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i don't know how i pulled this off, but i ended up being good enough that santa purchased me a kindle. what a lucky jew i am!

for those of you who own one, do you have any links to sites for free kindle downloads? i have plenty to read for now, but so far the only free books i can find are the classics-(not a bad thing), smut books, and random star wars fan fiction-(which oddly enough i am not a fan of).

You are lucky!

(Sorry, I don't have any links. Just jealousy.)

There's an ereader thread that has some info I think, but I'm going to be looking for good answers too. I actually mostly want a Kindle FOR the classics, but clearly other stuff is good too. I'm willing to see cheap too, not just free.

If you like Agatha Christie....

Here ya go http://librivox.org/

Are you looking for legal avenues for free ebooks? If so what bastah linked to and project gutenberg are good places to start. I've had a lot of luck using some threads on the mobileread.com forums. There's a Kindle section where the users keep updates on high-quality free ebooks.

But if you're looking for illegal downloads the usual torrent sites can help you there.

I recommend downloading Calibre. It's an awesome program to help organize your ebooks and once you enter your ereader you can import lots of different formats and then just click "convert" and it will make them into a format your Kindle can read (assuming there's no DRM).

Unfortunately you can't use the library books for your Kindle since Amazon doesn't support epub, but there are ways to strip library ebooks of their DRM so you can convert them and then delete it when you're supposed to return it, but I've had no luck with that. I tried for days and couldn't figure it out.

Oh wait, does librivox do ebooks now or is it just audiobooks? I thought they were just audio.

Oh, yeah you might be right. My sister in law got a Kindle and was talking about librivox, but I think she was talking about two separate things, and not about using them together. My bad

I want a Kindle. :( I've got an iPad, but that thing really kills your eyes when you're lying in bed in a dimly lit room. What do you think of it so far?

Pixel of Ink (http://www.pixelofink.com) has free and discount stuff. It's very hit-and-miss, though. Project Gutenburg (http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page) is great. Also Amazon's list of Top 100 free books is a good way to find things.

I don't have an iPad so I can't compare, but I love my Kindle. I may be exaggerating this in my own mind to justify the purchase, but I swear I read faster on the Kindle and my only explanation is that my eyes have so adjusted to computer screens and such that reading on paper is weird for my brain. There's an interesting article on Wired about the different ways our eyes and mind deal with digital text versus that on paper: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/ ... reading-2/

I really like the e-ink of the e-readers versus a computer screen like the iPad. I can read it in bright light and all that, but I also think it's more akin to paper reading. The reading light is nice and it doesn't seem like a chore to use it. Other pros about Kindle (but I think a lot of ereaders have these features as well):

- Highlighting. I don't use it as much during fiction, except for maybe something hilarious and full of quotables that I might use in the classroom (I'm a HS English teacher) like "The Importance of Being Earnest." But I used it a ton when reading "Eating Animals" and I know I would do the same with other nonfiction.
- The dictionary. I like to keep a dictionary on hand when I'm reading so I can look up unfamiliar words and hopefully aid my own writing. Sure, I use context clues and figure out the general idea behind a word like most readers, but I like to know the real definition.
- All the other non-book things you can add to the Kindle. I use Calibre to not only convert files and add them to my Kindle, but also to pull from news sites and gather my Instapaper items. I see an article I want to read online, I use Instapaper to mark it. Then, maybe once a week or so, I use Calibre to create a file of my Instapaper items and send those to my Kindle. The formatting can be a little wonky at times, but the text is all there and I can highlight it, annotate it, etc.

I won't rehash my reasons for not liking Amazon's approach to ebooks, but if you get one of the other readers that supports ePub format (like the Sony Reader or the Nook), you'll have a lot more options for buying or borrowing books. Many libraries now offer downloadable ebooks in ePub (using Adobe's DRM software), and with the launch of Google eBooks, you'll have the option of supporting independent booksellers by buying your ebooks through them. Yeah, there are ways of getting around the Kindle's limitations, but personally, I'd just assume not bother dicking around with various converters when there are ebook readers that support ePub natively.

And, yeah, free books aren't easy to get legally (except for classics that are out of copyright) for the simple reason that producing books is costly and publishers need to recoup their expenses, pay their authors, graphic designers, marketing staff, etc. and still make a profit. Very little of what you pay retail for a physical book is actually for the cost of the dead-tree artifact, so ebooks aren't going to be appreciably cheaper than their physical counterparts. But with regard to the original question, you can download Cory Doctorow's books, which are all licensed under Creative Commons. I liked Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town in particular.

(I think I just did rehash my reasons for not liking Amazon.)

Yeah, there are a lot of reasons for not liking them. I hate that they don't support ePubs, but I get it since they're a greedy corporation. I got it because I liked the device better and was told getting library books on them wasn't that difficult, which it turns out it is. I still like the device a ton, but wish it wasn't an Amazon product.

I may go to B&N tomorrow and play with a Nook just to see it.

Before I got my Kindle, I looked into borrowing books from the library. It turns out that in my library system, there are very few books available to be electronically borrowed. I figured that by the time they made more books available, the Kindle might have that process worked out and I'd be able to use it.
I also realized that I don't want to do 100% of my reading on the Kindle. I like going to the library and browsing books! The Kindle doesn't replace books for me. I'd like it to replace magazines for me, though. I get magazine subscriptions as gifts, and while I like to leaf through them, I could easily read them on the Kindle and not have to waste all that glossy paper.

I got a Sony ereader for Christmas and while its not going to replace books for me altogether, it helps with the classics! And someone bought me a bunch of ebooks so I have something to read off the bat, its awesome!

But yeah, there's not much out there legally thats free, aside from ze classics. And fan fictions.

I just got a Kindle for Christmas and I freaking love it. I'm a library rat so I'm not the biggest fan of Amazon's proprietary format, but I tried the other ones out and felt like it was really the best option, technology-wise. I just took my first vacation with it and can't believe how awesome it was to not have to pack and carry around a ton of books. It fits in my purse! Love.

I got a Kindle for Christmas and it's great. I like physical books, owning them, reading them, putting them on my shelf, etc...so I have a bad habit of buying books or borrowing library books that I may never read. With ebooks I don't have the same experience of owning or borrowing a physical book, so I've realized that I'm prone to buy books that I'll actually read or have already read and liked. What else is there to do with ebooks?

Yeah, the selection at a lot of libraries is pretty sparse, if they have ebooks at all. I'm lucky in that my library district has reciprocal agreements with several others in the area, so I have library cards from Seattle Public Library and two other library districts apart from my own, and can download from them as well. But, anyway, it's not a matter of Amazon (or Overdrive) getting the "process worked out," as though it's some technical barrier they haven't yet cracked; it's a purposeful move on Amazon's part to have a monopoly on ebook sales.

I get that Amazon is annoying, I do, but I played with a Nook and a Kindle today and I definitely like the Kindle better. It seems lighter and the screen seems bigger (I haven't actually checked the specifics). Also, for some reason using the Kindle felt more intuitive to me and I kept forking up whatever I was doing on the Nook.

Does one really have to pay for Kindle software updates? What's all that about?

What chaffs my asparagus something awful is how libraries only check out a certain (low) number of a given e-book at a time, as if there's only one copy of the book available. Really? I have to wait for someone to "return" an electronic file before I can be "loaned" the "same" file?!?! Stupid troglodytes.

Anywho, I'm a Kindle DX owner, and for it's worth, I would not recommend any Kindle to the recreational reader, at least until there is Overdrive (library-lending) support. Only the size of the DX makes it worth while, and few are likely to need such a large reading area.

Kindle content:
http://www.gutenberg.org
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu
And this thread from MobileRead Forums

Also, Instapaper.com is an awesome and free service for reading Web content on the Kindle.

I was complaining about that too because my library system actually does offer some ebooks, but everything I looked up had a wait list and my dad told me the libraries only pay for the rights to a certain # of books as if they bought real books. That seems like a rational explanation, but I still think I ought to be able to get them instantly.

Yeah I get that the cost of publishing isn't just about the material production of books, and I don't want to see poor starving writers (like Dan Patterson and whatever Goblin writes the Twilight books) suffer any further - I'm sure they have kids to feed - but I politely object to your defense of the ridiculously 20th-century practices of the Paleolithic book industry. Charging some 80-90% of a print book's price for the Kindle version is bad enough.

No wait, what REALLY irks me is that my SCHOOL library has to ration out electronic "books" to one student at a time. Fork them hard.

But I digress, slightly.

The reason libraries can only loan as many copies as they have purchased is the same reason an individual can't legally make and give away copies of the ebooks they own (or physical books, for that matter): the publishers own the copyright. And I'm sure Overdrive would gladly support Kindle devices, but Amazon doesn't allow it. Last year, someone figured out how to hack the Kindle to allow DRM'd MobiPocket format books, but Amazon had them shut down.

For what it's worth, I've been able to get some books faster on Overdrive than I have a physical copy. For example, I put holds on a physical copy and an ebook copy of shiitake My Dad Says at the same time, and I was still over a hundred users deep on the queue for the physical book when I got to the front of the queue for the ebook. I guess it just depends on how the demand for each format shakes out.