eBook Sources no comments
These are a few places to obtain ebooks and etextbooks, both paid and free. I’m sure I have left out your favourite, so please chime in and share! If you are also looking for recorded books, see my post on audiobooks.
Paid
Sci-Fi author Ed Howdershelt’s website. Non-DRM’d formats supporting various ereaders and devices. Some free ebooks as well.
“All the romance you need from all the publishers you love…” Just about every subcategory of romance (both fiction and non) you can think of is available here.
Writer’s collective offering ebooks on a variety of topics in ePub and PDF formats unencumbered by DRM.
Barnes & Noble’s ebooks have a proprietary flavor of DRM and can be used on ereaders whose makers have established a partnership with B&N. Besides B&N’s own nook ereader the Irex DR800SG and the Bebook Neo are currently supported. Other ereaders that have not been released yet – such as the Plastic Logic Que – promise support for B&N ebooks. You cannot at this time use B&N ebooks on Sony ereaders even though the reverse is true and both support Adobe Digital Editions. Barnes & Noble also has reading apps available for PC, Mac and various mobile and iDevices.
eBooks available in Epub, eReader, LIT, Mobi formats.
A cooperative of twenty-six award-winning and best-selling authors. Formats include PDF, Epub, Mobi, LRF, LIT, and PRC. Some free titles as well.
Sells almost 300,000 ebooks in Adobe DRM’ed ePub, PDF, eReader, Mobipocket and Microsoft Reader formats.
Claims to be the largest independent ebook store with over 1.4 million titles. Lots of bundle deals.
Offers a wide range of ebooks in various formats depending on title. PDF and ePub for Adobe Digital Editions, unencrypted PDF and epub, LIT, and Mobipocket are supported. eBooks.com also has a reading app for iPhone and iPad.
eBooks.com has issued some discount coupon codes:
- Back to School Promotion: Use coupon code BTSBOOK%SALEcp to get a 5% discount on ebook purchases. Valid until Feb. 28, 2012.
- For the month of January, ebooks from the following categories will receive a 20% discount with the coupon code Categorysalecp – Body Mind Spirit, Reference, Biography and Autobiography, Psychology and Psychiatry, and Medicine.
Please note that some publishers do not allow discounts on their ebooks.
Master Point Press website specializing in ebooks about playing bridge. PDF format only.
Ebooks in DRM’ed PDF, LIT, PRC, PDB, RB, KML, HTM, and DOC formats.
Over 50,000 non-fiction textbooks, manuals, etc. Uses Adobe Digital Editions.
Digital magazine subscriptions for a variety of ereaders, including Kindle, nook and Sony.
Harlequin Ebooks in the following formats: Mobipocket, Microsoft Reader, Adobe Digital Editions.
Free public domain ebooks as well as titles by indie authors in a variety of formats.
Owned by Barnes & Noble. Various formats offered depending on title: PDB, PDF, LIT, RB, FUB, KML, LRF, PRC, MOBI, IMP, as well as DRM’ed formats: Secure Mobibocket, Secure Microsoft Reader, Adobe Digital Editions, Secure eReader. Fictionswise also has a dedicated Kindle ebook section with titles in MOBI format.
Online ebook store specializing in pulp fiction. Short stories, graphic novels and serialized novels for sale and a number of titles for free. iPulp’s ebooks are readable in a browser – on your computer, smart phone or iDevice.
French ebooks, based in Montreal.
Kindle books can also be read on your iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, PC, Mac and Blackberry with the appropriate free reading app.
Formerly Shortcovers. Reading apps for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch, Blackberry, Android powered phones and Palm Pre. Kobo supports Adobe Digital Editions, so if your ebook reader supports that format you are also covered. You can read chapter samples and if you like the extract, you can click on the provided link to purchase and download a paid full version of a book. Kobo features eBooks from leading publishers including Random House, Harper Collins, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, and Harlequin.
Lulu “empowers anyone to publish and sell anything from novels to cookbooks. Since Lulu started in 2002, more than 1 million authors in 80 countries have used its services.” Besides self-published authors Lulu also has ebooks by traditional and popular authors.
Owned by Amazon. eBooks for your smartphone and PDA or computer and ebook readers. More than 120,000 titles. Mobi’s free eBook website has more than 10,000 free ebooks. You can use Mobipocket Creator to convert documents from Word, Pdf, text, html, or chm.
Scientific and medical ebooks. Also has scientific, medical and academic research journal articles.
Supports Adobe Digital Editions and Microsoft Reader. eBook section of store still seems a little sparse and not so easy to navigate. When I tried to do searches for titles in ebook format the results included paper books, which is annoying.
Specializing in “professional-quality, technologically sophisticated science fiction stories and novels.” Formats available to support a wide variety of ereaders.
Ebooks by indie writers in many formats for different ereaders. There are some free books here as well.
Formerly just for the Sony ebook readers, Sony has now converted its books to EPUB with DRM provided by Adobe. Since Sony no longer uses a proprietary format their ebooks should work on other ereaders that use Adobe Digital Editions. Sony ebooks work on the nook, but unfortunately books from Barnes & Noble won’t work on Sony ereaders as B&N.
Website for science fiction writer Jeffrey A. Carver. Not all titles are available in ebook format yet. The newest title in the Star Rigger series is free. There are also links to free ebooks from Carver’s Chaos Chronicles here.
Science fiction author Steve Jordan’s website. Jordan’s ebooks presently are either priced at $1.99 or are free.
Pulp fiction from L. Ron Hubbard. There are audiobooks and pbooks as well as ebooks. Some freebies as well.
eBooks store specializing in graphic novels and comics. Free (ad supported) online reading or pay to download in PDF format.
Baen Books website. Mostly sci-fi and fantasy books. Titles are available in Mobipocket format. There is also a selection of free books.
offers subscriptions to thousands of different digital magazines. Available in different languages and with some local content available in different countries. Apps for iOS and Android.
Textbooks
Amazon has some digital textbooks, but also sells lots of new and used textbooks in paper format. Amazon also buys used textbooks – for details visit their textbook buyback page.
CampusBooks.com
CampusBooks.com provides the widget below which you can use to search across almost 40 textbook sellers to find the best prices for your textbooks. The search results include both ebook and paper formats as well as rentals and used textbooks – you can choose which format you are interested in when the search results are shown. You can also buy your textbook directly from the widget.
Formerly iChapters.com. Here you can download not only an entire digital textbook; you also have the option of purchasing individual chapters. You can view each title on two different computers. Printing is allowed.
Offering more than 7,000 digital college textbooks at an average price of 50% less than paper versions. Printing allowed. Subscribers can also view their etextbooks on their iPhone or iPod Touch.
Digital textbooks can be downloaded to your computer. Uses Adobe Digital Editions or VitalSource Reader.
Offers over 4,000 etextbooks. Also sells paper versions, and buys your used paper textbooks.
Digital textbooks from Cafescribe support shared notes and text to speech in addition to the other common study features. Uses a proprietary reader software. A portable version of the reader is also available for installing on a USB key.
eTextbooks by various publishers including Routledge, Routledge-Cavendish, Garland, CRC Press, Psychology Press and Taylor & Francis. Supported formats: Mobipocket Reader, Microsoft Reader, Adobe Reader, DX Reader.
Free, ad-supported etextbooks from Textbookmedia are also upgradable to paid ad-free versions. Free versions have limited print capability only.
FREE
Search engine for electronic component datasheets. Not really ebooks, but useful for engineers, etc.
Baen offers many free books; usually the first title or more of their many series (mostly sci-fi and fantasy). Mobipocket Reader is supported as well as Microsoft Reader and Rocket eBook.
From the site:
Our goal is to be "The Library To The World", a web portal in which books, education materials, information, and content will be free to anyone who has an internet connection.
Bookyards has a total of 17,009 books, 41,784 external web links, 4,197 news & blogs links, 384 videos, 32,963 Ebook links and access to hundreds of online libraries (800,000 Ebooks) for your reading pleasure.
Brigham Young – Western European Studies Section
Resource for finding texts and other media formats in a number of European languages.
Cory Doctorow’s website with info about and downloads of some of the sci-fi author’s books.
Dutch language ebooks.
Free ebooks mostly in the scientific, engineering and programming categories. Hmmm……that book on tactical missile design looks interesting.
Free ebooks on a variety of topics.
Conversions of Project Gutenberg ebooks that are formatted for use on Kindle and other ebook readers. Titles are available in MOBI and PRC formats.
Source for free online computer science and programming books, textbooks and lecture notes.
French language ebooks.
Public domain books by women writers reformatted and given nice covers. Very nice editions that also include things like linked tables of contents.
Over a million public domain books available in non-DRM’ed epub or PDF. There are also paid books on here: to search for only free books go to the advanced search and select full view only. There are also many magazines here.
Free fiction ebooks from indie authors.
Harlequin Books has several free ebooks here.
LibriVox has a number of free audiobooks that have been narrated by volunteers.
Offering almost 25,000 free public domain ebooks in DOC, ePub, eReader, Mobipocket, PDF, LIT, LRF and a few other formats.
Mobipocket’s free ebooks.
Founded by John Mark Ockerbloom, digital library planner and researcher at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries, The Online Books Page has links to many free online ebooks. There is also a great listing of sources for non-English language ebooks.
Open Culture has links to free ebooks and audiobooks. There are also 250 free courses in a variety of subjects as well as language lessons.
Over 36,000 free public domain ebooks available here.
This is a service that will let you automatically convert free public domain books from Google to the mobi format for the Kindle ereader. The mobi file is wirelessly sent to your Kindle. While the service itself is free, Amazon charges 15 cents per megabyte for the data transfer.
Author Jeff Inlo’s website. Free downloads of some of his ebooks in various formats.
Samhain Publishing usually has a few pages of free ebooks available for download in PDF format.
eBook Lending Websites
These are websites that bring together users to take advantage of ebook lending for the Kindle and Nook ereaders. You can list the lendable ebooks you have and borrow ebooks from other users. Each ebook can only be loaned once ever. You will need to register an email address at these sites so that the lending notification can be sent to you.
- Lendingebook – support for both Kindle & Nook.
- BookLending.com formerly Kindle Lending Club.
- eBook Exchange – serves both Kindle and Nook owners.
- KindleLend (Reddit)
- The Nook Users Book Club (Facebook)
- I have a Nook and I’m willing to share books (Facebook)
- Goodreads has several groups that facilitate lending. One group for Kindlers is Kindle Lending. Another for Nook users is Nook Lending.
- eBookLendingLibrary.com lets members charge eBookDollars (EBD) for lending ebooks to other members. EBD are then used to borrow ebooks.
- ebookfling.com is still in beta. This site is from BookSwim – an online book rental service.
- BooksForMyKindle.com and sister site BooksForNooks.com
- Lendle
eBook Search Engines
Author Yellowpages.com is a searchable listing of author’s websites.
Listing of author’s websites.
Inkmesh is a search tool that you can use to compare ebook prices across various ebook stores and search for free ebooks.
A search tool for Amazon’s Kindle Stores in the US and other countries. Lets you easily search by publisher, publication dates and other criteria. Very good — I use this one myself.
Search engine for ebooks. You can search in a variety of languages and ebook formats. Search results seem to be public domain titles at the moment.
This is a search engine to find you PDF ebooks and documents on whatever subject you are looking for.
£149.00
£109
