Delights of Thrift
I do enjoy a good bargain, and having an e-reader has introduced me to the delight that is free books. You go on Amazon, put ‘free books in the kindle book store’ into the search box and get inundated by stuff to read.
Ever wanted to read Les Miserables, but not quite enough to pay for it? You can get it free here.
I’m sure everyone’s already read all the Sherlock Holmes stories, but how nice to be able to have them in one volume to go in your pocket.
I thought Stress Proof Your Life sounded like a good idea, but within the first five pages it had made me feel even more stressed by telling me to ‘think what you’ll look like in five years time if you don’t do any exercise.’ Eeep! I don’t need any self-help books to make me feel more of a failure. So I can’t really recommend this one.
You can get Wuthering Heights but I’m not sure why you’d want to.
But I spent most of Saturday morning reading The Secret Garden anew – one of those books I remembered enjoying in childhood which I haven’t read since – and discovering that it’s probably more magical now than it was when I read it first.
There doesn’t seem to be any free m/m romance, and I don’t read m/f romance (with the exception of Jane Austen). So I also downloaded a load of mysteries and SF/F by authors unknown to me. I’ve started The Soulkeepers which is a really nicely written fantasy with a Chinese hero and an Indian heroine, but … is it me or are all fantasies these days set in American high schools? Maybe it’s just that I’ve had a run of them recently, but I feel as though I can’t bear another one even if this one is a so-far highly superior version of the form.
Heh – look at me complaining about a good book I got to read for free. It’s just that there are so many books out there, it encourages a reader (this reader, anyway) to be ridiculously picky.
Oh but there are!, I have accessed an RSS feed which alerts me to free M/M reads on amazon. If I have copied it right you should be able to use http://www.amazon.com/gp/rss/top-free/digital-text/172503011/ref=zg_tf_172503011_rsslink in your RSS reader.
Or try the page itseld in your bookmarks as http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Kindle-Store-Gay-Lesbian-Fiction/zgbs/digital-text/172503011/ref=pd_zg_rss_tf_kstore_172503011_c
Oh, very cool! Of course, I am not allowed to download stuff from Amazon.com because I’m British, so I would have to find it on Amazon.co.uk. Do you just search for Best-Sellers-Kindle-Store-Gay-Lesbian-Fiction? Let me try that and see for myself….
No, alas. I got a: Your search “best sellers gay lesbian fiction” did not match any products in: Kindle Store
Hm, let me try “free gay romance”…
Well, that got me four books, which is better than a kick in the teeth. Thank you!
Alex
Is the amazon.com site barred?
I can see your difficulty if it is. I haven’t been able to find the corresponding on amazon.co.uk. I have always used the US site as it has been the better indexed/tagged. Thanksfully I can access all amazon sites here in Oz.
You might play with a “google type” search free gay books kindle I know I have seen something on goodreads before (I actaully use LibraryThging so am not there often).
Graeme
It’s a copyright thing. Generally authors will sell rights in the USA and then they’ll sell rights to each country in the rest of the world separately. Which means that legally the US editions ought not to be sold to other countries, because they would then directly compete with the local edition. Some authors sell world wide rights (most m/m authors do) but it would be too much trouble for Amazon to have to check which books were world editions and which were only US editions, so they just apply a blanket ruling of not selling ebooks from the US site to people from other countries. (And of course they know where you live from your IP address.)
Having said all that, I’m surprised you can use both sites from Australia. Perhaps the US has a different treaty or whatever with Oz than it has with the UK. It’s definitely one of those things that makes Amazon less valuable for me than it would be if I could shop the bigger variety of stuff on Amazon.com. As it is, I can see it, but I can’t buy it!
The copyright is a big issue here for book retailers as they must import the UK edition, and can only import a US imprint where a UK or Aust imprint hasn’t been listed. Individuals can still purchase from either online, although I can’t buy some music or their instant video from amazon.
As I have a background in both libraries and as a book retailer I TRY and do the right thing, but even now start to wonder whether I shouldn’t be buying ebooks direct from the publishers rather than the convenience of amazon.
Graeme
PS thanks for this exchange, I must let you away to some serious writing, and me some reading (I have bought both of the Under the Hill titles, but haven’t got them to the top of the reading heap yet!)
It is silly, isn’t it? I can buy the US print copies as long as I’m willing to pay for the postage of having them sent across the Atlantic, but I can’t buy the US ebooks at all from Amazon. But I can get them from the publishers or places like AllRomanceEbooks.
I’m all for buying books direct from the publishers if that’s possible, because the authors get a larger cut of the royalties if you do that, and we make so little as it is that it makes a significant difference.
Eee! I hope you like the Under the Hill books. I’m afraid to say they’re very much closer to what I typically write, when I’m not under the influence of a temporary Age of Sail obsession. Thank you!
I can’t help but comment back
Don’t knock your Age of Sail obsession, that’s how I found you in the first palce
*g* I’m not knocking it – I had lots of fun with it, and I intend to have more later – I’m just apologizing that it’s not the lifelong obsession that would lead me to staying in that genre forever.