Where Do You Get Your Books? (A Survey)

[Samantha45]

Originally Posted by clintbradford

... and I am not gonna say where I found a copy of "To Kill a Mockingbird" yesterday.

I've been looking for that one!

[techie42]

My ebooks have come from a number of locations...

http://www.kobobooks.com/

http://www.freesfonline.de/index.html

http://www.baen.com/library/

http://craphound.com/?cat=5

http://www.feedbooks.com/

http://www.starrigger.net/ebooks.htm

http://toronto.lib.overdrive.com/F52...en/Default.htm

I wish that I could supports Amazon's ebook efforts. But they won't let me.

[DNSB]

Hmmmm... I've hit the following sites for out of copyright books

http://archive.org/details/texts

http://openlibrary.org/

http://gutenberg.org/

http://manybooks.net/

I've downloaded from Baen's free library and purchased others from their website (latest was A. Bertram Chandler's Commodore Grimes books -- I originally read most of them in the form of Ace Doubles which may say something about how long I've been kicking around). ( www.baen.com )

I've also used other sites mainly due to the joys of Calibre being able to do a decent job of converting other formats to .epub. I had a recommendation for a UK site The Book Depository ( www.bookdepository.co.uk ) however I couldn't find any ebooks on their site -- my problem I suspect. One site I found rather disappointing was SmashWords since the formatting and editing on their books was, putting it mildly, rather spotty -- I really don't enjoy editing and reformatting a book before reading it.

I've also scanned in, OCRed and cleaned up a couple of my books. Not a task for the faint of heart.

My daughter downloads quite a few books but I've long since learned not ask my offspring where they obtain anything on the web. Plausible deniability is what I strive for.

[roguefan99]

Ebooks are listed on the side link but because I'm nice here is a direct one

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/category/3390/eBooks

[tpw]

Originally Posted by roguefan99

Ebooks are listed on the side link but because I'm nice here is a direct one

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/category/3390/eBooks

I love the book depository, but can someone tell me how the hell they can be out of stock for a given ebook? Either they have it or not, I would have thought.

For instance, I looked up Charles Stross, and found about 1/2 his ebooks were out of stock.

Does this mean that for a given book they only have X number of download licences or something like that?

[roguefan99]

Originally Posted by tpw

I love the book depository, but can someone tell me how the hell they can be out of stock for a given ebook? Either they have it or not, I would have thought.

Does this mean that for a given book they only have X number of download licences or something like that?

Dunno, I think its more insidious than that, I think they put a copy of the book in the ebook section even though they don't have a license to sell it. Why because when you click on the link you can see that its available for paperback or hardback. Whats really strange is if you search for "Dexter" (checking if the new one is out). They have copies of Dexter by Design avalaible and "out of stock" (with differing publishers).

[tpw]

Originally Posted by roguefan99

Dunno, I think its more insidious than that, I think they put a copy of the book in the ebook section even though they don't have a license to sell it. Why because when you click on the link you can see that its available for paperback or hardback. Whats really strange is if you search for "Dexter" (checking if the new one is out). They have copies of Dexter by Design avalaible and "out of stock" (with differing publishers).

I might just take the bull by the horns and email them to find out. I'll let you know...

[Ea]

I'm trying to shorten my 'to-read' list, so I haven't bought many books lately. But when I buy, I usually look for the cheapest. I de-DRM my books as I want to be 100% certain I can access them in the future, so where I buy doesn't matter as much. Most often I buy from either Amazon or Cyberread - because at Cyberread you can get 40% off an order for writing a review (http://www.cyberread.com/book-reviews), and that make their prices quite competetive.

[BBel]

Good one for the Aussies - readwithoutpaper.com
Yay!

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by roguefan99

Ebooks are listed on the side link but because I'm nice here is a direct one

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/category/3390/eBooks

Weird and wonderful. The first time I clicked on the link got taken to a section on Christian books. Dumped browser cache and hit the link again and there were ebooks!

Now get told the 4 books I was interested in were out of stock (from science fiction, fantasy & horror classification). Changed from "all" to "in stock" and dropped from 23431 books to 7716 books. It boggles the mind to think that less than 1/3 of their ebooks are in stock. Whatever "in stock" means to an ebook.

Hmmm... science fiction alone went from 9528 to 2268 -- less than 25%. Though the numbers may be inflated since it appears that every format is counted as a separate book. Sensible enough for physical media but for electronic media?

[tpw]

Here's the email I recieved back when I asked them this very question:

"This will be because the eBook is not being made available to our suppliers – we’re trying to stock as many titles as we can, but there will be some that are not being made available to us, and so we cannot offer these to customers just yet.

I’m sorry for any confusion caused

Kind regards,

Richard White

Customer Advisor
The Book Depository Ltd"

Doesn't really explain why they even bother listing the bloody books if they're not actually available.

[Ea]

Originally Posted by tpw

Doesn't really explain why they even bother listing the bloody books if they're not actually available.

One should think that it would be easy enough to implement in their web site. But having worked on the other side (behind the scenes, so to speak), sometimes what seems obvious and simple from the outside, for some obscure reason just... isn't.

They still have a problem though, because it confuses their customers and make them appear clueless.