Finding books and other resources
Once you’ve got your e-reader, how do you find books for it? At first we simply logged onto Amazon and looked for books. I could see in a heartbeat that we definitely did not have the budget for buying books, not at the rate we read, so I checked out the free books on Amazon. It became obvious immediately that it wasn’t going to be easy to get a good list.
I went searching and somehow found the blog Kindle Nation, which was quite a find for us. They have a site called Kindle Nation Daily, where they post free books on an almost daily basis. It takes a bit to stay on top of the new offerings – you’d be wise to check the list every day.
Kindle Nation is Kindle only (surprise…), but if you have another reader (Kindles are included), www.Smashwords.com is a great site. You’ve also got www.getfreebooks.com, www.manybooks.net, and www.free-ebooks.net. I suggest you Google “free e-books” and see what you come up with.
Another location is Calibre, a website that has a management system for your entire library, can convert books, and more. They’ve recently started a DRM free site which is acquiring new books all the time. These are not necessarily free, but many are low cost and all are DRM free. http://drmfree.calibre-ebook.com/about. You can then use Calibre to convert any book you choose into the appropriate format for your particular reader.
I wanted to use Calibre to manage all our books, but the process of getting them from Amazon into Calibre was so painful (because of Amazon’s system) that I have temporarily given up. I spent many hours on two different days trying to get things to work, but finally realized I will have to take extraordinary steps to get it to work. It’s not worth my time right now.
I will use Calibre to look for other book formats and then (keeping a DRM free copy, of course) will convert the books to an Amazon-recognized format.
Next is how to evaluate the books once you find something. All I can say is, “Good luck!” On Kindle Nation Daily we pick a book and click on it, which brings us to the Amazon store. We then click on reviews, and first go to the reviews rating it the lowest. There’s an amazing amount of information you can collect quickly this way.
The other sites tend to not have as many reviews, so it’s a tougher choice.
Here’s what we’ve discovered in our ongoing “finding books” saga:
- A number of respected authors will offer the first book in a series free to get readers hooked on a series; hopefully the reader will be willing to pay for subsequent books. We’ve been lucky with this approach, and have indeed gone back and bought follow-up books.
- Kindle Nation Daily has an author sponsor the site every day. The author then has his/her book offered for free or for a wonderfully low price, with the idea of attracting new readers. We’ve been lucky on this, too.
- You may find books free from a certain author, then the next book or two may be $.99 to $3.99. That’s a great deal if you like the author.
- There are delightful books out there just waiting to be discovered, and there are a lot of absolutely horrible books. Reading reviews won’t always get you a definitive answer.
- Reading reviews can be incredibly entertaining. I wish some of the authors wrote as well as the reviewers.
- Christian books are very popular, with the reviews divided into two very clear camps – you really like ‘em or you really don’t. Reading a review will generally tell you whether it’s Christian or not.
- We find ourselves amazed at some of the ratings. We’ve found highly rated books to be just garbage, and we’ve found books with low ratings to be some of our favorites.
- There are many authors who are clearly self-publishing, with no one looking at editing. Absolutely appalling things end up in the books, things that are so bad that we sometimes can’t read for laughing so hard.
- The use of incorrect words is rampant – slim-wasted instead of slim-waisted; not knowing the difference among piqued, peeked, and peaked (as in “her ample bosom peaked out from under the scarf” – now that must have been a sight!); clamored aboard instead of clambered aboard; its and it’s; there, their, they’re; your, you’re; compliment and complement; worse, worst; then, than; phased, fazed; site and sight; lay and lie; naval and navel – you get the idea.
Perhaps our all time favorite, merely one of a long laundry list of really bad writing mistakes in one particular book, was “toe head” instead of towhead. Two days later we were still in tears (of laughter) about that one. And that book had two reviews, both of them five-star.
Can you stand a few more hilarious errors? “My conscious wouldn’t let me.” “I wanted to give him a peace of my mind!” “I truly tricked him with my slight of hand”. And finally, here’s another one of our all time favorites, “a rouge FBI agent”.
- Punctuation, capitalization, and sentence structure are hit and miss and often totally random.
- Spelling is often so bad it’s funny – Navy Chaplin, instead of Navy chaplain (the incorrect capitalization is copied from the book).
- Words will be randomly missing and words and phrases will be randomly italicized or underlined.
- You’ll find extensive incorrect use of apostrophes, prepositions, and numerals.
- You’ll find books with characters that never come to life; plots that wander aimlessly; books that read like an eager eighth-grader wrote them – all enthusiasm and no skill; books that have great plots but are written so badly it’s impossible to finish them.
- Reading some of the books that are written so badly or so sloppily is like watching a train wreck – you’re fascinated and horrified at the same time. The worst part is that many of them are award winners of one kind or another.
- We’ve had so much abundance in free books that we’ve gotten ruthless about deleting books we don’t like.
- We’ve scored some great non-fiction books and books in other genres, such as how to create the perfect cocktail, how to publish a best-selling e-book, how to draw, and Sun Tzu’s Art of War.
- We’ve found a few authors we just love, and we’ve added them to our list for the time when we have a real book-buying budget.
All in all we’ve had a wonderful time figuring out this whole e-reader/e-book phenomenon. We’ve laughed a lot; we’ve learned how many people really can’t write at all; we’ve learned that every author needs a team of proofreaders and editors (or least one who’s really, really good); and we’ve found some absolute treasures – books that have made us laugh, moved us to tears, inspired us.