Read an E-Book Week is here … and with it the chance for you to learn more about e-books and to download free e-books. Let’s start with free e-books—everybody likes free—then we’ll get to resources to learn more about e-books.
During this week, I am offering a free e-book to each of my visitors.
Some of my clients are providing limited numbers of copies of their e-books:
- As Shadows Fall by Grace Anne Schaefer (5 copies)
- The New Day Dawns by Grace Anne Schaefer (5 copies)
- On the Wings of the Wind by Patricia Eytcheson Taylor and the Reverend Doctor James Taylor (2 copies)
- Some Monument to Last by James Doughty (2 copies)
- Spring House by David Bowles (5 copies)
I am offering an unlimited number of my own e-books:
Just leave a comment indicating your first, second, and third choices for your free e-book. I will e-mail you the e-book (typically a zip file containing several different e-book formats) within one business day. You must request your free e-book during Read an E-Book Week 2009, no later than Saturday, March 14th. Though I will give you your first choice if possible, the e-books in limited supply will be distributed in the order the request is received in comments.
Visit the Read an E-Book Partners page to find more free e-books from publishers and authors.
The following sites give away free e-books all the time:
- All Books Free—fiction, children’s literature, and poetry
- Bibliomania—over 2000 free classic texts
- Christian Classics Ethereal Library—classic Christian books in electronic format
- Classic Short Stories—read short stories online
- Digital Book Index—catalog of more than 100,000 online books, texts, and documents
- Electronic Text Center—University of Virginia’s E-Book Library for the MS READER and PALM Devices
- Feedbooks—Free public domain books in popular formats
- Free-ebooks.net—E-books delivered by RSS feed or downloadable PDF
- ibiblio—one of the largest “collection of collections” from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
- MemoWare—free e-books for PDAs
- National Academies Press—more than 4,000 free e-books in the fields of science, engineering, and medicine
- The Online Books Page—listing over 30,000 free books on the Web from the University of Pennsylvania
- Phoenix-Library.org—worldwide multiformat e-Library
- Project Gutenberg—The oldest producer of free e-texts on the Internet
You can find even more free e-books by going to your favorite search engine and typing in “free e-books.”
If you’d like to know more about e-books, check out the following articles.
On the Read an E-Book site, you will find:
- History of E-Books
- Future of E-Books
- Information on E-Book Reading Devices
- Environmental Impact of E-Books
- Sources of E-Books
- Read an E-Book Partners
You will find a number of articles on my blog about e-books, including the following.
General E-Book Information:
- E-Book Resources
- E-Books, Part 1: I read throughout a four-hour power outage
- E-Books, Part 2: Short Nonfiction (How-To) E-Books
- E-Books, Part 3: Books from Electronic or Traditional Publishers
- Blog Action Day: Publishing and the Environment
- Read an E-Book Week
- Read an E-Book Week 2
- Read an E-Book Week Next Week
Electronic Reading Devices:
- Dream or Destiny and the Kindle
- E-Books, Part 4: Electronic Reading Devices
- What Will the Kindle Do for the E-Publishing Industry?
Publishing E-Books:
- Answers to a Writer’s Questions, Part 2: Children’s Book on CD
- Answers to a Writer’s Questions, Part 3: Marketing a Children’s E-Book
- Self-Publishing Primer: Part 13 – Do I need a Web site and should I make my book available as an e-book?
In closing, let me share a few of the things I like best about reading e-books:
- Reading electronically is easier on my aging, stroke-damaged eyes because I can adjust the font to a size large enough for me to read easily; eInk in Kindle and other e-book reading devices creates an excellent reading experience.
- Holding my Kindle or eBookWise reader is more comfortable than trying to holding a print book (especially a hard cover book) open with arthritic hands.
- I can carry dozens or hundreds of books in the palm of my hand, which is especially beneficial when traveling.
- E-books are more environmentally friendly than print books, especially considering that a third of all books printed end up in land fills without ever being read.
- I find innovative, entertaining, and informative books from small, electronic publishers that often don’t follow the mold of books from traditional publishers.
- Many e-books, especially classics, are available for free, and e-books from independent publishers usually cost much less than print books, allowing me to buy more books on my budget.
I read e-books almost exclusively, but many people prefer print. Do any of the benefits listed above attract your interest? Many readers find that reading e-books—once a week, once a month, or once a year—adds to their reading enjoyment and saves them money while preserving trees. Hope you Read an E-book this week!
Don’t forget to leave your comment with your first, second, and third choices of e-books. If you request one of my books, Dream or Destiny or Stroke of Luck, you don’t need to include any other choices, as there are no limits on how many of these I will give away.