Whether it is an e book you find by searching these sites I’ve listed, a manual for your Jeep Wrangler, or a Greek Cookbook. Sometimes it is fun to hoard e books, just like many of us like to never let go of our hardcover books.

What you will find below in these sites are many different ways to find e books to read on your e book reader. Some of the sites offer many of the same books for download, only presented to you differently. Some sites offer e books that are unique to them. The benefit of some of these resources is how the list of e books is presented to you.

I recommend you go and visit a few of these sites to see what you think. Leave a comment below and tell the world!

PeJome

PeJome is a nice and simple way to search and get e books for your Kindle or mobi pocket device. When you search on this web site you are basically searching the Project Gutenberg web site. These books are all free and in the public domain. PeJome does all of the converting and spits out the E Book for you within 15 seconds in most cases.

Feed Books

FeedBooks is probably the most popular option for Kindle users. There website is easy to browse and understand. They offer helpful lists of books within categories, most popular books, and even a random book button. Feedbooks is a website that is operated in France with a mission to make the availability of free public domain e books easily accessible. The offer e books in many formats and any device that can read a PDF file will work fine.

Many Books

Many Books is a great site to browse and find something of interest. The website is well laid out and you are able to search among authors, categories, titles, and languages. Some example categories are: Post 1930, Espionage, Harvard Classics, to Pirate Tales. Obviously some great reading can be found here. The e books here are all downloaded in PDF format.

Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg is the Grand Daddy of all e book sources. They have a huge collection of e books available and many other sites only use their available e book collection and arrange it differently. Project Gutenberg is an actual Wiki made up of contributors all over the World. They also have taken almost every public domain book known to man and cataloged it within their vast database.

Scribd

Scribd is probably the site with the most user interaction. They offer a real value when you visit. Not only are you given access to millions of free e books you join a community of users you can share interests with for further reading ideas. Scribd also has some very unique content that is often times extremely interesting even just to glance over. The offer their e books either in plain text format or PDF format.

Amazon

Yes, even Amazon has books available for the Kindle at no cost. Many times they are a promotion from the publishing house, or a promotion from Amazon themselves. Sometimes these free Kindle books make it to the top of the best seller list, which has created somewhat of a buzz among the grass roots Kindle community as far as “list fixing” and wrongly categorizing works of indie authors. That’s a whole different story.

Mobile Read

The Mobile Read forums are the busiest and most informative forums on the internet when it comes to e readers and e books. They stepped it up a notch and made their own list of free public domain books. The list is currently over 3,000 books large and has some great reads in it.

Planet E Book

Planet E Book is a nice condensed list of classical literature available for download as PDF. This website has nothing really to it other than that. I like that you can look at one page and see the titles of around 50 classical reads and go for it. Makes for a quick easy visit.

Free Kindle Books

Free Kindle Books is a web site that categorizes books from the Project Gutenberg. What is nice about this site is on the front page is a huge list of Authors just to scroll down on. This is great sometimes when you are just browsing with no Author in mind to just see a list and go from there. They also offer for download the Project Gutenberg catalog via PDF.

EBookee

EBookee is a great source for that odd e book you would never imagine existed. They have e books available in many categories, especially computer and IT.  They have e books written by normal internet users such as how to guides, blogging guides, and software guides. Cons: sometimes their links do not work and the site can be a little spammy.

PDF Geni

PDF Geni is a really cool tool more than a place to download e books. It is really a search engine for PDF files, easily put on an e book reader or Kindle. One search gives you many results on any topic imaginable. This is a definite favorite among many Kindle and computer users.

Ibiblio

Ibiblio coins itself “The National Public Library and Digital Archive”. They are much like the Gutenberg Project but with more emphasis on education. This site would be a great resource for any high school or college student. They have e books on language, math, science, religion, history, geography, and everything else in between.

Munseys

Munseys is a site created for mobile devices to search their categories listed on their front page. This site works great with a PDA, Kindle, and Blackberry. They have thousands of e books that are easily downloaded. The web site looks very basic and is no frills, this is so that it can more easily be browsed with a mobile device.

Book Yards

Book Yards is a great way to browse an impressive collection of e books in PDF format. They have a great category and author listing making it easy to find a previously unknown book. They have categories from Spanish to Military. I even found a cool guide for the US Marine Corps M 40 Rifle, who would have known.

LibriVox

LibriVox is actually a web site for free Audio Books. What they do is have users or volunteers read and record books that are already free in the public domain on their own, and upload the files into the public domain for free download. They currently have over 2,000 audio books available for free download. Very cool idea.

Wowio

Wowio is a new type of website offering free e book downloads. They have a business model that is able to profit while you can still get limited free downloads. Once you become a user you are entitled to a certain amount of free e book downloads, and you can also purchase e books for yourself or friends for minimal cost.

Free E  Books

Free E Books is a site that hosts e books from a range of interesting topics from personal health to poetry. They have many titles available that you will not be able to find on other sites. The downside is that this web site is cluttered with ads and you have to become a member to download.

Online Books at University of Pennsylvania

This is a huge database of e books available for free download from the University of Pennsylvania. Many of these e books are nowhere else to be found. Many of these e books are research papers from college students and professors. This would be a great research tool for students of all ages.

Read Print

Read Print is a beautiful web site that is very well laid out and easily accessible. They do things a little different though. They do not actually offer e books, instead entire books, split up by chapters, available to read directly on their web site. Kindle users can browse here and so can any other reader that can read html.

The Internet Archive of Libraries

This was the most fun web site for me to browse around. If it isn’t the largest it certainly seems so. They give you access to several libraries, including the Gutenberg libraries. The Universal library seemed to me the most interesting. Files are easily viewed and downloaded in PDF format.

Online Free E Books

I found repair manuals for Porsche transmissions on this site among many things. This is a really cool site for quick visit to see if anything trips your interest. This site is very much automobile oriented, however also has manuals on karate and chess.

Audio books are becoming more and more popular as their availability is increasing along with consumers demand of easily consumable literature. Both the Kindle 2 and the Kindle DX have sound playback capabilities, which gives these E-Readers the capability to play audio books easily.

“This feature makes the Kindle into more of an “all-in-one” device for people serious about reading.”

There are several ways to download audio books from the internet. More often than not, you will need to purchase the audio book before you can download it. There are free audio books available for download on the internet, these books will be older works that have been released as public domain.

The best source of audio books is considered to be Audible.com. They offer by far the largest selection of audio books and the most options as far as payment goes. They currently offer over 60,000 titles available for download.  You are given the option to either purchase the audio books and an option for a membership based subscription. If you purchase the audio books without a membership the audio books usually costs close to what the hardcover version would cost, sometimes more and sometimes less. This is common among audio book sellers.

If you plan on purchasing a few audio books within the year, the membership option is by far the more economical one. Here are the 2 pricing plans available. As you can see, with a membership the most an audio book will cost you is $14.95. With the Platinum Plus plan each audio books will cost you $11.48. If you sign up for the Gold Plan you can get audio books for just $7.49 for the first 3 months.

Here is an example pricing for different versions

Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist

Hardcover Version	$16.55
Kindle Version	$9.99
Audible Version	$20.99 (w/o membership)

My Remarkable Journey

Hardcover Version	$18.45
Kindle Version	$9.99
Audible Version	$24.47 (w/o membership)

Playing Audiobooks on your Kindle

Now that you have a couple audio books downloaded to your computer, it’s time to get them onto your Kindle and start listening. Because of the file size of an audio book, it doesn’t work to email the file to your Kindle email address and grab the file from there using Whispernet. You need to download the book onto your computer and upload it manually onto your Kindle. Don’t worry, it’s easy.

Once you have downloaded the audio book onto your computer you will need to connect the Kindle to your computer using a USB transfer cable. Make sure your Kindle is powered on. You will see an additional drive under “My Computer” that is for the Kindle, most often times this will be “Drive (F:)”. Navigate to the “Music” folder within your Kindle device and drag or copy the audio books file into that folder. Make sure the transfer is complete before disconnecting your Kindle.

To play the audio book you will see it show up along all of your other content, along newspapers, books, blogs etc. You will just see a speaker icon next to it.

Once playing you have some controls. You can either go forward or backward by 30 second intervals. Or skip forward or backwards by chapters.

Software

There are a few options for software programs you can use to manage your Audible downloads, playback, and library organization. Audible.com has its own proprietary software called the Audible Download Manager. This is the best way to download and organize Audible files, other than iTunes.

iTunes works very well to download, organize and play any Audible files.

Sound Quality

There are 4 different quality types available for download of audiobooks from Audible.com. These qualities range from poor to excellent. The Kindle 1 is able to play formats 2, 3, and 4, not the Enhanced Audio format. The Kindle 2 and DX is able to play only the quality level 4 and enhanced Audio format.

Check out Audible.com for available titles

Even after you have reached your destination the Kindle is nice to have around. You won’t need to lug around a couple books and magazines just in case you find yourself without anything to do, or just get the urge to do some reading. All you need is one thing, the Kindle.

With airport security these days, sometimes passengers aren’t quite sure whether or not their electronic device will make it through security safely or even if they will be allowed to use it once the air plane is at cruising altitude.

The general rule of thumb is: Anything that is capable of transmitting a signal must be turned off during flight, or have the transmit function disabled.

Blackberries quickly added the feature allow users to disable the transmit feature on them so that they could still go through saved emails look at documents and do whatever else.

The Amazon Kindle also has a feature to disable the Whispernet function, so that you will no longer be transmitting a signal. Therefore once the Whispernet function is disabled, you are allowed to read your Kindle during flight.

Going Through Airport Security with Your Kindle

The general rule of thumb with getting your Kindle through the airport security check is to treat it like a laptop. It is recommended that you turn it off and place it in it’s separate bin or along with your laptop.

People have said that they kept their Kindle inside their carryon or backpack and have gotten through fine, if it is a hassle to take it out go for it. I’m all for getting through that check point with no troubles though and the airport security may ask you to take it out or do it for you. Slowing the entire line down.

The data on your Kindle should be fine, there is no reason to worry about loosing your books or settings.

Here is a quick guide to the Video:

• 25 sec – Mine Sweeper
• 1 min 16 sec – Screen Shots
• 1 min 50 sec – Menu Navigation Tips
• 2 min 50 sec – Searching the Internet and Browsing Web Pages
• 3 min 30 sec – Diagnostics for the Kindle
• 3 min 50 sec – Cool Keyboard Shortcuts

You can do this on the Kindle 1, Kindle 2, and I’m sure on the Kindle DX.  It is actually quite simple.  You just point the web browser on your Kindle to Twitter.com, login, and you can start Tweeting right away.

The reason the huge changed in maps occurred between January 19, 2008 and February 26, 2009 was that the Kindle 2 was released. Once the Kindle 2 was released Amazon worked very hard with Sprint to extend coverage to much more of the United States.

Theoretically, the Kindle 1 and the Kindle 2 should have very similar ranges. Notice even in the past 3 months the differences between the February 26, 2009 map and the June 3, 2009 map.  It looks like the coverage areas are continuing to improve both for the higher speed EVDO and for reaching areas previously unreachable even by using a low speed uplink.

Click Here to View the Whispernet Coverage Map from Sprint

January 19, 2008

February 26, 2009

June 3, 2009

Amazon recently announced an effort to help authors publish books in their tangible form. This service is called Amazon Encore, its release date is not yet known. This post will be focusing on self publishing for the Amazon Kindle format.

Another benefit of publishing your e-book for use on the Amazon Kindle is the very low startup costs to do so. You are not charged anything to do this. You simply create an account, enter the details along with a description of your e-book, and afterwards you upload it and set a selling price for the e-book.

There are certain types of formats that Amazon can use to convert for viewing on the Kindle. The best way to do this is to use Amazon’s Digital Text Platform, or DTP. There, you can upload one of the below file formats and Amazon will automatically prepare it for the Kindle.  Read the next section for another option.

• Microsoft Word
• PDF
• Text
• RTF
• HTML, XHTML
• Amazon Kindle (.mobi/.prc/.azw – all 3 extensions are equivalent)
• IDPF format (also known as OEB (.opf) or EPUB)

Note: once you have uploaded your file and Amazon has accepted it, it is highly recommended you check to make sure the conversion process did not negatively alter your work in any way.

Creating Your E-Book

Creating an e-book is more complex than just typing it out, adding some photos and graphs, then uploading the file. You need to have a well laid out table of contents. This will allow readers to navigate to certain portions of your book with ease, I wouldn’t consider publishing a book without one.

Another thing to keep in mind is the use of images in your e-book. Although the Amazon Kindle uses black and white coloring, you should let it do the work to convert the colors to the many shades of grey it is capable of rendering. Also, if you are viewing the e-book on an Apple i-Phone, the images will be in full color.

One of the best software programs available to properly format an e-book for compliance with the Amazon Kindle guidelines is the MobiPocket software. It is recommended by Amazon. This software also has the capability to emulate an e-reader for testing purposes.

Get the MobiPocket Software Free

Preparing Your E-Book for Sale

After you have written and properly formatted your e-book, you are ready to start getting it ready for sale on Amazon. You will need to create an account with the Amazon Digital Text Platform. It will ask you for your basic contact information, bank account information, and tax information for payment processing purposes.

Then you go to the”My Shelf” tab and choose to add a new item. There you can enter:

• The Title of your e-book
• The Description
• Author Name
• Publish Date
• Category
• Keywords
• Product Image

Then you will be asked to enter the price at which you wish to sell your e-book for. One point on this, Amazon really touts that “most” of the Kindle books sell for $9.99. There have been a few examples of mass boycotts of books selling for over that amount in the blogosphere. I would not recommend selling your e-book for more than $9.99. More on this figure in the next section.

Here is the Official PDF instruction manual for using the Amazon DTP service (PDF)

Making Money with Your E-Book

Some authors may have just written a manuscript for fun and do not expect to earn any or very little income from publishing their e-book for the Kindle. Often times people and businesses write e-books as a tool for promoting their website or business. (there are some good promotion like e-books out there, however some are quite “scam” like)

Other authors would really like to make some extra dough on the side using this publishing platform. This is quite possible. The way the payment proceeds work is quite simple. You earn 35% of the sale of your E-Book. Just like that, and Amazon gets the rest. They will send you a payment once you have earned at least $10, and you will receive it 60 days after the calendar month in which you earned that threshold. Example: You reach $11 in sales at the end of June. You will receive your payment via direct deposit into a US bank account 60 days after the end of June, or approximately September 1.

There are other ways to sell e-books online, many other ways. I recommend you use them also. However, as I touched on before. Even though Amazon gives you a paltry 35%, Amazon has a huge customer base and is able to sell more effectively than any other online business out there.

Note: Any income garnered from the sale of e-books on Amazon is taxable and should be reported on your IRS tax return, most often on Schedule C or C-EZ. Amazon may not send you a 1099 to report this income unless the amount is $600 or more.

Rights and Copyrights

One thing I was really glad to read in the Digital Publication Distribution Agreement that Amazon has you agree to before allowing you to publish your e-book, is that they do not take your published work as theirs. The allow you to retain full custody of the copyright, allowing you to continue to distribute it in any way you like. However, hey do ask that you do not charge more on Amazon than your other outlets of choice.

Publishing anything on the internet does have its risks. Even though the Kindle format is a relatively safe way to publish your work, it is still susceptible to being duplicated or distributed freely. They do not hold themselves liable for this, and there is very little you can do about it.

For further reading on the copyright agreement and your rights as an author read:

Digital Publication Distribution Agreement

Thank You,

Kindle Tank

So the question is, “What Files Does the Amazon Kindle Recognize?, meaning, what files will the Kindle display if I upload them to it. Let’s go through them.

E-Books

Of course the Kindle can read some e-books, it does that best. It will read all past and present books published in Kindle format.  Also it will read the Mobipocket filetypes, such as .MOBI and .PRC, however if you purchased these books / files from a publisher, they will most likely be DRM protected and therefore will not display on your Kindle.

• Kindle (.AZW, .AZW1). Text (.TXT)
• Unprotected Mobipocket (.MOBI, .PRC)

Audio Books

The Kindle 2 and Kindle DX have text to speech converters, but the output is not nearly as pleasant to listen to as a true audio book, a book read by an actual person.  Audio books from Audible are the only  audio book file type that will play on the Kindle.

• Audible (.AA, .AAX)

Images

Being able to view images on the Kindle is a nice little perk. This capability also lets you comic books, very cool. Either use Kindle’s Personal Document Service (via Whispernet), or transfer the files via USB onto your Kindle.

• JPEG (.JPEG, .JPG)
• GIF (.GIF)
• PNG (.PNG)
• BMP (.BMP)

Documents

You can also view documents on your Kindle beyond reading books, newspapers, and blogs. You can upload or send important or informational documents to your Kindle and always have them with you on the go.

• Microsoft Word (.DOC)
• PDF (.PDF) is supported natively by Kindle DX and by Kindle (2nd Generation) in the experimental category
• Microsoft Word (.DOCX) is supported in the experimental category.
• Structured HTML (.HTML, .HTM)
• RTF (.RTF)

His book, Warrior of the Light, is less a traditional story and more of a manual for life.  Paulo Coelho released the book in 1997, however the passages from the book are a compilation of written work published in several Brazilian Newspapers in the years of 1993 to 1996.

FeedBooks.com is now offering for free download the entire e-book for the Kindle, Warrior of the Light. This is the only book from Paulo Coelho available for free download.  The book is broken up into 3 parts for download:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

Other Books written Paulo Coelho

The Alchemist

Eleven Minutes: A Novel

By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept: A Novel of Forgiveness

The Zahir: A Novel of Obsession

The Valkyries

Here is how to install the application on your iPhone or iPhone Touch:

To install Kindle for iPhone:

1. Visit www.apple.com/iphone/appstore/ by tapping the App Store icon on the home screen of your iPhone or iPod touch. You can also get the application through the iTunes Store.
2. Search for “Kindle for iPhone” or find it in the alphabetical list of applications.
3. Follow the on-screen install instructions.

When your installation is complete, simply tap the Kindle for iPhone icon on your iPhone and iPod touch to start accessing or building your Kindle books library.