frugalmama Posted March 9, 2012 Share Posted March 9, 2012 How do you find free kindle books? I know about the top 100 free list on Amazon, but I've seen several people link to free kindle books through Amazon that aren't on that list. How the heck do you find them? Is there a website somewhere that does the daily freebie books? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Word Nerd Posted March 9, 2012 Share Posted March 9, 2012 My favorite source is Pixel of Ink. (URL is correct, but the site must be down at the moment.) I get the daily email and follow them on Facebook. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LadyMSews Posted March 9, 2012 Share Posted March 9, 2012 I like this one: http://blog.booksontheknob.org/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
weddell Posted March 9, 2012 Share Posted March 9, 2012 http://www.ereaderiq.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shannon in TN Posted March 9, 2012 Share Posted March 9, 2012 I've gone to amazon and the kindle store and search "free" for books. Seriously, 35K+ titles were found. Then you have to narrow the categories (there's something to touch for that in the upper corner -this is when I'm searching on my kindle, not computer) and it breaks down the book list into categories. Something like thriller/mystery had over 600 titles if I remember right. I hope that makes sense. I've been able to download classics like Tale of Two Cities, Tom Sawyer, War and Peace (not that I'll have time to read THAT one any time, soon:001_huh:). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheHomeScientist Posted March 9, 2012 Share Posted March 9, 2012 Kindle Review: http://ireaderreview.com/ You can also sign up for daily email notifications. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vettechmomof2 Posted March 9, 2012 Share Posted March 9, 2012 another great freebie site is ereaderlove.com. I normally check there and the ireaderreview.com daily! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Negin Posted March 9, 2012 Share Posted March 9, 2012 I wish that the free books were good ones. I have yet to find a very good free book. Most of them are really quite weird - the sort that I wouldn't want to read unless if I was paid to do so. Does anyone know about this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheHomeScientist Posted March 9, 2012 Share Posted March 9, 2012 I wish that the free books were good ones. I have yet to find a very good free book. Most of them are really quite weird - the sort that I wouldn't want to read unless if I was paid to do so. Does anyone know about this? Yep, there's a lot of garbage out there, from both traditional publishers and indie authors. In my experience, the books from traditional publishers are, if anything, of worse quality than those from indie authors. Trad publishers are trying desperately to get their authors' backlists posted as ebooks (whether or not they have the right to do so, which is another story entirely), and many of those trad-published ebooks are complete garbage. Instead of converting them to ebooks from the original manuscript and then doing editing and formatting, many trad publishers are simply doing OCR scans and publishing them as ebooks without even minimal editing. I've seen many books from the "Big Six" publishers wit stuff like a hard return in the middle of a sentence (or even a word), horrendous typos (where the OCR misread something and the lack of editing meant it wasn't corrected), and so on. The better indie books are completely professional. Those authors are publishing their books themselves, but they're paying for professional cover designs, editing, and so on. The results are indistinguishable from the best trad-published books. And, of course, many of those indie-published books are by authors who formerly were published by trad publishers. And I'm talking about big names, many of whom have had multiple NYT Bestseller List books. In short, keep looking. There's a lot of good stuff out there, and most indie ebooks are priced at $2.99 or $3.99 and are often discounted to $0.00 temporarily to build readership. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vmsurbat Posted March 10, 2012 Share Posted March 10, 2012 This is one I check everyday: http://www.fkbooksandtips.com/ I've gotten several hundred free books this way! :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mom2abcd Posted March 11, 2012 Share Posted March 11, 2012 http://www.inspiredreads.com http://www.whatsinmybookbag.com/whats_in_my_book_bag/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ottakee Posted March 11, 2012 Share Posted March 11, 2012 I wish that the free books were good ones. I have yet to find a very good free book. Most of them are really quite weird - the sort that I wouldn't want to read unless if I was paid to do so. \]? What type of books do you want to read? I have been more than pleased with the books I have gotten on the Amazon top 100 free list. YES, you do have to wade through the 50+ smut books that make the list but I have found some great devotionals, inspirational romances, biographies, humor, and other great novels. I have downloaded about 150 titles and I think I was only disappointed with 2 or 3 of them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Negin Posted March 11, 2012 Share Posted March 11, 2012 In my experience, the books from traditional publishers are, if anything, of worse quality than those from indie authors. In short, keep looking. There's a lot of good stuff out there, and most indie ebooks are priced at $2.99 or $3.99 and are often discounted to $0.00 temporarily to build readership. Thank you :). I think I just downloaded a relatively cheap indie book recently. Is there any easy way, a trick, to finding indie books versus the rubbish-y stuff? :D What type of books do you want to read? I have been more than pleased with the books I have gotten on the Amazon top 100 free list. YES, you do have to wade through the 50+ smut books that make the list but I have found some great devotionals, inspirational romances, biographies, humor, and other great novels. I have downloaded about 150 titles and I think I was only disappointed with 2 or 3 of them. My taste is relatively broad. I like all sorts of stuff. Some of my favorite authors are Isabel Allende, Khaled Hosseini, Fannie Flagg, Maeve Binchy, and a whole bunch of others. The usual Costco hardcover/bestseller stuff, but also stuff that's slightly less known - The Housekeeper and the Professor or Nothing to Envy, for example. I got Cybill Disobedience and it was fine. But most of the free books on Kindle that I have downloaded are, for the most part, certainly not ones that I would normally pay full price for. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ottakee Posted March 11, 2012 Share Posted March 11, 2012 Check out: Walking on Broken Glass They Almost Always Come Home We'll have the summer The Third Floor The Narrow Path Those were some of my favorites. Not sure which ones are still free but these were good. You do have to check the list every day or several times a day if you can as the selection changes hourly and some books are only there for a few hours and disappear from the free list. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
redsquirrel Posted March 11, 2012 Share Posted March 11, 2012 I keep my eyes open for sales on 'real' books. I got Gaiman's American Gods for 1.99 and it was amazing. Most of the free books are not worth my time. I don't like romances or Christian lit and that seems to be most of what is free. Oh, I have found some good free cookbooks though. As for classics, it can be worth paying .99 or 1.99 for a well formatted book. Not having to page through the entire book to get to a particular chapter is nice. For example, having the complete works of Shakespeare for free is nice. But, not having to page through the entire document to get to a play in the middle is worth .99. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheHomeScientist Posted March 11, 2012 Share Posted March 11, 2012 Thank you :). I think I just downloaded a relatively cheap indie book recently. Is there any easy way, a trick, to finding indie books versus the rubbish-y stuff? :D The trick is to let someone else screen them for you. I signed up long ago for the daily email notifications from Kindle Review (http://ireaderreview.com/). Every email includes a list of free Kindle ebooks, which are often free only for a short time. The list is divided by genre--Romance, Mysteries and Thrillers, Religious, Non-fiction, and so on--with anything from 1 or 2 to a dozen titles in each genre. Each of the titles on the lists has undergone at least minimal pre-screening, if only based on the average review. Some are books that others have read and recommended. In terms of fiction, my wife and I read primarily cozy mysteries, so I ignore everything other than the Mysteries and Thrilllers group and the non-fiction group. If there are a dozen Mysteries and Thrillers, I might immediately rule out 10 of them because they're listed as hard-boiled, thriller, vampire, and so on. A couple of them might be described as "cozy", "women sleuths", and so on. Those I right-click on to bring up the Amazon page for them. I look at the descriptions and reviews and download any of them that might be good. Over the course of an average week, I might download a dozen such books. Barbara then does a more detailed look at the titles I've downloaded to decide which ones are worth actually trying. Overall, a couple hundred books a year might pass through all those stages, so we always have plenty of free ebooks in our TBR pile. Then, of course, there are the other books that aren't free but are from authors or series we like, which we buy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TXMomof4 Posted March 11, 2012 Share Posted March 11, 2012 I like Kindle Nation Daily. They send out notes every day about free books - I think they're organized well to browse through and have pretty good descriptions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ottakee Posted March 11, 2012 Share Posted March 11, 2012 Here are a few I have read http://www.amazon.com/The-Third-Floor-ebook/dp/B006BC7L26/ref=zg_bs_154606011_25 http://www.amazon.com/Fools-Rush-Weddings-Bella-ebook/dp/B002LE87RQ/ref=zg_bs_154606011_69 I liked these 2 books. Right now I am not finding much else but again, that changes hourly so later today I might find a few good ones again. If in doubt, I download it as it is easy to delete later if I don't want to read it or start it and don't like it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dmmetler Posted March 11, 2012 Share Posted March 11, 2012 If you like sci-fi/fantasy, http://www.baen.com is a good resource. They've released a lot of their backlist or the first book in a series as free e-books, and there are some wonderful books there. I use iBooks to read them, but they give instructions for getting them to Kindle. The downside is that I now have about $80 in my e-book shopping cart there :). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Word Nerd Posted March 11, 2012 Share Posted March 11, 2012 (edited) Most of the indie and self-pubbed freebies I've tried are poorly written and edited, so I don't agree with the sentiment that avoiding traditional publishers will get you the best results. No matter what source you use to find books, you're still going to have to weed through a lot of carp. The Kindle Daily Deals are probably your best bet for finding cheap Kindle books by well-known authors, and Amazon also has ebook sales on bestsellers every so often. ETA: Here's a list of top books under $5. Edited March 11, 2012 by WordGirl Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheHomeScientist Posted March 11, 2012 Share Posted March 11, 2012 Most of the indie and self-pubbed freebies I've tried are poorly written and edited, so I don't agree with the sentiment that avoiding traditional publishers will get you the best results. Not all trad-published ebooks. Current and recent titles are generally fine. It's backlist titles that often have really bad typos, formatting errors, and so on. That's because many trad publishers are trying to get backlist titles into ebook form as quickly and as cheaply as possible. Incredible as it seems in this day and age, many trad-published books, particularly those originally published in the mid- to late-90's and earlier, weren't kept in electronic form by the publishers. So what they're doing is scanning and OCR'ing print copies of the books. That'd be fine, if they'd edit or at least proofread them. Unfortunately, it's immediately evident with many of these titles that the publisher just used the OCR document and converted it to ebook format without ever even looking at it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheHomeScientist Posted March 11, 2012 Share Posted March 11, 2012 Oh, yeah. As an example of how bad... A month or so ago, my wife started to read what she thought was a Stephen Booth title. The cover was correct, and as it turned out so was the text. But the title page said the author was Alexander McCall Smith. I had my wife just about convinced that Stephen Booth and Alexander McCall Smith were actually the same person and that both were pen names, just before she smacked me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Negin Posted March 12, 2012 Share Posted March 12, 2012 Thank you all so very much. Off to check out some of your suggestions and links. Most of the free books are not worth my time. I don't like romances or Christian lit and that seems to be most of what is free. :iagree: Yes, I have noticed that most of the freebies have been romances & Christian lit and I'm not into either. Fannie Flagg, Maeve Binchy, and Isabel Allende are not really romances, per se. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Home_s_Cool Posted March 12, 2012 Share Posted March 12, 2012 http://jungledealsandsteals.com/category/freebies/free-kindle-books/ This is a website for Amazon deals - not just free kindle books. I skim it on my Google Reader each day. I get frustrated trying to find books on Amazon's kindle site. I also use their lending library to "check-out" a free book each month. That is the most frustrating to find books that are part of their library. I'm hoping they improve the search engine soon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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