Reading Free Books

[Harry Shannon]

Agreed

[Ann in Arlington]

Folks, I've deleted some posts that were self-promotional in nature (remember, we're in the book Corner ) or were not about the subject of reading free books but rather about whether books should be free.  THAT is a good discussion for the Writer's Cafe -- in fact has been had there many times.

Personally, I like free books:  sometimes I'm on the fence about trying an author and one of their titles free might be what tips me over.   And, hey, if I like that one, I may buy more.  And of course I LOVE the free classics. . . .picked up another Dickens yesterday in honor of the 200th anniversary of his birth tomorrow!

[Pamela]

I like the free books, but I'm careful about those I download.  I don't get more than I can read in a few days.  My mind would explode with too many choices.

I have found some I wanted to try anyway, new authors, and they were excellent.  Hope it's okay to mention one.  It was Replica.  I got it free and loved it.  Sometimes a favorite author of mine will go free too!  I'm happy with the free books.

[Phyllis Lily Jules]

I bought my kindle three months ago and have almost one hundred free books ready to read. What can I say, I'm looking for an interesting book, and many times I find one. I've sharpened my hunting skills over all these book-loving years and do pretty well with the ones I've carefully chosen. I give them forty pages to prove their worth, though, and have only tossed out about ten percent of my picks so far.

But I know exactly what you mean. So many choices and temptations. Too much hype and over-promising. Then at the grocery store it's the same thing, terrible food that looked delicious in the ads. Shampoo that almost guarantees shine, but I end up with frizz. Turn on the TV with hundreds of channels but nothing to watch. Buy a CD with that one amazing song, and all the rest are dull letdowns. I become exasperated over and over again.

I think the market gave us what we wanted, choices. But now we have the problem of finding our preferences among the masses of items. Not too much fun. But I'm still very happy to have all these free books. I've read some amazing ones, just have to put some work into finding them.

[Aenea]

I think I failed to mention that I have read some good free books and have bought a few series' because of the first one being free and I do appreciate authors giving them away. It's just that really good books have been hard to find lately for me. The thing that turns me off the most is bad grammar, spelling and missing words. If a person can't write well and won't bother getting their work edited, they shouldn't be writing, in my opinion. :-)

[corpsjustice]

How are you guys finding the best free books available. Pixel of Ink seems to be decent. The other option is searching the top 100. Any other EASY ideas?

[Eliza Baum]

Yeah, the crap factor has definitely increased. I like using www.ereaderiq.com to filter certain genres (while listing the most recently added first so I don't have to wade through everything to find the new ones). Only problem is, not all books are correctly categorized. But it narrows things down so I then can scan for good covers.

Yep, I use Ereaderiq too. The filters they added are great now. You are right, they aren't always correct, but what makes me even more mad is authors/publishers marking their books with genre's they do not belong too. Apparently its the thing to mark anything romance now. But it certainly cuts down on the time it takes to go through the list. I do it every morning if I can so I can use the last 24 hour listed.
I also like using the site for stuff that went on sale.

You guys are amazing! This site ROCKS. Being a cover junkie, I love that you can view your search results by cover.

I downloaded a ton of freebies right after I got my kindle, most of which were public domain books. Now, I don't really download many. I'll watch for books I've been eyeing (I have a long wish list) to go free (or cheap, for that matter), but otherwise I don't download unless it's something for which I would have paid money.

[HeidiHall]

How are you guys finding the best free books available. Pixel of Ink seems to be decent. The other option is searching the top 100. Any other EASY ideas?

I think the easiest way to find the best freebies is to sort by favorite genre(s), then refine by price lowest-highest and make sure to check the reviews.

As for my own free book addiction... it was a lesson learned the hard way. I used to be a voracious reader, so when I first got my kindle, of course I loaded it up with my favorite authors' new releases and as many freebies as I could find within the genres I typically enjoyed. About a month later I realized I had almost completely lost my appetite to read . There really is a whole lot of less than mediocre books out there. It took almost a year, but I do occasionally browse the freebies now - I'm just very selective in what I chose to download. The fault is completely my own though because I'm stubborn and refused to stop reading when I knew the disappointment was only going to get worse. Nowadays, there isn't much time in my life to simply read, so when I do it better be good.  Free really is a great way to try new authors and personally, I'm very appreciative when I discover those gems (I show this by buying everything else they've written even if I won't get to it for quite some time). Yup, even with the extra work it takes to find the greats, I am definitely a fan of free.

[Beth Balmanno]

I used to have the free-book problem -- I was always so worried about missing out on something good that I instantly downloaded anything that struck my fancy.  After cluttering my Kindle with more books than I could ever read, I'm a bit more discretionary now and always download the sample pages first.  Yep, it's an extra step but if those first pages grab me, I go back and download the rest.  And I've found lots of gems for free. 

[Pamela]

ENT does filter the books that they show as free.  And I know eReader IQ does as well.  I went free with one of mine and asked eReader IQ how they picked the books, because mine was on the site.  It does have to do with the star rating on Amazon.  If it's high, the books will be shown on the site under Free books.

It's unfortunate that some people think that because a book is being promoted as free it must be terrible, and they go into the book with that mind-set.  I found some wonderful free books.  Aiden James has a free book today that I downloaded.  He's a very good writer.

[Atunah]

Actually ereaderiq lists all freebies, not just those with ratings. There are 100's every day and many do not have any reviews. But one can sort on the site by everything from genre, to number of stars, filesize etc.

One has to do their own filtering. And I like it this way. Some of the other sites are very much ad driven only at this point, so I want to see everything and then do my sorting as I see fit.

[GerrieFerrisFinger]

My guess is you would have a similar experience if you were to be given a $1,000 ge to a book store and spent wildly.  If you don't discriminate at all you are bound to end up with a lot of things you don't like.

I don't tend to download just anything, regardless of price.  The exception is probably cookbooks... I  almost always grab them and delete them if I don't care for them.

I agree. I can tell after a few pages that the freebies are stinkers. Off they go.
But I've come across some trad books that had multiple errors and huge gaffs in logic and fact.
 
but true

[jljarvis]

How are you guys finding the best free books available. Pixel of Ink seems to be decent. The other option is searching the top 100. Any other EASY ideas?

I tend to search in this order: genre, keyword search, cover (I'm shallow like that.), blurb, and sample. If I like the sample, I download.

Reviews can be all over the map, so I tend to weigh them lightly, unless I'm familiar with the reviewer's taste and past preferences. (For example, I have stayed in some gorgeous 5-star hotels that got bad reviews on TripAdvisor. I think that's where I learned not to place too much stock in any one person's opinion. There are just too many unknown variables.)

[history_lover]

ENT does filter the books that they show as free.  And I know eReader IQ does as well.  I went free with one of mine and asked eReader IQ how they picked the books, because mine was on the site.  It does have to do with the star rating on Amazon.  If it's high, the books will be shown on the site under Free books.

eReaderIQ definitely lists all freebies, maybe there was a misunderstanding when you got info from them or perhaps the info is just outdated but all you have to do is go to their site because they list the star rating right underneath the title and some have no star rating.

It's unfortunate that some people think that because a book is being promoted as free it must be terrible, and they go into the book with that mind-set.  I found some wonderful free books.  Aiden James has a free book today that I downloaded.  He's a very good writer.

It's a long topic so maybe I've missed something but I don't recall anyone saying that if a book is free it must be terrible. Some people agree that many free books are pretty bad but some are pretty good and therefore it becomes a matter of trying to weed through the crap to find the good stuff. But I don't remember anyone saying ALL free promos are terrible. I have found some really great freebies but honestly, I've found more duds than gems.

[Laura Lond]

Like many others who have posted here, I have been very picky with my freebies, and probably for that reason I haven't encountered anything terrible yet. I'll usually only grab a freebie in my preferred genres, after I check the blurb and reviews. If I'm venturing into a genre I don't normally read, I'll be even more picky = do more research. It's been paying off so far.

[Harry Shannon]

Been thinking about this. I'm slowly going back to word of mouth, grabbing things someone I trust has already suggested. That's what book sellers used to do for us, and quality magazine reviewers we'd come to believe had good taste. Perhaps after all this chaos things will settle down to a 21st Century version of that model. There are so many people desperately trying to game the Amazon system it's become a crowded, loud marketplace full of people screaming about their wares. That's not all bad, we certainly have variety now, but not particularly beneficial either.

[Edward M. Grant]

That's why returns of free books always confuse me.  Delete it.  

Sometimes a free book is so bad that you have to consider returning it just to make a point. So far I've managed to not do so .

And, to be fair, if 10,000 people download a free book you'll almost certainly find a few who didn't like it or don't remember why they did, or did it by accident and then return it because they think they were charged for it. With the recent spate of one-day freebies people can easily get confused about which books were free and which weren't.

[Edward M. Grant]

Dialogue that reads like a conversation: ("Hello, how are you?" "I'm fine, and you?") No decent writer includes such incidental conversation in dialogue. Next time you watch a film, notice that the characters don't even say hello or good-bye, let alone other extraneous stuff, when speaking on the phone. Shouldn't happen in a novel, either.

I've been in a critiquing group for several years and that's one of my personal bugbears: 'Your short story is four thousand words long and the first five hundred are just people walking into a room and introducing themselves'. I've read an awful lot of stories which would benefit from losing the first quarter where nothing happens.

As you say, movies really can't afford any time wasted on such things; back when I was editing indie movies I've often cut out half the dialogue before the edit was done.

Back more on topic, I generally go by the first two or three pages as well; I've become more choosy as I'm beginning to run out of space on my Kindle, but in the past I've treated free books as 'extended samples' and if I don't want to read beyond those few pages I just moved on to the next one. Sometimes I've been disappointed, but normally if those pages are readable and interesting the rest of the story is too.

[MariaESchneider]

Did my usual weekly pick through the freebies.  The first one I tried was an absolute GEM.  I LOVED IT.  Unicorn on Speed Dial by Jeanette Cottrell.


http://www.amazon.com/Unicorn-on-Speed-Dial-ebook/dp/B004RHWQ40/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1328994441&sr=8-1

It's not free anymore, but it's 2.99 (I think.)  I reviewed it at my blog and I highly recommend it for cozy fantasy readers, cozy mystery readers and anyone who needs a good adventure with a laugh. 

These are the ones that keep me looking.  (The cover sort of indicates a children's story--I almost didn't download, but something in the blurb caught my attention.  Probably the unicorn.)   Glad I did.

[Ann in Arlington]

Sometimes a free book is so bad that you have to consider returning it just to make a point. So far I've managed to not do so .

I don't think you can 'return' a free book any more.  When I look at MYK, even for books acquired within the last 7 days, the 'return' option isn't there if I got it free.

[John Barlow]

I never download free books.
Until I read this post, I hadn't really thought about it.
It's prejudice, obviously, but from what people are saying here, there's some justification to it.

I also don't understand what a writer gets out of having a book published for free, if 'free' has such a bad reputation.

Best, JohnB

[HeidiHall]

I also don't understand what a writer gets out of having a book published for free, if 'free' has such a bad reputation.

Best, JohnB

It's all about exposure... it is easier to rise through the ranks as a freebie and when you return to paid status your visibility remains higher for a bit. I think it is losing its shine because of so many freebies, but it does help some people for a limited amount of time. Even with the bad reputation freebies have, I love being able to sample new authors without feeling guilty for setting it aside if it doesn't grab me. It also lets me experiment outside my normal genres without hesitation for the same reason.

[planet_janet]

I'm incredibly picky about freebies.  Even when I first got my Kindle, I was very selective about what free content I downloaded.  I have roughly 20 freebies (including public domain classics) that I've accumulated over the two-year span that I've owned my Kindle.