Thousands of Public Domain ebooks added to the Kindle Store

[Nate the great]

Okay, I know that you are wondering why I posted that; it's not news. Here is the news:

All of those ebooks are free.

Most of the books appear to be have come from Project Gutenberg. None of the ones I've checked have a table of contents, nor any illustrations.

It's not a big deal, but this is a nice little treat for Kindle owners. Now a Kindle owner has no need to go elsewhere to find public domain ebooks.

Edit: As Moe the Cat pointed out, apparently Amazon simply took the free offerings from Mobipocket and ported them over to the Amazon store.

[TheJohnNewton]

So basically it's good for Amazon's marketing but for the high quality editions you should still come here :-)

[Daithi]

How do you view the titles they have available? I found a way to do it, but I might be missing something, and a much better way than I am doing it exists.

My method: I went to Amazon selected the Kindle Store from the drop downlist and pressed the GO button. This brought me to their main Kindle Store page, then I selected "Price: Low to High" in the "Sort By" drop downlist. This displayed pages of free books.

I imagine you could also search for specific items. However, I just wanted to browse a list of free books that they were offering. I wasn't looking for a particular title or author.

[Moe The Cat]

They seem to be the same (or some of the same) public domain ebooks that have been offered for years on the Mobipocket site.

[TadW]

Originally Posted by Moe The Cat

They seem to be the same (or some of the same) public domain ebooks that have been offered for years on the Mobipocket site.

Well spotted! They use the same cover dummy. And the creation date displayed on the Mobipocket site is the same as the "publisher" date shown on Amazon.com.

Example: Search for "Portion of Labor" and compare the two.

[Daithi]

As of a couple of minutes ago the cutoff seems to be HERE

That's 4,335 free books from Amazon. So, Mobileread still offers more books, offers higher quality books, and provides a more convient way of browsing through the books offered.

Originally Posted by Daithi

As of a couple of minutes ago the cutoff seems to be HERE

That's 4,335 free books from Amazon. So, Mobileread still offers more books, offers higher quality books, and provides a more convient way of browsing through the books offered.

Don't forget to add "faster response time to formatting and text errors". Hmmm, better just make that "responds to formatting and text errors" since most places don't.

[mtravellerh]

Originally Posted by stxopher

Don't forget to add "faster response time to formatting and text errors". Hmmm, better just make that "responds to formatting and text errors" since most places don't.

Now do not remind me. I am beavering away at "The Snare" (last chapter got cut off mysteriously)

[Daithi]

Originally Posted by stxopher

Don't forget to add "faster response time to formatting and text errors". Hmmm, better just make that "responds to formatting and text errors" since most places don't.

Absolutely, good point stxopher.

[Dr. Drib]

What member was it who was keeping tabs on the total books available from Sony vs. Amazon?

Some eager-beaver member with a good mathematical head on his shoulders, if I remember correctly.


Don

[lilac_jive]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

What member was it who was keeping tabs on the total books available from Sony vs. Amazon?

Some eager-beaver member with a good mathematical head on his shoulders, if I remember correctly.


Don

I believe it was vivaldi. Still not sure how to add all of that up, since Sony will list books under multiple sections.

[mtravellerh]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

What member was it who was keeping tabs on the total books available from Sony vs. Amazon?

Some eager-beaver member with a good mathematical head on his shoulders, if I remember correctly.


Don

Beaver that's me, mathematical head is (mth is checking himself) definitely not me!!

[nrapallo]

Some one looking for a mathematician? User:Nrapallo Present!

[dodgyville]

Amazon have some cheek! Making use of the copyleft movement when it suits them but doing everything they can to lock down large chunks of the public domain (see their attempted patent on "one click purchasing" and fairly locked down platform that is the kindle, charging too much money for editions of books long in the public domain (not the gutenberg stuff I know that's free)).

I hope they are contributing back to Project Gutenberg. I know companies are there to make profit, but there's the right way to do it, and the a**hole way to do it. Sadly, Amazon strikes as an example of the latter. Take take take, never give back.

Yes, it is 43C here and everyone is cranky with the heat.

[koland]

Originally Posted by Daithi

How do you view the titles they have available? I found a way to do it, but I might be missing something, and a much better way than I am doing it exists.

My method: I went to Amazon selected the Kindle Store from the drop downlist and pressed the GO button. This brought me to their main Kindle Store page, then I selected "Price: Low to High" in the "Sort By" drop downlist. This displayed pages of free books.

I imagine you could also search for specific items. However, I just wanted to browse a list of free books that they were offering. I wasn't looking for a particular title or author.

There are now 7,370 of these books available. Follow this link (sorted by highest customer review) to the complete list of all Public Domain Books (there is one extra that comes up in the search, a 1.99 offering that you can get free elsewhere) and you can use the categories on the side to help locate those of interest.

Happy downloading!