Saturday, March 13, 2010

My Kindle, Free E-Books & Resources

I won my Kindle back in December from J.T. over at http://bibliofreakblog.com/. It was such a busy time of year, plus I have an aversion to learning new things involving technology, so it took me awhile to get into the swing of things on the e-book front. One of the best resources I've found so far is blogger Kindle Vixen. She has a great post here: http://www.kindlevixen.com/archives/413

She explains in friendly terms about the software Calibre, which can be used to convert files. It's free and it also organizes e-books on your PC and you can move them back and forth from the Kindle to the laptop. I've been using it this week and I've converted quite a few e-books and moved them to my Kindle from my laptop.

I started out downloading free books, mostly short stories, to get a feel for the Kindle. To be truthful, I LOVE reading a physical book. It's something I don't think will ever change for me. This is not to say that I don't love the Internet, my laptop and the Kindle. I do. I look at them more as resources to expand my reading and my research. I've been downloading classic books like:

Edgar Allen Poe's Complete Poetic Works
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells

I've not really found a good way to find free books by browsing through Amazon on the Kindle itself. There are so many books that even broken down into the categories it isn't possible to "browse" through that many titles. So far I haven't found a way to search by price while using the Kindle.

Little by little I've been discovering sources for e-books other than Amazon. One of the best is by following my favorite authors on Twitter, and by reading their blogs and visiting their websites. Many authors will have free stories for download. Here are a few I've come across:

Anya Bast has several paranormal romance shorts that you can download for free. They are erotic so you must be at least 40 18. I've read the first one so far and enjoyed the story of a shifter and his reluctant mate.

http://www.anyabast.com/free-reads/

My Soul to Lose by Rachel Vincent, the free ebook prequel to her Soul Screamers series is available free. I really enjoyed learning how it all began.

http://urbanfantasy.blogspot.com/search/label/free%20stuff

I just found Drollerie Press this week, and have downloaded several free stories that I converted to with the Calibre software to put on my Kindle. They also have free reading guides to download.

http://drolleriepress.com

As I find more resources I will share them, and I'll review e-books as I finish reading them.

~Moonsanity

2 comments:

Caz said...

Hi,

I have a Sony book reader, not a Kindle, but a great source of books to convert using Calibre is Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org). It has loads and loads of classics available, and the best part is that it's free!! Still doesn't replace real books, but really handy when you live miles away from the nearest good second hand book shop!

Brenda Hyde said...

I can't believe I forgot about Project Gutenberg. Back in the fall I downloaded a few stories to my laptop. Now that I can convert the files I can put them and more on my Kindle. Thanks Caz. I live out in the country so we really don't have a used bookstore nearby, or a regular bookstore!