Comments on: Ebook Freebies #1

By: Bob Martinengo

Bob Martinengo — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 16:38:13 +0000

I accept that challenge. Not saying it will be tomorrow, but I’ll have something for you soon…

By: David Rothman

David Rothman — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 16:09:20 +0000

Absolutely, Bob. If you run across some incredible things in this area that you want to write about, why not do a guest-posting for us? How about a post with tips on how people without disabilities could help disabled folks get into e-books? Use examples to liven things up.

Thanks,
David

By: Bob Martinengo

Bob Martinengo — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 15:34:50 +0000

Thanks David – I thought people might be interested to check out the DAISY format, which is the basis of the NIMAS format, which was mandated for K12 textbooks.

I’ll hop up on my soapbox for a sec to remind people that readers with disabilities that prevent them from reading print books are a great audience for ebooks.

By: David Rothman

David Rothman — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 14:41:41 +0000

Hi, Bob. Appreciated your further comments.

I dropped by the bookshare.org site again and could indeed call up pub domain books for free. You’re right on that—books in the Freely Available area. As noted, I said I wasn’t sure about noncopyrighted books. The 9/11 report is a government document without the usual copyright.

That said, I suspect people would get a much bigger choice of public domain books from a site like Gutenberg.org or Manybooks.net or probably Feedbooks.

Hey, we love tips, so thanks for your original comments, and I hope you’ll share other hints!

Thanks,
David

By: Bob Martinengo

Bob Martinengo — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 14:16:24 +0000

Just to make sure, I downloaded a DAISY file of the 9/11 report in a few clicks, right from the bookshare website. And, you can go right to advanced search from the home page – didn’t notice that at first.

By: Bob Martinengo

Bob Martinengo — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 14:04:17 +0000

David,

I wouldn’t steer TeleReaders wrong – the books I mentioned are available to EVERYONE – no disability or registration required. Its a nice free bonus from Bookshare.

– Bob

By: David Rothman

David Rothman — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 17:03:50 +0000

Handy info for the right people, Bob. Just a reminder: Copyrighted books from BookShare are only for the disabled who qualify. Not sure about the others. Thanks! David

By: Bob Martinengo

Bob Martinengo — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 16:52:36 +0000

Here is an interesting resource for freebies:

Got to http://www.bookshare.org
Go to Getting Started > Find Books
Click ‘Advanced Search’
For ‘Books to Search’, select ‘Freely Available Books’
Under ‘Filter by Category’ select one or more categories (contrary to what it says, you cant leave these fields empty to search all).

If you select all categories, you should get over 4,000 titles you can download in DAISY, BRF, HTML, or text.

Go for it!