Free eBooks

smigaldi said:
For those of you who have a Kindle and don't want to pay licensing fees, or have another eReader, or maybe just want to read on your PC/iPod. http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page has many public domain books in several formats that are free for the downloading.

Why pay Google books or Amazon for stuff that is free?
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Also, why pay google or amazon for stuff that isn't free?
 
SkyHog said:
Also, why pay google or amazon for stuff that isn't free?
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Because that would be stealing. Project Gutenberg is for books that have passed into the public domain. Google and Amazon are charging you for those books and reaping 100% profit. in fact they are not even selling you the eBook but only a license to already free content.
 
JeffDG said:
Another good site that's already converted to reader formats is http://www.feedbooks.com Mostly the same books, but in a more reader-friendly format.
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Gutenberg is putting things in reader formats as well. they are doing a lot with mobi, ePub, and plucker as well as the old more computer friendly text, html, and .pdf
 
smigaldi said:
Because that would be stealing. Project Gutenberg is for books that have passed into the public domain. Google and Amazon are charging you for those books and reaping 100% profit. in fact they are not even selling you the eBook but only a license to already free content.
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No more than downloading MP3s or Movies.

The difference being, I suppose, that there's not some overbearing organization that is trying to protect the book publishers (my father is one of those publishers).
 
Wonder if Amazon can reach through and delete these Ebooks like they can to the ones they sell?

"Ve vill control what you see and read".
 
SkyHog said:
No more than downloading MP3s or Movies.

The difference being, I suppose, that there's not some overbearing organization that is trying to protect the book publishers (my father is one of those publishers).
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The books on Gutenberg have passed out of copyright (in the USA, at least) and so can be legally shared and enjoyed by all. Most of the movies and music is not that old yet, or they have someone renewing the copyright.

I download the text from PG and convert it to MS reader for my PDA (it remembers where I left off on any given book, even if I need to reboot the thing). I can put many books in the PDA and keep my carry-on light. The PDA is handy to read while standing in a long TSA line or stuck on the ramp someplace waiting to take off or get to the gate. It fits in a pocket too.
 
wsuffa said:
Wonder if Amazon can reach through and delete these Ebooks like they can to the ones they sell?

"Ve vill control what you see and read".
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The copy of 1984 that I got from Feedbooks has remained on my Kindle...:D
 
wsuffa said:
Wonder if Amazon can reach through and delete these Ebooks like they can to the ones they sell?

"Ve vill control what you see and read".
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If you use their reader, maybe. I doubt it can be done on anything else without downloading something we would consider bad.
 
A place to get free, legitimately licensed,copyrighted books is here:
http://www.baen.com/library/
The authors and publisher uploaded them in a variety of reader formats.

It seems to be heavily into science fiction but I haven't nearly looked at all the offerings.
 
AuntPeggy said:
Wow. Thanks.
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Same here, I downloaded enough books to last 10 years at the rate that I read. I did notice that once you get past the older books with expired copyrights, most of the selections are sci-fi which I don't read too much. Wonder why that is.
 
Everskyward said:
Same here, I downloaded enough books to last 10 years at the rate that I read. I did notice that once you get past the older books with expired copyrights, most of the selections are sci-fi which I don't read too much. Wonder why that is.
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The books that are less than 95 years old are still under copyright. Those that want to distribute their books for free are probably the ones using this site and are likely to be a group of scifi writers. Most writers will wish to retain their coopyrights so as to make money licenses the publication. I'll bet that publishers that own copyrights are nto too keen on letting their property out for free either.
 
smigaldi said:
The books that are less than 95 years old are still under copyright. Those that want to distribute their books for free are probably the ones using this site and are likely to be a group of scifi writers. Most writers will wish to retain their coopyrights so as to make money licenses the publication. I'll bet that publishers that own copyrights are nto too keen on letting their property out for free either.
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I understand about the copyrights. I was just curious why sci-fi writers are more likely to distribute books for free (not only on the one site) than writers of other genres.
 
Everskyward said:
I understand about the copyrights. I was just curious why sci-fi writers are more likely to distribute books for free (not only on the one site) than writers of other genres.
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i am not sure where you got that idea. Check out the romance genre. By far more copyright free stuff available there.

Personal history is also a big deal with copyright free writers. The vanity publishing houses still charge some pretty high rates for their books. If that dogsdontfly' guy comes back you can ask him as his book is published by one of those vanity on demand places.
 
smigaldi said:
Check out the romance genre. By far more copyright free stuff available there.
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LOL, I'm even less likely to read romance than sci-fi.

smigaldi said:
Personal history is also a big deal with copyright free writers. The vanity publishing houses still charge some pretty high rates for their books. If that dogsdontfly' guy comes back you can ask him as his book is published by one of those vanity on demand places.
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I can see why e-publishing would be an advantage in these cases. I've read some books published by vanity publishing houses and they can be pretty uneven in quality, not that all normally published books are that great. That's pretty much what I would expect, though, since they don't need to be "accepted" in the traditional sense and may not be edited that well either.
 
Cap'n Jack said:
A place to get free, legitimately licensed,copyrighted books is here:
http://www.baen.com/library/
The authors and publisher uploaded them in a variety of reader formats.

It seems to be heavily into science fiction but I haven't nearly looked at all the offerings.
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Well, since Baen Books is a SF and Fantasy publisher, I guess it makes sense that the majority of the books there are in that genre.

In fact, their manuscript submission FAQ says:
http://www.baen.com/FAQS.htm said:
We publish only science fiction and fantasy. Writers familiar with what we have published in the past will know what sort of material we are most likely to publish in the future: powerful plots with solid scientific and philosophical underpinnings are the sine qua non for consideration for science fiction submissions. As for fantasy, any magical system must be both rigorously coherent and integral to the plot, and overall the work must at least strive for originality.
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Grant- makes sense. I got to the site another way that missed the home page (via an author web site).
 
smigaldi said:
I'll bet that publishers that own copyrights are nto too keen on letting their property out for free either.
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The publisher is hosting the Baen site. Here are a few snips from the First Librarian of the Baen Free Library.

Don't bother robbing me, twit. I will cheerfully put up the stuff for free myself. Because I am quite confident that any "losses" I sustain will be more than made up for by the expansion in the size of my audience...

That assumes, of course, that the writer in question is producing good books. "Good," at least, in the opinion of enough readers. That is not always true, of course. But, frankly, a mediocre writer really doesn't have to worry about piracy anyway...

The only time that mass scale petty thievery becomes a problem is when the perception spreads, among broad layers of the population, that a given product is priced artificially high due to monopolistic practices and/or draconian legislation designed to protect those practices. But so long as the "gap" between the price of a legal product and a stolen one remains both small and, in the eyes of most people, a legitimate cost rather than gouging, 99% of them will prefer the legal product...
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