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
Barnes & Noble’s ebook store will support their own nook ereader due out end of November 2009 and Plastic Logic’s ebook reader when it comes out in early 2010. For now you need to use B & N’s eReader software (free download) to read their ebooks on your computer or pda, phone, etc.
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. Usually there is a monthly sale in selected categories. For March, 2010 the following categories are 20% off: Health and Fitness, Humor, Pets, Science, Psychology and Psychiatry. You must use coupon code Categorysalecp on the payment details page.
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.
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.
Harlequin Ebooks in the following formats: Mobipocket, Microsoft Reader, Adobe Digital Editions.
French ebooks, based in Montreal.
Kindle books can also be read on your iPhone, and reader apps are coming soon for PC, Blackberry and Mac.
Formerly Shortcovers. Sample first chapters of books, also magazine articles, short stories and blog posts for iPhone and iPod Touch, Blackberry, Google Android enabled phones and Palm Pre. Shortcovers has also recently added support for Adobe Digital Editions, so if your ebook reader supports that format you are also covered. If you like the extract, you can link to a paid full version of a book. Shortcovers features eBooks from leading publishers including Random House, Harper Collins, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, and Harlequin. The prices on some titles here seem quite good compared to some other ebook stores.
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.
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; when Sony finishes converting their store to ePub all ereaders that are Adobe Digital Editions compatible should be ok with ebooks downloaded here.
eBooks 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.
Textbooks
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. Coupon: For 1 week only, January 11 through January 17, 2010 get a 5% discount by using coupon code JANUARY5 at checkout.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Author Jeff Inlo’s website. Free downloads of some of his ebooks in various formats.
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.
eBook Search Engines
Inkmesh is a search tool that you can use to compare ebook prices across various ebook stores and search for free ebooks.
This is a search engine to find you PDF ebooks and documents on whatever subject you are looking for.
