WOWIO Free Books - Free Minds

[realityloop]

WOWIO is a new kind of online bookstore that enables readers to download ebooks for free, using commercial sponsorships to compensate authors and publishers. Readers get free ebooks. Sponsors get a powerful new channel to communicate their message to precisely the people they want to reach. Publishers get a new means of distributing their books, expanding their readership, and monetizing their intellectual property.

For now, WOWIO is only available to people living in the United States. Copyright laws vary by country and currently our licensing restrictions limit distribution to U.S. residents.

http://www.wowio.com/

ps: I was able to sign up, via a US web based CGI Proxy, from Australia

[Azayzel]

Excellent find! Although I am a bit frustrated that I cannot actually get anything from the website. Sucks that they block other countries; how about this for a clue... why don't they check the copyright laws of the countries and adjust accordingly instead of blocking everything?!

[henkvdg]

Originally Posted by Azayzel

Excellent find! Although I am a bit frustrated that I cannot actually get anything from the website. Sucks that they block other countries; how about this for a clue... why don't they check the copyright laws of the countries and adjust accordingly instead of blocking everything?!

They live by placing ads. The ads are often for local businesses. So outside of the US they should use other ads. Seems as simple as that. So wowio should have a site for each country. And books in several languages. Or there should be comparable companies in other countries. There are some, BTW.

[sammykrupa]

Anyone want to get credit for a free ipod shuffle? What email did you sign up with? That's all I need to know, I believe.

If you want to give me credit for the ipod, my email is sammykrupa@comcast.net

[nekokami]

Too bad they can't work out a way to not worry about distribution of the files. I understand that they need to count how many downloads they have to charge their advertisers and compensate their publishers. Maybe someday the reader will handle that by pinging a server when a file is opened by a user for the first time.

Meanwhile, I don't know why anyone would want to read PG books with ads in, but they do have some copyright titles (e.g. Heinlein's Puppet Masters) and some interesting manga that I will consider downloading.

[realityloop]

Goto https://www.evaded.net/circumvent/000010A/x-proxy/start

paste the follwing into the box:
https://www.wowio.com/users/useradd_start.asp?dest=1

and untick "show url entry form", click browse and follow prompts.. you'll likely need an email address that is .com .edu etc not .com.au etc..

Once your account has been created you can do everything without using cgi proxy.

Originally Posted by Azayzel

Excellent find! Although I am a bit frustrated that I cannot actually get anything from the website. Sucks that they block other countries; how about this for a clue... why don't they check the copyright laws of the countries and adjust accordingly instead of blocking everything?!

[mdbenoit]

Originally Posted by realityloop

WOWIO is a new kind of online bookstore that enables readers to download ebooks for free, using commercial sponsorships to compensate authors and publishers. Readers get free ebooks. Sponsors get a powerful new channel to communicate their message to precisely the people they want to reach. Publishers get a new means of distributing their books, expanding their readership, and monetizing their intellectual property.

For now, WOWIO is only available to people living in the United States. Copyright laws vary by country and currently our licensing restrictions limit distribution to U.S. residents.

http://www.wowio.com/

ps: I was able to sign up, via a US web based CGI Proxy, from Australia

I had a quick look at the books and I'd say most of them (at least in the SF category) are available through the Gutenberg project, so they're not offering something that's really new (no bestsellers there). I guess the advantage is that the books are presented a bit better and it's easier to access them.

[rlauzon]

Originally Posted by mdbenoit

I had a quick look at the books and I'd say most of them (at least in the SF category) are available through the Gutenberg project, so they're not offering something that's really new (no bestsellers there). I guess the advantage is that the books are presented a bit better and it's easier to access them.

Yes, I was disppointed to see the same thing.

But manybooks.net does a much better job of presenting books (in multiple formats too).

So, for me at least, I don't see much use for WOWIO.

[Azayzel]

Originally Posted by realityloop

Goto https://www.evaded.net/circumvent/000010A/x-proxy/start

paste the follwing into the box:
https://www.wowio.com/users/useradd_start.asp?dest=1

and untick "show url entry form", click browse and follow prompts.. you'll likely need an email address that is .com .edu etc not .com.au etc..

Once your account has been created you can do everything without using cgi proxy.

RealityLoop: Thanks for the info, I had tried several proxies the other night w/o success (they either wouldn't do secure sites or they blocked the JS, without giving the option to enable it). This totally did the trick, I'm going to have to add this service to my save-list just in case I need something like it in the future. You're awesome!!!

Others: I know there's been speculation of most of the titles being PG-type books, but there are actually quite a few that are not and many that are quite new and current. You'd be doing yourself a disservice is you didn't check it out and browse to your hearts content, there're a few manga, comics, non-fiction, classics (PG-type), and quite a few more. You're limited to 5 a day for d/l's, but the other books remain in your basket to snag when you can; i.e., don't have to search them out again. I'll be milking this one dry unless I find something wrong with the content, etc.

[katania]

Originally Posted by realityloop

WOWIO is a new kind of online bookstore that enables readers to download ebooks for free, using commercial sponsorships to compensate authors and publishers. Readers get free ebooks. Sponsors get a powerful new channel to communicate their message to precisely the people they want to reach. Publishers get a new means of distributing their books, expanding their readership, and monetizing their intellectual property.

For now, WOWIO is only available to people living in the United States. Copyright laws vary by country and currently our licensing restrictions limit distribution to U.S. residents.

http://www.wowio.com/

ps: I was able to sign up, via a US web based CGI Proxy, from Australia

Now How do you do that???
I am totally ignorant in this but rather irritated every time I encounter yet another so called free e-book place, only to find out they cant be downloaded to europe

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by katania

Now How do you do that???
I am totally ignorant in this but rather irritated every time I encounter yet another so called free e-book place, only to find out they cant be downloaded to europe

Pretty easy: look for a list of proxy on google, take the IP of one that's located in the US and go to your browser settings. Under "connection" or something similar you'll find a way to set this proxy address. Go back to the website, and it should work.

[nekokami]

I can appreciate that their advertisers don't want to pay for ads going to customers out of service range, but it's a pity their server doesn't just serve the content but not increment the ad count for non-US customers. I would think that would generate good will among future customers, as well as establishing the size of possible new markets for non-US advertisers.

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by nekokami

I can appreciate that their advertisers don't want to pay for ads going to customers out of service range, but it's a pity their server doesn't just serve the content but not increment the ad count for non-US customers. I would think that would generate good will among future customers, as well as establishing the size of possible new markets for non-US advertisers.

Well I guess that for commercial books, they have to pay a price based on how many people downloaded a book. Sure, they could decide to remove non-US customers from the number they use to bill the ads with, but if they're not making money on these books, and have to pay for them, I can see why they're blocking non-US users.

[nekokami]

I have to admit, their pre-account marketing survey is the first one I've ever seen to include board games, card games, AND role-playing games as hobbies. (Though it was also the first I had seen to include "religion" as a hobby....)

I had to use a credit card to sign up, since they didn't like my email address. I'll let folks know what I think of the content and format.

[Azayzel]

I hate the fact that you have to put items in a cart, checkout, and then have to wait for an email to tell you that you can d/l the books. Kind of redundant, plus a few minutes wait to queue them up. The actual formating was simply PDF for the 15 books I snagged already (several comic books to check out!) and the only advert was a single page at the intro stating provided by... for... Nice.