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.

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.

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

Are there any ebook readers for Palm PDA's? Specifically I have a Palm IIIe with about 1.5 mb free. Is that enough?

Try the Peanut Reader. I've never used it, but it may work for you.

robyn

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

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.

Yup, I thought that exact same thing. It's nice to see that I was wrong! :)

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.

Now bookmarked, thank you!

And for some <I>fiction</I>, Geoff Ryman's <A HREF="http://www.ryman-novel.com/info/why.htm" target="_blank"><b>253</b></a>.

:D Anyone got any more?

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


http://www.stealthpress.com/store/download.asp<br><br>The ebook is in PDF format so you need Acrobat Reader to read the stories.Download the free version here:<br><br>



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

<br><br>



Enjoy!

Thanks for the tip!

They've got a few other books by major modern authors for free download too.

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.

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

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.

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.)

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.

There is a new Doctor Who e-book/animated webcast here:<ul><li><A HREF="http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/doctorwho/shada/index.shtml" taret="_blank">Shada - by Douglas Adams</a></li></ul>

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

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/

From <A HREF="http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/kbrooke/stone/download.htm" target="_blank">here</a> you can download a copy of Keith Brooke's <b>Lord of Stone</b>.

If you like science fiction and fantasy the rest of the site is well worth a look.

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

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.

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.

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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Have you updated your PC version of MS Reader to the latest version? They updated it right before offering the free books to try and make sure everyone updated to the latest version. The book should download when that window pops up and then you can close it. It downloads and opens in MS Reader.

For anyone that doesn't now the story of these free books which started on July 4th, there is a program called convert lit that some crazed Linux user (okay I'm guessing Linux) created that can turn MS Reader encrypted books into standard HTML. To stop the program they updated MS Reader and offered three free books a week until November to entice people to upgrade (and probably promote MS Reader, but I like being a cynic). This of course backfired immediately when a day later they hacked the new version and convert lit works with it as well. So now Linux and Palm OS users are enjoying free Microsoft ebooks all summer on devices that are not supposed to be able to read them.

Yeah, I have the latest version of MS Reader installed and activated. :hscratch: :(

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I'm not sure. I just checked it now and the books are downloading to my PC. I've heard of people having trouble downloading the books before, but never what causes it.

Anybody want to do me a HUGE favor and email me the e-books from the MS Reader website? I have an updated and activated version of MS Reader, but I still can't download the 3 books. :(

I assume nobody else is having this problem since I posed the question earlier. If anybody has any ideas/suggestions on how to fix this, I'd appreciate it. I've already gone through the FAQ, but no help there. I really want to avoid calling the tech support, but I think I may have to.

My email is: [email protected].

Thanks!

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immortal_zeus : YGM

I sent you them as well in DRM1 so they should work fine.

If next weeks books give you the same problem let me know.

Thanks <B>jhko</B> and <B>darkside</B>! :):up:

The ones sent by jhko didn't work because I think they were tied to her account. That doesn't take anything away from the kind gesture, though. :)

But darkside, the ones you sent worked. :confused: What is DRM1? I'm new to e-books (and actually, even reading as a hobby), so I'm always wanting to learn more. Thanks for the books. :)

I had sent an email to their support (it turned out I sent it to the wrong support because I sent it to the newsletter support :o), but the support guy emailed me back and said that there are known issues with Norton's Firewall (which I use). So I turned off my firewall and I was able to download the books.

So if any of you are having trouble downloading and having NIS, just disable it and you should be able to download.

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DRM1 means they are not tied to any account and will work on your MS Reader.

immortal_zeus Sorry that the books I sent didn't work. I've only used Microsoft Reader once before so I didn't know that books are tied to an account. (I do more reading on my Visor instead of on the computer.) Glad to hear that you found out what the problem was and you can download the books now. :thumbsup:

This weeks free MS books are pretty good including the classic Slaughter-House Five.
http://www.microsoft.com/reader/prom.../free_shop.asp

Fatal Tide
by Iris Johansen
from Bantam Books

A high-stakes treasure hunt… A twisted trail of murder… A secret one woman may die to discover… #1 New York Times best-selling author Iris Johansen last electrified readers with Dead Aim and No One to Trust. Now she offers a new pulse-pounding thriller that takes suspense writing to an all-new level: deep below the surface, where a ruthless killer strikes without warning, without mercy... and with the deadliest intent. Melis Nemid is treading in dangerous waters—and she’s about to be dragged under. As a marine researcher, Melis knows all too well the dangers that can lurk under even the calmest surfaces. But not even she can guess how deep the darkness runs. Only one oceanographer ever came close to discovering the deadly mystery that lies beneath the sea—and he seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth. Now Melis is the last one who knows the truth. And someone is determined that the truth will die with her. For what Melis knows about the deep-sea mystery is only part of a nightmarish past torn by violence. She thought she had put that past behind her when she arrived at her Caribbean island home to research dolphin behavior.




Slaughterhouse-Five
by Kurt Vonnegut
from Rosetta Books

Unstuck in time, the hero of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five—an unforgettable Everyman named Billy Pilgrim—is never sure what part of his life he is going to have to act in next. Vonnegut's wildly imaginative, witty and affecting novel tells Billy Pilgrim's story in just that fashion. It spins back and forth through time, layering in the elements of Billy's life, which begins, chronologically, in 1922 in the upstate New York town of Ilium, and ends over 50 years later, when he is a successful middle-class optometrist with a wife and two grown children. Like Vonnegut himself, Billy was a World War II draftee and a prisoner of war in Dresden when the Allies firebombed the city early in 1945. Its indelible ironic tone, its trippy plotting and its bold, even hilarious use of science fiction make it an utterly unique reading experience. Slaughterhouse-Five remains perhaps the signature work in Vonnegut's large and varied catalogue of writings. In reviewing the novel for Life magazine, the critic Wilfrid Sheed called it splendid art ... a funny book at which you are not permitted to laugh, a sad book without tears.





One Nation Under Goods
by James J. Farrell
from Smithsonian Books

Loved and hated, visited and avoided, seemingly everywhere yet endlessly the same, malls occupy a special place in American life. What, then, is this invention that evokes such strong and contradictory emotions in Americans? In many ways malls represent the apotheosis of American consumerism, and this synthetic and wide-ranging investigation is an eye-popping tour of American culture’s values and beliefs. Like your favorite mall, One Nation under Goods is a browser’s paradise; and in order to understand America’s culture of consumption you need to make a trip to the mall with Farrell. This lively, fast-paced history of the hidden secrets of the shopping mall explains how retail designers make shopping and goods “irresistible.” Architects, chain stores, and mall owners relax and beguile us into shopping through water fountains, ficus trees, mirrors, and covert security cameras. From food courts and fountains to Santa and security, Farrell explains how malls control their patrons and convince us that shopping is always an enjoyable activity. And most importantly, One Nation under Goods shows why the mall’s ultimate promise of happiness through consumption is largely an illusion. It’s all here—for one low price, of course.

This week's free MS Reader books (free until 9/26/03 noon ET):

Make Yourself a Millionaire
by Charles C. Zhang with Lynn L. Chen-Zhang
from McGraw-Hill

Charles Zhang, American Express’s #1-rated financial adviser, became one of today’s most nationally known and trusted financial advisers by stressing sanity and sensible investing over dubious, get-rich-quick tricks and schemes. In Make Yourself a Millionaire, Zhang transfers his program to eBook form. Far from a confusing, all-or-nothing approach, this eBook outlines a clear and rational approach to organizing and planning all aspects of a financial life. How do different investments work? How much insurance is too much? Zhang answers these questions and more as he discusses recommended investments for virtually any portfolio, asset allocation techniques that work, actual examples of success and disaster, the role of insurance as a key element in a portfolio and all major financial instruments like stocks, bonds, funds, REITs and cash.


Shoeless Joe
by W. P. Kinsella
from Rosetta Books

Ray Kinsella, sitting on the porch of his Iowa farm one evening, hears the voice of a ghostly baseball announcer. It speaks to him the famous line, "If you build it, he will come." Needing no further explanation, Kinsella visualizes the ball field he is being asked to create in the middle of his field of corn. The voice will speak only two more things to Ray: "Ease his pain," and "Go the distance," and yet the dreaming, idealistic man knows just what it is he has to do. Digging up his corn to build a ballpark will inspire the return of baseball legend Shoeless Joe Jackson, a man whose reputation was forever tarnished by the scandalous 1919 World Series. Thus begins Shoeless Joe, the award-winning novel by W.P. Kinsella, which also inspired Kevin Costner's exceedingly popular film, Field of Dreams. W.P. Kinsella has been called a great writer of baseball novels, but this is misleading. While his works all evince a love for the game he grew up watching, Kinsella doesn't merely treat baseball as a subject in itself. Rather, he uses it as a metaphor, a way to talk about things like innocence, belief and, perhaps above all, America.


Paingod and Other Delusions
by Harlan Ellison
from eReads.com

Robert Heinlein says, “This book is raw corn liquor – you should serve a whiskbroom with each shot so the customer can brush the sawdust off after he gets up from the floor.” Perhaps a mooring cable might also be added as necessary equipment for reading these eight wonderful stories: They not only knock you down…they raise you to the stars. Passion is the keynote as you encounter the Harlequin and his nemesis, the dreaded Tictockman, in one of the most reprinted and widely taught stories in the English language; a pyretic who creates fire merely by willing it; the last surgeon in a world of robot physicians; a spaceship filled with hideous mutants rejected by the world that gave them birth. These are touching, gentle and shocking stories from an incomparable master of impossible dreams and troubling truths. In a career spanning more than 40 years, Harlan Ellison has won more awards for his 74 written or edited books, the more than 1700 stories, essays, articles, and newspaper columns, the two dozen teleplays and a dozen created motion pictures, than any other living fantasist.


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Nothing too exciting, but these are free until Friday. Actually the Silverberg short stories are pretty good. http://www.microsoft.com/reader/prom.../free_shop.asp

Brunelleschi's Dome, How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture
by Ross King
from Walker Books

Even today, in an age of soaring skyscrapers, the cathedral dome of Santa Maria del Fiore retains a rare power to astonish. Ross King presents a chronicle of life in fifteenth-century Florence, where a 41 year old goldsmith and clock maker named Filippo Brunelleschi, would dedicate 28 years to solving the greatest engineering puzzle of the Renaissance and creating one of the world’s architectural marvels. Brunelleshi’s Dome still remains the largest dome (143 feet in diameter) in the world. Awarded the Top Adult NonFiction BookSense Book of the Year 2001.

Never Say Never
by Phyllis George
from McGraw-Hill

With a career spanning three decades and transitioning seamlessly between the fields of sports, entertainment, and politics, Phyllis George has lived a lifetime of risk taking, pioneering, and success. Now, in Never Say Never, she shares 10 essential lessons she has learned from her vast and varied experience, from Miss America in 1971 to the first woman co-anchor of the national football pregame show “NFL Today,” to first lady of Kentucky, actress, entrepreneur, and award-winning humanitarian and businesswoman. This courageous small-town girl lost the Miss Texas pageant but came back, tried again, and won, later winning the national title. She went on to pave the way in the overwhelmingly male world of sports casting. These are but two of the triumphs—and trials—George reveals in this dynamic book. With her powerful combination of positivity and hard-earned wisdom, George motivates and inspires you to believe you can do almost anything. In addition to George’s personal accounts, here you will also find inspirational stories from high-profile personalities such as Walter Cronkite, Larry King, Roger Staubach, Barbara Taylor Bradford, Paula Zahn, and many more. Engaging, intimate, and filled with invaluable lessons, this powerful book will help you believe in yourself—and take on your greatest challenges.

Robert Silverberg Short Stories, Vol. 2
by Robert Silverberg
from Fictionwise

Few people would argue with the proposition that Robert Silverberg stands among the greatest science fiction writers of the twentieth (and now twenty-first) century. His career spans over forty years, and continues in full force today. Indeed, many critics feel Silverberg's recent work is among the most compelling of his entire career. This collection presents a sample of Robert Silverberg's short works. They span many different segments of his career, and include some of his most acclaimed stories, such as the Nebula Award winning and Hugo nominated story "Passengers," the Nebula Award winning "Sailing to Byzantium," and the Nebula Award nominated "Pope of the Chimps." Four more excellent short works, spanning from 1957 to 1995, round out this diverse collection. The stories follow Silverberg's progression from a promising young writer in the 1950s to a clear master of the form in the 60s, to his ascension through the 70s and 80s, to a towering figure in the field of science fiction in the 90s and today.

Are there any books from MSReader this week? I didn't get an email reminder and I don't remember what the link is to look it up myself.

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They were late this week. I think Microsoft is working hard to try and defeat the Convert Lit program. You will have to register your MS Reader again before openning any of the new books. They are doing this to try and stop the Convert Lit program and they are failing badly.

They came out yesterday and the link is always http://www.microsoft.com/reader/prom.../free_shop.asp

Blindfold
by Kevin J. Anderson
from Fictionwise

Kevin J. Anderson, the co-author of the Dune prequels--including the current bestseller Dune: The Machine Crusade--submitted this novel to the Frank Herbert estate in hopes of convincing them that he could write for the Dune universe. In this brilliant science fiction novel, Atlas is a struggling colony on an untamable world, a fragile society held together by the Truthsayers. Parentless, trained from birth as the sole users of Veritas, a telepathy virus that lets them read the souls of the guilty, Truthsayers are Justice, Infallible, and Beyond appeal. Falsely accused of murder, Troy Boren trusts the young Truthsayer Kalliana ... until, impossibly, she convicts him. Still shaken from a previous reading, Kalliana doesn't realize her power is fading. But soon the evidence becomes impossible to ignore. The Truthsayers' Veritas has been diluted and someone in the colony is selling smuggled telepathy. Justice isn't blind--it's been blinded. From an immortal's orbital prison to the buried secrets of a regal fortress, Kalliana and Troy seek the conspiracy that threatens to destroy their world from within.

An American Tragedy
by Theodore Dreiser
from RosettaBooks

Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy (1925) is nothing less than what it purports to be -- the harrowing story of a weak-willed young man who destroys himself, a villain who is also victim of the values of a deceptive, materialistic society. Dreiser patterned the story of Clyde Griffiths on a real-life murder that took place in 1906, a charming young social climber who killed his pregnant young girlfriend in order to romance a rich girl who had begun to notice him. A powerful murder story, An American Tragedy is much more than that. For Dreiser pours his own dark yearnings into the character of Clyde Griffiths, while grimly charting the young man's pitiful rise and fall as he pursues empty ambitions to wealth, power and satisfaction. The Indiana-born novelist Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945) has never been a dashing or romantic figure in American literature, and he has no Pulitzer or Nobel Prize to signal his importance. His big, rugged novels were shocking in their day -- unapologetic in their sexual candor, antagonistic to the norms of conventional morality and organized religion, often banned or suppressed -- and challenging still to readers. Yet the brooding force of his writing casts a deep shadow across modern American letters. At his best, in An American Tragedy, Dreiser examines the flip side of The American Dream in a gathering storm of a story that develops with a power echoing Dostoevsky in Crime and Punishment. Inspired by the novels of Balzac and the ideas of Spenser and Freud, Dreiser became one of America's greatest naturalist writers, and An American Tragedy retains its rocky intensity and its devastating view of American longing almost a century later.

Death Watch
by Elizabeth Forrest
from Alexandria Digital Literature

DEATH WATCH is the book that launched Elizabeth Forrest into national best-selling fame! Its review in Mystery Scene claimed it to be "a dark and dazzling suspense novel that does something brand new with the theme of serial killers and virtual reality. Forrest's style is cool, poised and always ready to pounce." Also the author of PHOENIX FIRE and DARK TIDE, Forrest uses this praised pulse-pounding thriller to tell the story of McKenzie Smith, an innocent young woman who gets caught up in a whirlwind of terror involving a ruthless serial killer and a brilliant, obsessed psychiatrist who uses virtual reality to transform the fragile personalities of her vulnerable patients. Forrest's suspense eBook novel, DEATH WATCH is a literary landmark blending elements from three very different genres to create something new, dynamic, and exceedingly evocative.

Thanks for the link <B>darkside</B>. Interestingly, the link is totally invisible to me. I had to click on the http://ads.kleinman.com/images/quote.gif to see what the link was. By doing the same thing, I also noticed that you included the link in your 8/30/03 post . Weird that the link doesn't show up for me. Maybe because it's in "url" tags?

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