trying to locate books to read

[JLYates]

Not sure if this is the place to ask, but I am confused.

I went to e-deisel to check out some books and they needed my email address to send the books to.

I am new to this, but why would they send it to my email? Why couldn't I just download it, as I have from manybooks onto my desktop and then put it on the calibre to send to my ereader (Sony 900).

I would like to find a place that sells paranormal romance, along with other genres, but the books I mainly read are paranormal, murder mysteries, some westerns and sci-fi and classicals.

Thanks for any help that can be given.

Janette

[ATDrake]

For paranormal romance, you'll want Jasmine Jade (Ellora's Cave Publishing/Cerridwen Press ebookstore) and AllRomance Ebooks (aggregate of big-name publishers, small press, and individual authors). Both have "free reads" sections you can try out at no cost.

Also Harlequin, which has a dedicated ebookstore (LUNA is their fantasy/paranormal imprint). I've heard they sometimes run deals and give out discounts to members/newsletter subscribers.

For their 60th anniversary, they put up a bunch of DRM-free multiple format ebooks both on their webstore page and special ebook promotion site, and I think there's at least one or two paranormal & mystery romances among the lot.

Their new Carina Press online publishing venture offers more DRM-free Harlequin stuff in ePub and PDF so far, and they're having 20% off as a grand opening sale. The Donna Lea Simpson book "Last Days of a Rake" is currently a promotional freebie.

For science fiction, you'll want to bookmark Baen's Webscription service, as well as the Baen Free Library. The latter offers the first book in many popular series for free, in the hopes you'll be persuaded to go buy the rest. The former has very affordably priced books from various publishers and authors (not just the Baen "stable") and you can save even more by getting the monthly Webscription bundles, if the books are to your taste. There are a few urban fantasies among the free selections, if you're interested.

The classics can be found easily via Project Gutenberg, which also has Australian and Canadian versions, for works that have come into the public domain in Life+50 copyright countries.

Feedbooks, Manybooks, and our own MobileRead forum members have made nicely formatted versions of some of these same classic texts for many e-readers.

Also, if you've got a favourite author, see if you can find their website. A lot of writers will offer free short stories and occasionally even entire novels formatted for various e-readers for fans to read.

Hope this helps.

[Worldwalker]

I'll give you my stock "where to find books" post. Yes, for those who wonder, I have this saved and ready to go. I really ought to slap it up on a web page somewhere, I suppose, and link it in my .sig.

Right here on MobileRead is a good start -- the ebooks are built by hand by MobileRead members, and in my opinion they have the best formatting. There are a lot of other good ebook sites out there. Here's my personal free ebook source list:

Public Domain

MobileRead - best formatting, limited selection (hand-built by MobileRead members)

ManyBooks - PG scraper, but sometimes has books from other sources, good formatting

Feedbooks - mostly scrapes PG, improves formatting

Project Gutenberg - the granddaddy of them all, phenomenal selection

Munseys - painful to use, but has books nobody else does

the Internet Archive - generally only the scans are readable

Google Books - most of the time, what's good isn't free, and what's free isn't good

Free non-PD

Baen Free Library - amazing selection; also, they will tempt you into buying books

5th Imperium - Baen CD collections

Other Things

Search: Inkmesh. Sadly, it's not a very comprehensive search engine, at least when it comes to free ebooks - it misses a lot of them - but as far as I know, it's the only ebook-specific one out there.

If you're using free ebooks, it's only right to give something back: proofread a page a day at the Distributed Proofreading Project.

[JLYates]

Thanks everyone,

I have visited some of them listed; at Manybooks I got a BUNCH of the classics that I have always wanted to read.
I have been looking at the ebooks here at MR and plan to download several of them. Sherlock Homes, can't wait to read them !

Checked out Google, but didn't seen anything in romance. A lot of other stuff that I might check out later, but right now I am trying to find sites that do pnr. Not into comtemporary romance, I like the supernatural realm.

Am planning on going to Bean later on, was looking at pnr right now. I seem to be doing it in genres, classicals, now pnr, then sci-fi, probably look at murder mysteries next.
I guess what threw me was e-deisel asking for my email address to send books to. Is that the norm to send them to an email address?

This is my third week owning my Sony 900 and I have been researching a LOT about the reader, how it works and such and calibre. Now I am turning my focus on getting books.

thanks again for the help.

Janette

[Maggie May]

Janette

Diesel send a link to your email address so you can download your books from there.

Slan
Mag.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by JLYates

Not sure if this is the place to ask, but I am confused.

I went to e-deisel to check out some books and they needed my email address to send the books to.

I am new to this, but why would they send it to my email?

Because they are, I believe, selling DRM-protected ePub files. The way that works is that they e-mail you a small file which acts a "loader" for the book proper. They don't e-mail you the book itself.

[FlorenceArt]

Other online ebook stores don't all send you an e-mail link, but I suspect they will all require an e-mail address and some other personal information when you sign on. I am registered on several of them and as far as I can remember, they all asked for my e-mail. As does any forum or online shop I would say. If I have doubts as to the trustworthiness of the site, I do a Google search on the site to see it if there are any complaints about it. If I still don't trust them but want to sign in anyway, I use a special e-mail address I have set up for this kind of use and that I almost never check.

[Edit: of course, if I have doubts as to the trustworthiness of a commercial site, I just don't buy from them )]

One thing that more and more ebook stores will ask from you is a postal address, because some books come with geographical restrictions, and you can't buy them if you're not in the country they are for (usually, the U.S.). Others don't ask for your address but guess which country you're in from your credit card or from your IP address.

[wayspooled]

In answer to your question as to "why" they request an email address instead of just forwarding you upon payment to a download page - it's so they can send you advertisements and sell your email address. It's designed that way on purpose. All that folks have said above is certainly true in a technical sense but there are other ways of providing you the ability download it. This is the reason they want the email address.

It's just a fact of life in the internet world of sales. Perhaps I'm cynical but I know I'm also right. Doesn't stop me from providing mine to them.

[Worldwalker]

I set up an email address for everyone I do business with. They're all aliased to the same account, of course, but by checking the email something comes in on, I know who sold my name to the spammers.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by wayspooled

In answer to your question as to "why" they request an email address instead of just forwarding you upon payment to a download page - it's so they can send you advertisements and sell your email address. It's designed that way on purpose. All that folks have said above is certainly true in a technical sense but there are other ways of providing you the ability download it. This is the reason they want the email address.

My practical experience suggests that this is untrue. I have a hotmail account that I use purely for registering with stores with. I always check the "Please don't send me any information" box. That account has not received one spam message in over three years. Zero.

What bookstores have sold your e-mail address resulting in your receiving spam?