Some blogs are making a big deal out of how the recent 200th-birthday Charles Dickens Google Doodle linked, not to a general Google search for its subject as other such doodles have in the past, but rather to the Google Books search for Charles Dickens. CNet’s Chris Matyszczyk (rather smarmily) calls it a “pure, straight-up piece of commercial communication.” You might not see today's Google Books-pointing doodle as a moneymaking effort. After all, these Dickens e-books are free. And yet, surely, the aim is gravitate your mind and habits over to the Google eBookstore, where money...

CNet reports that cartoonist Richard Stevens III has released a free, DRM-free PDF of the first physical book collection of his webcomic Diesel Sweeties. Although the entire strip is archived for free on-line, the e-book represents a PDF conversion of a printed collection which includes a foreword, character information, and edited and recolored artwork taking into account the lessons Stevens learned through experience. The giveaway is, of course, meant to promote Stevens’s web store where he sells merchandise related to the strip (including printed strip collections). But that’s to be expected; Baen’s DRM-free digital giveaways work the same way....

With about a zillion people getting Kindles for Christmas, they’re going to be wanting something to read, and not necessarily for a lot of money, either. I spotted a couple of articles highlighting some of the best works available to read for free on Kindles. One of them offers an intriguing theory on why Amazon’s quality control may be so random. The UK blog PC Pro lists a number of these works, split about evenly between public-domain works and newer titles. I’m not sure whether all of them are available in the US version of the store, international rights...

Could we be getting closer to a free Kindle—but not one provided by Amazon? The rapid price drop of the Kindle led some to speculate that, if prices kept falling at the same rate, it would be free by the end of this year. It doesn’t look like that is going to happen, but the prices sure have fallen, haven’t they? Rumors have long been with us about free Kindles. In 2010, Mike Arrington heard from someone claiming Jeff Bezos was considering giving free Kindles to all Amazon Prime subscribers. More recently, Amazon reps told an AllThingsD reporter...

As I mentioned in my review of Honor Among Enemies, with In Enemy Hands the Honorverse series changes from a pure space navy series to something more politically-based. While there are still plenty of naval battles in the offing, at times the space combat takes a distinct back seat to all the political maneuvering. I suspect that this is why a number of readers seem to feel it “jumped the shark” at this point—they started reading it because they liked space battles, and suddenly it turned into something very different. This book begins a phase of the series expressly...

If Amazon accidentally gave 6,000 copies of your e-book away for free—without compensating you for the downloads—you’d be a little ticked off, right? That happened to self-publishing author James Crawford, whose zombie novel Blood Soaked & Contagious was inadvertently given away by Amazon, due to a glitch in the web-crawling robot that makes sure Amazon’s prices are always equivalent to the lowest price the book is offered for elsewhere. As originally reported by GalleyCat (and in a rather more balanced article on PaidContent), on September 30th Amazon’s bot mistook a free sample of the first few chapters of the...

Next up, chronologically, in the Honorverse are a pair of short stories. Although they have nothing to do with each other, they both cover events that become important in the next book. And they both involve events of great change to their respective worlds—one not violently, but the other very much so. Previously: Introduction Treecat Trilogy A Beautiful Friendship Young Honor and Elizabeth Prince Michael rescues and Honor dances On Basilisk Station The Honor of the Queen...

As I continue my series of Honor Harrington reviews, in the hope of eventually reviewing the entire almost-completely-free e-book series from start to finish, I notice some news from David Weber has popped up lately: Weber and an unnamed CGI/3D movie studio are in the process of finalizing negotiations over the movie rights (Baen Bar link; free registration required) to the Honorverse series. Weber is very optimistic over the studio’s intentions to be as faithful to the books as possible (especially since they’re also fans of the series), and has been doing a lot of consultation with them on how best...

I found an interesting piece on BoingBoing the other day by Bill Barol, another one of those authors who had been rejected by traditional publishers and was thinking about self-publishing his caper novel, Thanks for Killing Me. He discussed the matter with a friend who had been a publishing executive, explaining that his real goal was to catch the attention of a traditional publisher and/or the movie business. “Okay,” he said. “First, forget everything you know about traditional media; all your experience is worthless. Take all that time you spend screwing around on Twitter and put...

Previously: Introduction Treecat Trilogy A Beautiful Friendship Young Honor and Elizabeth Prince Michael rescues and Honor dances On Basilisk Station The Honor of the Queen The Short Victorious War Irresponsible captain, itinerant noble Field of Dishonor Continuing my review of Honor Harrington stories and novels in chronological order: Flag in Exile by David...

Often hilarious and usually surreal novelist Daniel Pinkwater is serializing his latest work, Bushman Lives, on the book’s website. The first three chapters are up so far, and they definitely continue the surreal and hilarious trend. New chapters will be added every Monday. The book itself doesn’t appear to be available for purchase yet, but hopefully this experiment in serialization will attract more people to buy it when it is. It’s great to see a wonderful author like Pinkwater joining the free e-books crowd! (Found via BoingBoing.)...

As Hurricane Irene approaches the upper east coast, property damage is of course a key concern—but Hurricane Irene is also, at least temporarily, knocking down some virtual walls—paywalls. Laura Hazard Owen reports on PaidContent that the New York Times and Newsday.com are both making hurricane coverage available to all readers for free. E-magazine service Zinio is also offering free issues of several electronic magazines to travelers stranded by the hurricane. Of course, the usefulness of these free services depends on people being able to keep their connectivity during the storm. USA Today has a guide suggesting ways for...