Suggestions? Best ways to acquire eBooks

[Difflugia]

In addition to the other suggestions, here are a few more. I'll leave it up to you to decide if these fit your particular set of rules for ethics and level of convenience,

Amazon's "Best Sellers" are worth browsing. There used to be an easy link to it, but you have to look a little harder now to find it. Or just bookmark this link.

Once there, you can narrow by genre. First, check the free books. Many independent authors have started making some books free, either old titles or firsts in series. If you like to read a wide variety of authors and have a high tolerance for wading through crap, you may never run out of books. Incidentally, most indies lack DRM.

Checking the paid books is a good way to find sales. Reasonably popular books that go on sale tend to shoot right up in the listings. Browse the first few pages of paid best sellers in you favorite genres to find the best sales, even if you ultimately buy them from somewhere other than Amazon.

If you're into public domain books, books.google.com is a treasure trove of stuff that hasn't even made it to Gutenberg. Whether you want some old eugenics-based science fiction or a recipe for rabbit soup that can be adapted to squirrel, Google's got you covered. Use the advanced book search.

The old Baen CDs are still available online and are still legal. Note that I've had trouble with some of the ISO images, but the "CD.zip" work fine for me.

While Christianbook.com obviously has a somewhat narrow selection of books, they're one of the only bookstores that still makes it easy to specifically search for ebooks that are on sale. Order by price to find the freebies. Note that Christianbook doesn't let you download the freebies, but they're almost always free at other stores (Kobo, Amazon) as well.

The University of Chicago Press has a free ebook every month. The topics are varied and potluck, having included literary fiction, biography, tomato hybridization, sexy nuns, and a history of ambergris. Not all of the subjects have been to my taste, but many have and all are high quality. Unfortunately, they continue to use Adobe's ADE DRM.

Aarhus University in Denmark also has a free monthly ebook (two, if you also read Danish). They're only available as PDF and tend to be a bit more esoterically academic than University of Chicago's offering, but I've read and enjoyed enough that I find it worth a look. There's no DRM.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Difflugia

In addition to the other suggestions, here are a few more. I'll leave it up to you to decide if these fit your particular set of rules for ethics and level of convenience,

Amazon's "Best Sellers" are worth browsing. There used to be an easy link to it, but you have to look a little harder now to find it. Or just bookmark this link.

Once there, you can narrow by genre. First, check the free books. Many independent authors have started making some books free, either old titles or firsts in series. If you like to read a wide variety of authors and have a high tolerance for wading through crap, you may never run out of books. Incidentally, most indies lack DRM.

Checking the paid books is a good way to find sales. Reasonably popular books that go on sale tend to shoot right up in the listings. Browse the first few pages of paid best sellers in you favorite genres to find the best sales, even if you ultimately buy them from somewhere other than Amazon.

If you're into public domain books, books.google.com is a treasure trove of stuff that hasn't even made it to Gutenberg. Whether you want some old eugenics-based science fiction or a recipe for rabbit soup that can be adapted to squirrel, Google's got you covered. Use the advanced book search.

The old Baen CDs are still available online and are still legal. Note that I've had trouble with some of the ISO images, but the "CD.zip" work fine for me.

While Christianbook.com obviously has a somewhat narrow selection of books, they're one of the only bookstores that still makes it easy to specifically search for ebooks that are on sale. Order by price to find the freebies. Note that Christianbook doesn't let you download the freebies, but they're almost always free at other stores (Kobo, Amazon) as well.

The University of Chicago Press has a free ebook every month. The topics are varied and potluck, having included literary fiction, biography, tomato hybridization, sexy nuns, and a history of ambergris. Not all of the subjects have been to my taste, but many have and all are high quality. Unfortunately, they continue to use Adobe's ADE DRM.

Aarhus University in Denmark also has a free monthly ebook (two, if you also read Danish). They're only available as PDF and tend to be a bit more esoterically academic than University of Chicago's offering, but I've read and enjoyed enough that I find it worth a look. There's no DRM.

You got me. How did you know I didn't have that book?

[barryem]

I think the key to buying ebooks is don't look for a single source. Seek out sources that work for you. Collect them. Browse them. The beauty of the book world is the richness of selection and also of sources. They're all over the place.

Barry

[GlenBarrington]

Originally Posted by barryem

I think the key to buying ebooks is don't look for a single source. Seek out sources that work for you. Collect them. Browse them. The beauty of the book world is the richness of selection and also of sources. They're all over the place.

Barry

+1 on this post. Sometimes the hunt is part of the fun.

[Tarana]

BTW, there are many free books on Amazon and B&N sites for you to download. Most are in public domain (and yes, many have just been taken from Guttenberg and repackaged). Feel no guilt removing the DRM on those.

[Tarana]

Originally Posted by haertig

If I stick with the eBooks, then I will probably buy a basic Kindle eReader. Nothing against the Nook Simple Touch, I actually like that eReader itself, but it seems that eBooks from B&N are more expensive than the same eBooks from Amazon. Not always, but that is my general impression. Plus, I keep seeing hints and rumors that B&N might be on the way to it's grave. Don't know how well founded those predictions are though.

You will also like the Basic Kindle. The main difference is that the ST is easier to hold for those of us with hand issues. The book organization can be switched to LIST which is what I prefer. It may surprise you but there are SOME books that are only available at B&N. Make sure you have copies of everything you have bought now, just-in-case.

[misling]

Re using a VPN: I use Netguard on my kindle fire (sideloaded). It builds a VPN tunnel from your device to your same device. This allows you to 'allow' or 'block' all network traffic by app.
The paid version allows you to block by individual address within an app, but you can't pay for the sideloaded version through the Kindle app store, so you have only the 'app by app' version only available. That suffices for most purposes though.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

For a person who only reads one book per month, I'm not sure I'd recommend an e-reader.

Excuse me? I read every moment I can, but, depending on the size of the book, I don't often read more than one book a month. I might even take longer for a single book. And I do read at least a few minutes each day (depends a bit on how long it takes to fall asleep...)

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Tarana

You will also like the Basic Kindle. The main difference is that the ST is easier to hold for those of us with hand issues. The book organization can be switched to LIST which is what I prefer. It may surprise you but there are SOME books that are only available at B&N. Make sure you have copies of everything you have bought now, just-in-case.

The ST also has page turn buttons in addition to the touch screen, expandable memory and (depending on the model) a front light. The Nook ST is (IMHO) a better piece of hardware than the current basic Kindle.

If you're going to leap from Nook to Kindle, do yourself the favor of upgrading to a Paperwhite, at least.

[haertig]

It looks like Netguard is available from Google Play. I get all the apps for my Kindle Fire from there, not from the Kindle Store. Google Play can be directly installed on the newer Kindle Fires. But the older Fires require you to side-load if you want to install things from Google Play. I assume that since you can install Google Play on newer Fires, then you can make in-app purchases as well. Although I haven't tried that part (in-app purchases) yet. But I have installed many apps directly onto my Fire from Google Play, no side-loading required.

I will definitely investigate this Netguard app. I like control over my network (and not just for eBook related things).

Thanks for the tip!

Originally Posted by misling

Re using a VPN: I use Netguard on my kindle fire (sideloaded). It builds a VPN tunnel from your device to your same device. This allows you to 'allow' or 'block' all network traffic by app.
The paid version allows you to block by individual address within an app, but you can't pay for the sideloaded version through the Kindle app store, so you have only the 'app by app' version only available. That suffices for most purposes though.

[kyteflyer]

Originally Posted by Barbara1955

https://www.ereaderiq.com/

Seconded! Excellent source for Kindle books.

I also use Baen Free Library, Gutenberg, Smashwords, Feedbooks and Manybooks. There are lots of sources for free or cheap ebooks which arent necessarily rubbish.

[haertig]

After registering at the https://www.goodreads.com/ website, I created a list for "Books I want to read". I was pleasantly surprised to receive an email the other day telling me that one of those books was on sale at the bargain price of $0.99 at Amazon. So I went and bought it right away.

I think I will put every book that I want to read on that list now, hopefully to receive more bargain price emails in the future. I never realized that this bargain notification was a feature at Goodreads, but I'm glad that it is!

[kansaskyle]

Originally Posted by haertig

After registering at the https://www.goodreads.com/ website, I created a list for "Books I want to read". I was pleasantly surprised to receive an email the other day telling me that one of those books was on sale at the bargain price of $0.99 at Amazon. So I went and bought it right away.

I think I will put every book that I want to read on that list now, hopefully to receive more bargain price emails in the future. I never realized that this bargain notification was a feature at Goodreads, but I'm glad that it is!

I noticed a similar email from Amazon because I had a book on a wish list. They let me know the price dropped on it.

[BookCat]

I'm a big fan of older classics. There are many sources of these. If you try the site manybooks.net then search under genre categories you'll find that they have an ADVENTURE genre. Browse the books in this category, if you find something you like, come back to mobileread and download the book from the library: the books here are far better formatted.

One thing I dislike about Amazon is that they often have the cheek to charge for ebooks which are out of copyright and have no additional material such as an introduction or footnotes.

https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Free_eBooks
Take a look at this link for sources of free books.

[Tarana]

Most of the out-of-copyright books I've seen provided by Amazon associated with whispersync are .99 or $1.99. I have no issue with small charges. It costs money to format an ebook to make it available. They also offer those same books for free for long periods. Many of the books charged for more are 'self-published' by a third party. They can do that since they are using an out-of-copyright source. Just mentioning in case you didn't know this aspect. Since I mostly do audio books, I don't notice the ones without whispersync very often, so our experiences are probably different.