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One-and-only free "e-text" thread

Book Talk A Place To Discuss Books and Audiobooks

One-and-only free "e-text" thread

Old 07-18-01, 04:20 PM
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E books and how to get them for FREE

I've gotten to the point where my bookshelves are full. I have started to collect Electronic Books (e-books) and save them on CDs. There are several e-book readers on the market but you can also find them for free. One source is Zdnet. I have several readers off this site when you request: e book
http://hotfiles.zdnet.com/cgi-bin/te...x=26&b=default

Some sites:
http://www.scorpiusdigital.com/reader.html
This site gives you access to MS reader and several free books.

http://www.gutenberg.net/
http://www.promo.net/pg/helpex.html#What-books
Project Gutenberg is a great place to find free books and a great reader is supplied for free. I purchased a CD from them containing thousands of classic books in the public domain.

Will I stop purchasing paperbacks? As long as there are flea markets where I get them for .25 cents I guess they will find their way into my home. Also I will never stop getting 'coffee table' books with great pictures but when it comes to the 'Classics' it's all electronic for me.
Old 07-19-01, 09:04 AM
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You can also find many books on-line in txt or zip files that you can read just using Notepad. Over 17 thousand titles.

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/

Everything from Plato to Grimm Fairy Tales to Shakespear. Great stuff for the impulsive reader.
Old 07-22-01, 08:56 PM
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Here's a link to the electronic book/reader thread we had going a few months ago. Had many decent resources listed.

r

http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/showthr...hreadid=103362
Old 07-23-01, 07:21 PM
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Are there any ebook readers for Palm PDA's? Specifically I have a Palm IIIe with about 1.5 mb free. Is that enough?
Old 07-26-01, 08:23 AM
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Try the Peanut Reader. I've never used it, but it may work for you.

robyn
Old 07-27-01, 12:15 AM
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You're an amazingly straightlaced and law abiding lot..

When I say the heading "Thread: E books and how to get them for FREE" I assumed - incorrectly - that this would be a thread discussing the Advanced eBook Processor software that has been getting so much press lately


Hemulen
Old 07-31-01, 12:28 PM
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Nope. Just places to pick up e-book readers and some text files (public domain) for free. I would like to find a system that can translate .txt into MS reader and Adobe reader files.
Old 07-31-01, 08:09 PM
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Originally posted by Hemulen
You're an amazingly straightlaced and law abiding lot..

When I say the heading "Thread: E books and how to get them for FREE" I assumed - incorrectly - that this would be a thread discussing the Advanced eBook Processor software that has been getting so much press lately


Hemulen

Yup, I thought that exact same thing. It's nice to see that I was wrong!
Old 09-03-01, 09:38 AM
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free html ebook: Coyote's Song: The Teaching Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin

The free ebook is in HTML format. It was released on Aug 17th, 2001, and announced in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.sf.announcements on 23/8/01.

THEME: Science Fiction and Fantasy of Ursula K. Le Guin

The Science Fiction Research Association's (SFRA) first digital book publication is Richard D. Erlich's "Coyote's Song: The Teaching Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin". It covers all of UKLG's major SF, fantasy, poetry, and picture books from 1961 thru 1995. It includes a chapter on Tehanu. You may use a downloading tool to compile it into a singular HTML ebook, a subscription packetizer that converts HTML from a website into a single website file, or manually convert into one or more PDF files. The annotated structure of this digital book loses meaning if converted to ascii-only (text) format.

It is available HERE

Additional info on the SFRA is at http://www.sfra.org.
Old 09-03-01, 10:13 AM
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Now bookmarked, thank you!

And for some fiction, Geoff Ryman's 253.

Anyone got any more?
Old 10-09-01, 01:28 AM
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Free Halloween e-book!

Here's the link to Stealth Press's free ebook for Halloween that contains seven stories that are perfect for reading on Oct 31.

Ray Bradbury, William F. Nolan, Al Sarrantonio, John Shirley, Peter Straub, Chesea Quinn Yarbro & F.Paul Wilson are the authors.




http://www.stealthpress.com/store/download.asp

The ebook is in PDF format so you need Acrobat Reader to read the stories.Download the free version here:





http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html







Enjoy!
Old 10-09-01, 02:16 AM
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Thanks for the tip!

They've got a few other books by major modern authors for free download too.
Old 10-09-01, 11:52 PM
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I'm glad to see Stealth Press bringing back the old (and very out of print) Skipp and Spector horror novels like "Light at the End" and "The Scream."

One of these days, I'll have to pick up "Darkness Divided," the latest collection of short stories by John Shirley.
Old 08-22-02, 01:57 PM
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I can't speak for the quality, but ....

.... the BBC have a free Doctor Who "ebook" currently downloadable: http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/doctorwho/...ys/index.shtml
Old 08-23-02, 09:56 PM
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Two really good places for free ebooks are www.blackmask.com and www.memoware.com

They both have ebooks in multiple formats to work with various ebook reading software.

Also for some reason The Fifth Sorceress is still free at Palm Digital Media. http://www.peanutpress.com/S=9a1da44...cgi/0345454766

Its a decent Fantasy book and now it can be read for free on Windows or the Mac if you don't have a Palm or Pocket PC.

Last edited by darkside; 08-23-02 at 09:58 PM.
Old 08-30-02, 04:39 AM
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You can also get free ebooks (in a multitude of formats) at www.fictionwise.com. They're mostly a pay site, but they keep a bunch of samples online and add new ones periodically.

www.blackmask.com has a lot for free, but they do little or no proofing... You get what you pay for!

There are a few free fantasy and horror ebooks (some of which are new material instead of public domain) at www.wildsidepress.com too -- click on ebooks and then free samples. (Wildside Press has a 15% off coupon -- SFC15 -- good on their pay ebooks or paper books, too.)
Old 09-06-02, 01:06 PM
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A new resource I read about today: http://textz.com/index.php3?non-java...gnutenberg.net

Many texts and including some fairly recent donations from authors.

Check it out.
Old 05-13-03, 01:43 PM
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There is a new Doctor Who e-book/animated webcast here:
Old 07-19-03, 07:38 AM
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MSReader is featuring a free e-book promotion. Update your version (PC or PPC) and you get to choose a fee e-book every weekend. So far, I've gotten "A Short History of Nearly Everything" and "A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." They offer a choice of three every weekend.
Through a promotion delivered to my Ipaq via PerfectBound, I got a free copy of Elmore Leonard's "Get Shorty."
J
Old 07-20-03, 11:15 PM
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Baen Books (a smaller science fiction press) has a free library where you can download many of their books, I am glad to see publishers and authors doing this, as opposed to people like the RIAA who are serving 817 subpoenas to file-sharers... This page has an interesting read about online piracy and electronic media...

http://www.baen.com/library/
Old 08-30-03, 07:49 AM
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From here you can download a copy of Keith Brooke's Lord of Stone.

If you like science fiction and fantasy the rest of the site is well worth a look.
Old 08-30-03, 11:00 AM
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Microsoft is giving away three free ebooks every week for Microsoft Reader. Check back every Friday as the books will change. This promotion ends in November.

http://www.microsoft.com/reader/prom.../free_shop.asp
Old 09-07-03, 04:01 PM
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Looking for ebooks

I've recently started reading Ebooks on my PocketPC and was wondering if anyone knew where I could find:

1984
Lord of the Flies
East of Eden

for free. Anyone know? I found a whole crapload of other books I was looking for on MS's Ebook page, but have not found these. Thanks.
Old 09-07-03, 04:19 PM
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1984 is available here. http://au.geocities.com/roderickdarat/ Its an australian site. Its still not in the public domain in the US.

I don't think Lord of the Flies or East of Eden are available as ebooks. At least not legal ones.

Thanks to Sonny Bono's dumb copywrite extension law a lot of classics that should be in the public domain are still under copywrite.

Last edited by darkside; 09-07-03 at 04:30 PM.
Old 09-08-03, 11:20 PM
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Anybody else having trouble with these links? When I click on the 3 links for the books, another window pops up, but there's nothing in it.

http://www.microsoft.com/reader/prom.../free_shop.asp


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