Free Books Jan 2009--Post info about Free Books Here!

[tlshaw *Padded Cell 511*]

I didn't see MobiPocket, so I downloaded the pdf files and have already emailed them to myself. I love
the feature in the Kindle. It is nice to have some quick reading when I don't want to get too involved in a longer book.

[MeganW]

See if this link works.

http://www.amazon.com/s/qid=1233205496/ref=sr_st?rs=154606011&page=1&rh=n%3A154606011%2Cp_36%3A0-0&sort=daterank

There are 1469 public domain books free listed on Amazon now. Interesting.

Atunah, thank you so much for this link:  http://www.amazon.com/s/qid=1233205496/ref=sr_st?rs=154606011&page=1&rh=n%3A154606011%2Cp_36%3A0-0&sort=daterank

When you click the link, you can get back to the list we remember, where the legitimate free books display.  I changed my Free Books bookmark to this URL.  Hopefully the link will keep bringing us to these books.

[KAYDEE]

All this does is hurt the publishers who put out their books for free in order to get us into a series.  I know that I picked up a few of the free books and have put the next books in the series into my buying queue because I did enjoy the freebie so much!  It would be nice if these were separated out a bit.

I saw this link on another board. It lets you search amazon differently. It might help.
jungle-search.com

[Xia]

Atunah, thank you so much for this link:  http://www.amazon.com/s/qid=1233205496/ref=sr_st?rs=154606011&page=1&rh=n%3A154606011%2Cp_36%3A0-0&sort=daterank

When you click the link, you can get back to the list we remember, where the legitimate free books display.  I changed my Free Books bookmark to this URL.  Hopefully the link will keep bringing us to these books.

Unfortunately, it doesn't show them all.  It only lists about half of the "real" (non-public domain) free books.  The other half of the "real" free books are still mixed in with all the public domain stuff.

It's sorting the results by publication date.  And if the pub date of the "real" book was before the date the public domain book file was created than it gets buried in among the public domain books.

I really hope amazon fixes this problem.

I want to be able to see all the "real" free books, without any of the pub domain books.  Amazon would do well to just create a page where all the "real" free books are listed.  One click and anyone could see them all.  We, the customers, would be happy because we could download the "real" freebies.  And the publishers and authors would be happy because they could still easily promote their products and get us customers hooked on an author/series (which is the whole point of giving out freebies in the first place, right?).  And then the pub domain books would still be there in the regular book listing for those who are interested.

[MeganW]

Unfortunately, it doesn't show them all.  It only lists about half of the "real" (non-public domain) free books.  The other half of the "real" free books are still mixed in with all the public domain stuff.

It's sorting the results by publication date.  And if the pub date of the "real" book was before the date the public domain book file was created than it gets buried in among the public domain books.

I really hope amazon fixes this problem.

I want to be able to see all the "real" free books, without any of the pub domain books.  Amazon would do well to just create a page where all the "real" free books are listed.  One click and anyone could see them all.  We, the customers, would be happy because we could download the "real" freebies.  And the publishers and authors would be happy because they could still easily promote their products and get us customers hooked on an author/series (which is the whole point of giving out freebies in the first place, right?).  And then the pub domain books would still be there in the regular book listing for those who are interested.

I just saw that, Xia.  That really stinks.  Hopefully they'll get it fixed.  Even if they add a special "Free for a Limited Time" section, similar to the way they highlight their temporarily free music in their MP3 Downloads section (which is AWESOME, btw.)

[Xia]

I just saw that, Xia.  That really stinks.  Hopefully they'll get it fixed.  Even if they add a special "Free for a Limited Time" section, similar to the way they highlight their temporarily free music in their MP3 Downloads section (which is AWESOME, btw.)

Exactly!

(Btw, I've never seen the free MP3 download section - I'll have to go find that.  Thanks for mentiong it!)

[Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake']

Can someone explain how to break the search down into "Kindle books>0-0>4 stars and up"?

Thanks.

Did anyone answer you, yet?  If not ... on the left side of the Amazon screen where you are doing your search are several categories.  You have to scroll down a bit and you'll see Avg. Customer Review.  Just click on 4 stars and up. 

[Seamonkey]

Did anyone answer you, yet?  If not ... on the left side of the Amazon screen where you are doing your search are several categories.  You have to scroll down a bit and you'll see Avg. Customer Review.  Just click on 4 stars and up. 

That will work except for those books that are "real" free books but  that have had no ratings yet, or one low rating only.  So they won't show up right away if you search for 4-5 stars only until they are reviewed.  Hopefully they will still be free at that time.

Lynn D

I sat here last night/early this morning while watching Australian Open tennis and clicked through to page 33 and did download some that sounded interesting, especially some that were highly reviewed and certainly the "real" free books would pop up every few pages.

[Vegas_Asian]

Can someone explain how to break the search down into "Kindle books>0-0>4 stars and up"?

Thanks.

I would recommend using Jungle-Search. You can search by rating, price, genre, and more. Be sure to select Kindle(books)...i forget sometimes

My search results for book with a price range of $0-$0 and a 3star or better rating. http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?node=154606011&field-price=0-0&p_72=3-&sort=price&redirect=true

[bellapixie]

I tend to just lurk but I felt this had to be shared from the amazon discussion boards.

If you used jungle-search.com and put the price of $0.00 and then use the last drop down box to pick "featured items" you will get the regular listing of promo free books and not the public domain books.

Now before everybody beats me up I'll go introduce myself.

Beth

[Vegas_Asian]

Welcome!

[traci]

Unfortunately the smaller publishers like Samhain aren't listed as featured so only the Random House books show up.

Traci

I tend to just lurk but I felt this had to be shared from the amazon discussion boards.

If you used jungle-search.com and put the price of $0.00 and then use the last drop down box to pick "featured items" you will get the regular listing of promo free books and not the public domain books.

Now before everybody beats me up I'll go introduce myself.

Beth

[bellapixie]

Unfortunately the smaller publishers like Samhain aren't listed as featured so only the Random House books show up.

Traci

When I searched with jungle-search.com "Blood of Eden" showed up and that was published by Samhain. It just wasn't the first one on the list anymore.

[MAGreen]

Harlequin has 16 free books!
 http://www.harlequincelebrates.com/index.php
P.S. They are PDF, but they don't have the DRM so they can be converted for Kindle.

[Kathy]

Harlequin has 16 free books!
 http://www.harlequincelebrates.com/index.php

I downloaded these last night in pdf format and emailed them to free.Kindle.com and had them converted. It was the first time I used the service and was impressed at how fast I got them back. It was great.

[sharyn]

I looked at the Harlequin books, but didn't know any of the authors and didn't want to spend so much time downloading them one by one.

Sharyn

[Kathy]

The Harlequin books downloaded pretty quickly. I emailed them one at a time because the were all over 1mb. They were emailed back to me quickly. I spend about 30 minutes total. I haven't added them to my Kindle yet.

[drenee]

Same as Kathy, only took a few minutes to do each one.  I don't normally read Harlequin, but free is free. 

[Meemo]

I saw this link on another board. It lets you search amazon differently. It might help.
jungle-search.com

Jungle-search REALLY helps get through the new public domain offerings to the more current freebies.
I posted this on the Amazon board as well.  Hopefully its okay to cut & paste my own post (with a couple of changes...)

Just wanted to let people who haven't seen it yet know about a good way to refine your search through the Kindle books by searching by price. If you go to jungle-search.com you can choose the category of "Kindle Books" (you have to scroll down a tad in that drop down box) and put in your parameters for pricing to find books within a certain price range. So if you're looking for free book, you can look for books price $0 to $0.

You can also refine your search by using the sub-category option to choose a genre,  I don't know how well the new public domain offerings might be tagged for genre, though.

For those of us looking for more current "freebies" with all the public domain freebies now coming into the Kindle bookstore, I found that if you use that last drop-down box to "Sort by", one of the options is "Featured Items". Choose that and the first free books that come up are the current Random House selections. Looks like those are Amazon's "featured items" within the free offerings.  You can also choose to list the results sorted in multiple ways (alphabetical by author or title, price, customer ratings, etc). 

You can search for anything on Amazon using jungle-search, apparently it's an associate-type site.  I might've read about it here, in fact - can't really remember.  If it was here, thanks to whoever posted it initially, it's a great tool, especially now!

[Meemo]

One thing that someone else mentioned, and might've been mentioned here (if so my apologies for being repetitive) - if you download these new mobipocket public domain books from Amazon, they're in your content manager forever.  Which is fine if you don't mind that.  If you download from mobipocket, you can delete them once you've read them (or figured out you don't like it & will never read it) & they won't stay in your content manager.  Just something to think about...

[KindleMom]

Thanks for the great tips, Meemo!

[love2read]

I used Mobipocket Creator to change these books from pdf to kindle format. I was also able to change the metadata so that the title and author came out right.

Question - I have never tried emailing a file to myself. When you email it do you send the pdf file as an attactment? and also when you see it on your Kindle screen are the title and author correct straight from the pdf file?

Thanks,

Lynn M

I downloaded these last night in pdf format and emailed them to free.Kindle.com and had them converted. It was the first time I used the service and was impressed at how fast I got them back. It was great.

[Lizzy]

I used Mobipocket Creator to change these books from pdf to kindle format. I was also able to change the metadata so that the title and author came out right.

Question - I have never tried emailing a file to myself. When you email it do you send the pdf file as an attactment? and also when you see it on your Kindle screen are the title and author correct straight from the pdf file?

Thanks,

Lynn M

You can send the pdf as an attachment but the metadata probly wont be right. If you converted it yourself you dont want to send the pdf file. If you have a PC go to MyPublications in Documents and the file will be there. Just pick the one that says its an ebook file. The author name comes out right as long as you type it in the way they tell you, LastName comma space FirstName. Hope this helps.

[Anne]

The Harlequin books downloaded pretty quickly. I emailed them one at a time because the were all over 1mb. They were emailed back to me quickly. I spend about 30 minutes total. I haven't added them to my Kindle yet.

Thanks for the info Kathy. I have never done it before. Maybe I should try it.

[Kathy]

I used Mobipocket Creator to change these books from pdf to kindle format. I was also able to change the metadata so that the title and author came out right.

Question - I have never tried emailing a file to myself. When you email it do you send the pdf file as an attactment? and also when you see it on your Kindle screen are the title and author correct straight from the pdf file?

Thanks,

Lynn M

I didn't mail it directly to my Kindle because I wanted to name the file before putting it on my Kindle. You can download to your computer and then mail it to "yourname"@free.kindle.com and they will email it back to your regular email address. You click on the link that they send and it asks you get the prompt to save it. Save it to your computer and then you can rename it before adding it to your Kindle with the usb cord.

Hope this helps. I'm sure there are better instructions on the board. Leslie's book is a big help. It was the first thing I bought and read on my Kindle.