complete selection. Also, some of the other sites accept advertising from authors who pay to have their books featured. Nothing wrong with that, except that it results in these sites recommending some truly awful books from time to time.
Like Kindle Buffet, the sites mentioned here participate in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate program that pays advertising fees for linking to Amazon.com. While this list isn’t exhaustive, these sites are among the best:
Pixelofink.com
The Kindle Daily Deal publishes daily deals, bestsellers, bargains, free books, and popular quotes.
MORE GOLD MINES OF FREE BOOKS
U ntil now, our discussion has focused on current books—those published within the past few years and usually available free only through Amazon for a limited time. However, there is a whole new category of books freely available on Amazon and other sites. These “Public Domain” works include the classics from authors like William Shakespreare, Jane Austen, Jules Verne, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, and countless others. Unlike the books featured in Kindle Buffet’s “Editor’s Picks,” these old classics remain free all year long.
These free classics can pop up any time you’re browsing or searching Amazon. For example, enter a search for “Bronte,” and among the results are free Kindle editions of up books by the Bronte sisters—Ann, Charlotte and Emily—as shown below:
Figure 1: Free eBooks of classic novels by the Bronte sisters.
Notice the books with the generic covers and the book with the Kindle graphic for a cover. They’re all priced at $0.00. These are Public Domain titles, so Amazon lets you download them for free to your Kindle. The beige and green covers appear on several of the books in my library, pictured below. These are all free—and rather hard-to-find in printed form—books that I got from Amazon.com.
In the image below, King Henry V by Shakespeare, Four Weird Tales by Algernon Blackwood, The Centaur by Algernon Blackwood, The Return by Walter de la Mare and the Raven by Edgar Allen Poe were all free. Amazon has a huge collection available.
Figure 2: My Library showing several free books.
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T IP: Many rare and out-of-print books are now available as eBooks from several different sites. If you’ve been searching for a book that means a lot to you to own—maybe something from your childhood or with similar sentimental value—be sure to check Project Gutenberg and Amazon. It may well be available on one of these sites.
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Exploring Project Gutenberg
F igure 3: The Project Gutenberg homepage
Figure 3 shows the Project Gutenberg homepage. The left navigation menu gives you access to the site’s entire book catalog. You can choose to Search Catalog , Browse Catalog or you can view Book Categories .
Let’s search for a well-known suspense story, “The Turn of the Screw” by Henry James. Here is the result from Project Gutenberg:
Figure 4: Search results for ‘Turn of the Screw’ at Project Gutenberg.
Notice that, on the right of the page, there are two results listed. The first is a link to all the eBook versions of The Turn of the Screw. The one below it is a link to the audio version of the story. Project Gutenberg has a lot of audio books that are public domain and that are read by volunteers. If you want to stock up on audio books for a long trip, this is a good place to do it!
Let’s click on the link to the eBook version of The Turn of the Screw.
Figure 5: The eBook Versions of ‘The Turn of The Screw.’
Project Gutenberg will typically offer books in a variety of formats. Notice that there are HTML, EPUB, Kindle, PLocker, QiOO Mobile and Plain Text versions of this eBook.
The perks of Amazon Prime
T his is a good point to mention Amazon Prime, a subscription offered to Amazon customers for $79 annually. Membership entitles you to watch thousands of free movies and TV series on Kindle