart (new) or even Target if the latter still carry them.
Bring your K2 with you. K2 is solid, and the main reason for my preferring my K3 is the screen contrast. Others won't need that.
AND the K2 has a Numbers row, while the K3 has them hidden on the top row of alpha characters and you can get the numbers only by pressing alt and the number (or by using the Sym key, which I don't like to do), so the K2 wins there :-)
Since you are directing Kindle readers to the "Discounted/Price Dropped" thread in the Amazon forum, it would be helpful to suggest that they first read the OP (original post) on page 1. It might help to decrease some of the OT (off-topic) chat that comes from new visitors to the thread.
ReplyDeleteIf Kindle readers use your links to the "Discounted/Price Dropped" thread, do you then receive an affiliate cut if they make a book purchase from there?
Thanks.
What does "late-listed" mean?
ReplyDeleteAnonymous,
ReplyDeleteThat was a good suggestion and I've made the recommendation and included the statement about the key purposes of the thread.
Since you seem worried about anyone making money from Amazon links to get people to discounted books more easily, the links to the e-books in that thread are non-referrer links formed by Amazon itself, which is why they can be created as hyperlinks on the forum.
However, the opening-post writer recommends her blog of collected book links, where the pointers to the discounted books discussed at the thread -are- referrer links and do make money (certainly not much).
And, since there is a lot of time gathering and presenting the ebook-info there, in my view, the books' affiliate-link work merits the small revenue and doesn't cost the customer a thing. You might instead just appreciate the info given in that thread.
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteIt means these were generally published sometime ago and usually don't show up with a by-date or ("latest")_that Amazon calls 'By Publication Date,' but Amazon does tend to put these on top of the list-sort which they call "Relevance" and since we're not searching by title and there's nothing to be relevant to, I just call it late-listed.
The most recent back-listed books that are free for awhile tend to show up under that category.
I am probably not helping the confusion :-)
Thanks for your response re: the "Discounted/Dropped Price" thread.
ReplyDeleteI asked a question about the affiliate cut -- simply out of curiosity. I wasn't expressing a worry. I post a large number of the books on that thread and appreciate others who do the same. I have mentioned your blog a number of times there and have encouraged others to use your links. I love your blog!
I do think it's reasonable for Kindle readers to express concerns about "shameless self-promotion." (I'm not referring to you.) As I'm sure you're aware, one of the recent ways that topic has been addressed is through the creation of a "Meet the Authors" forum.
In this same regard, I think it's fair to question the idea of someone starting a community book-finding thread that promotes as well as benefits their own blog. It does seem to fall somewhat into that "shameless self-promotion" territory. I know that it takes time and energy to maintain a blog and I fully appreciate the efforts. It also takes considerable time, energy, and goodwill for readers to find discounted books and post them.
It's been my understanding that blogs will get an affiliate cut if readers purchase items directly from their blog sites. Am I hearing you say that purchases made on the "Discounted/Price Dropped" thread are credited to the person who actually started that thread (without readers physically visiting that person's blog)? Again, I'm asking out of curiosity, not worry.
Thanks so much.
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteThanks for doing that -- it's a good feeling when we know someone thinks the blog info is useful :-) I look for the discussion dates when I post the links but have not read the thread itself thoroughly, so I missed that.
I once recommended at the forum that Amazon create a forum named "Meet the Authors" to do away with, for the most part, the morass of self-promotion taking the place of actual conversation, but am sure others recommended thattoo. So it was great to see they listened to us.
Yes, authors just there to plug their own books in a Kindle forum created a lot of forum-viewing fatigue when there to see other type of discussions. So I'm glad they have their own place and we can go there to talk with ones whose work we like and to find new authors trying to get some eyes for what is fairly lonely work. But Amazon should have a clear link that lets people know the forum exists.
For me, some concern over self-promotion for blog-affiliate referrers is like going to a place that refers dentists (not that I'm comparing authors to dentists :-)) and asking if they get any income from that. You know the answer. But, that's only at their blogs, normally.
Re that thread, no money is made directly from the opening poster's message topic.
Amazon doesn't allow product-referral links in the forums and the hyperlinks we see are Amazon's own plain links.
The opening post refers people to the blog where, from the info she's collected, the material or data is easier to find without wading through the discussion.
But some LIKE to see discussions. We all know of so many places with free-book links, but this can give extra info and a bit sooner in many cases and from others who are interested in the book.
Nevertheless, her blog holds her added work to collect the info, present them in ways that give readers more info -- and those links, gathered, are normal Amazon affiliate links.
If a person doesn't visit her blog to see the listed books straight (and it's extra work to find out which books are no longer discounted), there is no referral credit to the person who started the thread.
Purchases made on the books, from browsing that thread itself, brings her no direct income. The rules are complicated and one referral can override another one. You can read about them at Amazon. Very few people make enough to support the time they put into things like this.
Thanks for taking the time to answer my question(s). I may have sensed that "the rules are complicated" and therefore have avoided reading about them at Amazon.
ReplyDeleteI apologize if my curiosity about affiliate credit came off sounding crass or was offensive to you in any way.
What you do is time-intensive. I so appreciate the labor of love that goes into your blog. : )
Again, many thanks for your helpful responses.
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteNo problem at all. Curiosity over this is normal and didn't come across as crass or offensive at all.
People have asked before, but not as nicely, and while Amazon asks affiliates not to talk about details of their program (probably because their policies can be misinterpreted by us when they have a page to explain it, sorta), I thought what you asked deserved a reply.
Thanks for the feedback; it's appreciated.
Your solution to the "Google Reader" problem is somewhat annoying. I am using Google Reader and I am used to reading RSS items there. I don't like follow a link just to see what an item actually contains.
ReplyDeleteI actually think that Google's behavior of not pushing an edited item back. In blogging, edits should not contain new information (in my opinion).
So, if you want to add stuff, why don't you create a new blog entry?
Regards
The links change daily or a few times a day. Maybe I'll just drop it from RSS feeds as far as updating. Making a new one for each one is a waste of blog entries. People who do RSS tend to know what they want and don't want. I don't like the extra work of it either.
ReplyDeleteIt's just another date. Maybe I'll change it to a 'page' but then newbies won't read what the links are about or who gets credit.
Anyway I am off to sleep.
By the way, other rss feeds just push the new edited blog entry up, according to the date it was edited. Makes sense to me. There should not have to be a new entry explaining all that everyday. And this way people can catch up from certain days. Few people have time to check out every single day. This gives them points to check instead of wading through hundreds each time.
ReplyDeleteBut again, I'm done with it for a day. Zzzz.
Thanks for posting this article. I am definitely tired of struggling to find relevant and intelligent commentary on this subject
ReplyDeleteHi Andrys ,
ReplyDeleteThe URL of "7/3-7/5" (http://amzn.to/kdisc0704-0705) is probably not correct :
"Something's wrong here...
Uh oh, bitly couldn't find a link for the bitly URL you clicked."
And http://amzn.to/kdisc0703-0705 doesn't work either .
:-)
AthenaAtDelph,
ReplyDeleteWish I had seen that non-working URL for those 6.5 hours! Didn't even see the blogger.com notice of a comment. Thanks for trying to alert me. Much appreciated.
Apologies to all for the waste of that time.
The links to the lists of free and almost-free books are really helpful ... Amazon doesn't seem to provide any guidance with respect to filtering, but with these links, it's easy enough for me to modify them to get any number of other searches I want, say by changing the price range (200-399 for $2 to $3.99) or by removing additional items (-pre-order or -games, for example).
ReplyDeleteer ... that should be -game in my last comment.
ReplyDeletezlionsfan (inventor of football) :-)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the feedback, which I'm happy to see, as that was the intent, that once there with the filtered sets, you can adjust the parameters on the URL.
FYI, the link behind 'Wandering Koala rides The Phantom Coach comic 1" goes to the wrong amazon page: "beyond all price". The one on the cover image is correct so you can just copy that to fix. Must be gnarly to get all these links right...
ReplyDeleteTom, thanks much for letting me know the text link (vs the image link) ws going to the wrong book.
ReplyDeleteIt IS gnarly! :-) Am glad you're around.
On a couple of posts there, I saw that people had seen a couple of books drop even further right after they bought them, partly due to people noting that the two were lower at B&N’s sales, and Amazon has given (with no problem, they say) $credits on those further drops in that short time.
ReplyDeletewww.pcs4cheap.ca
Marcus, that's very true. I released your comment although it looks more designed to be a site-promo-focused comment.
ReplyDeleteTo Linda Corby,
ReplyDeleteThis blog is mainly Kindle news, and if you use google and search on something like
free kindle books blog
you'll find the blogs that specialize in free books.
There are about 600 released everyday and if each blog listed them all, daily, it wouldn't be very easy to find one anyway, but some websites do focus only on free books.
Try ereaderiq which is my favorite. Best of all, you can see that people are finding them, including yours if you go to Kindle Community Forums and search on the word 'free' -- and you'll see every book listed under the threads on the day they were released. But they must be listed by one of the Kindle owners who are sharing the alerts and not by the author as there's an Amazon forum rule against self-promotion except in one subforum. See next paragraph.
It's not easy. There is a "Meet the Author" forum on those Kindle community forums that you might want to explore. And that's where you might want to ask for advice on anyone finding your free offering.
I don't list the 600 daily free books here here because it would turn the blog into a billboard, essentially and if you look at the right-column reference areas, you'll see I have links to more than the top 100. But other free-books-oriented blogs are your best bet next to the Kindle Community forum. Good luck.