My Free Kindle Book Recipe

July 6, 2009

I love my Kindle. I knew that I would, because I borrowed my friends for a few weeks and read a book on it. I was worried about the lack of a “Kindle Public Library” and the whole loaning and selling Kindle books thing until I rediscovered Project Gutenberg, and Feedbooks.

To be honest, while I knew about Project Gutenberg before, I didn’t really have a use for it until I had a dedicated reader. I mean, who wants to read a book at your computer. Even on a laptop its no fun. But with a svelte, light, non-backlit reader in my hands, the out-of-copyright and CC world are my oyster.

Of course the next step was to try to find out every legal way to get free or cheap commercially available content for my device. If you spend even a second searching the web for free kindle e-books, you’ll probably find the -domain trick. I’ve added a little to this technique to filter out the single chapter books (if I’m really interested in a sample, I’ll just click the sample button). Here’s my current method (I’ll post updates if I find a better way)

  1. Go to The Amazon Kindle Store
  2. Search for -domain -chapter -epilogue -excerpt -preview -romance
  3. Sort by Price (lowest to highest)

The resulting pages should be full of trashy romance novels, religious books, and a handfull of sci-fi, fantasy, and other fiction.

Do you have a good source for free or inexpensive e-books?

3 comments

  1. Comment by David Drazen

    David Drazen July 7, 2009 at 9:45 am

    Do you find you miss actual books when using it, or does it satisfy you enough in that vein. I’m struggling against getting any more items which require power and an adapter.

  2. Comment by Tucker Bradford

    Tucker Bradford July 7, 2009 at 9:54 am

    Oh I like it much better than real books. I discovered (to my surprise) that I never liked having to hold a book open while I read. Its so nice to be able to prop the Kindle up on my knee. The nice thing about the cordage is that it holds a charge forever if you turn off wireless. Combine all this goodness with the fact that I can sync my bookmarks with the Kindle app on my iPhone and I’m totally in love!

    The only downside is that. in my family, books are viewed as an indicator of intellectual capital. So the thought of not having wall to wall bookshelves does make me kind of uncomfortable. But if that’s the price I’ll have to pay for a life at sea, so be it.

    • Comment by Tucker Bradford

      Tucker Bradford November 26, 2009 at 12:19 pm

      Just fond another site that posts current free Kindle books on Amazon’s site.

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