...and, as we've discovered, not all of it should be free, either.
Last week, we mentioned that iLibrarian was providing several links to free ebooks, no money down, no money ever, and we were intrigued. We hadn't actually visited any of the sites but their offer of 5 e-Book collections which contain over 100,000 free e-Books was enough to get our little readers' hearts racing.
Enticed by the promise of $0.00 books, we wandered over to the first of the sites, ManyBooks.net -- which offers, in ManyBooks' own words, the best ebooks at the best price: free! The ManyBooks crew has more than 29,000 tomes available for all kinds of e-readers. As you've probably noticed yourself by now, their front page promotes several Books of the Week. This week's B.O.T.W. are Madame Bovary, The Wizard of Oz, Crime and Punishment and The Phantom of the Opera.
Yep, you've got it: Their most recent Book of the Week was first published over 100 years ago. We're betting it was hot stuff, 'way back when. All of the titles are great, and as confirmed Oz-ians, we're not sorry we stopped by. Still, nobody is all that excited about public domain stuff, including us.
Which is one reason we didn't bother to knock at another of the iLibrarian hot spots, Project Gutenberg.
Instead, we went to a site called BookRix. BRix (the nickname we've just-this-second decided all the cool kids use) says it has over 115,000 books on-line and available. Not all of them are free but many are and we wanted to see what was what. Checking the BookRix Most widely read books, we were surprised to find "free" novels from Stephanie Meyer (under the pseudonym, 'S.M.'), Suzanne Collins and Jeff Kinney.
Even though we're not experts on copyright law, we still wonder if it's legal to give away royalty-free copies of BREAKING DAWN, CATCHING FIRE, and WIMPY KID 4. If it is, our mistake, and BookRix is more than worth a stop. If it isn't...then, boo! on you, BookRix. You might have some wonderful authors in your mix and some terrific books available but we'll never know.
When we saw the Meyer/Collins/Kinney stuff, we left.
Last week, we mentioned that iLibrarian was providing several links to free ebooks, no money down, no money ever, and we were intrigued. We hadn't actually visited any of the sites but their offer of 5 e-Book collections which contain over 100,000 free e-Books was enough to get our little readers' hearts racing.
Enticed by the promise of $0.00 books, we wandered over to the first of the sites, ManyBooks.net -- which offers, in ManyBooks' own words, the best ebooks at the best price: free! The ManyBooks crew has more than 29,000 tomes available for all kinds of e-readers. As you've probably noticed yourself by now, their front page promotes several Books of the Week. This week's B.O.T.W. are Madame Bovary, The Wizard of Oz, Crime and Punishment and The Phantom of the Opera.
Yep, you've got it: Their most recent Book of the Week was first published over 100 years ago. We're betting it was hot stuff, 'way back when. All of the titles are great, and as confirmed Oz-ians, we're not sorry we stopped by. Still, nobody is all that excited about public domain stuff, including us.
Which is one reason we didn't bother to knock at another of the iLibrarian hot spots, Project Gutenberg.
Instead, we went to a site called BookRix. BRix (the nickname we've just-this-second decided all the cool kids use) says it has over 115,000 books on-line and available. Not all of them are free but many are and we wanted to see what was what. Checking the BookRix Most widely read books, we were surprised to find "free" novels from Stephanie Meyer (under the pseudonym, 'S.M.'), Suzanne Collins and Jeff Kinney.
Even though we're not experts on copyright law, we still wonder if it's legal to give away royalty-free copies of BREAKING DAWN, CATCHING FIRE, and WIMPY KID 4. If it is, our mistake, and BookRix is more than worth a stop. If it isn't...then, boo! on you, BookRix. You might have some wonderful authors in your mix and some terrific books available but we'll never know.
When we saw the Meyer/Collins/Kinney stuff, we left.
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