I love DRM-free books! I know that for most people, DRM is an issue they might not think about often; if their books work, they're happy. But for many more experienced e-book users, it's an issue to care about. If you acquire 100 Amazon e-books and then you buy a Kobo, how are you going to read those books? If you spend years as a loyal Sony customer and then buy a Kindle, what will you do with the books you've bought and loved? Unless you are blessed with some technical skills—and either a country whose laws permit format-shifting, or a...

It all started with John Lehman's call-to-arms to app developers: "Those of us in app development love to talk about how ridiculous it is that people will drop $4 every other day on a cup of coffee but will not 'waste' 99 cents on our hot new app. I hope by now we’ve learned something: This comparison doesn’t work." Lehman goes on to explain that Starbucks coffee is a trustable experience, and 'your app' is not; that is has no free substitute and the app does; that its craftsmanship is on full display unlike an app, and so on. Then, Nate over at The Digital...

You can get it here. The description: “Siegel continues his Love series of arch and diverting novels about the body-mind conundrum, sexy tales that revolve around the influence of texts as much as the libido.… As always, mischievous Siegel revels in the magic of language while offering tart social commentary on everything from Jewish assimilation to racism to the atomic bomb, but never has his humor been sharper or his characters more alluring than in this shrewdly spiked, cheerfully erotic, incident-rich Hollywood coming-of-age tale.”—Booklist “Hilarious.… A delicious, page-turning memoir that spans those doctor-playing, sex-obsessed, hormone-drenched years from 5 to 15. It’s...

That's the title of a new book by Chris Armstrong. I got the following email from him about it: One of the problems which face all librarians adding e-books to their collections is that of bibliographic control: there is no legal deposit for e-books and consequently there is no single place from which new titles can be found. If this is true of commercially published e-books, it is most certainly also true of free e-books… and there are many thousands of free e-books available over the Internet, many of which are of a quality such that librarians might wish to...

Blog Kindle (unofficial) has an article on Bookyards. I must admit I had never heard of them. They have about 17,000 free ebooks in Kindle PDF format, says the blog. This free e-book library is mostly education oriented. So, a student, or a researcher, or just a curious erudite might find this resource a very useful one. If you were looking for an electronic version of C. Bresciani Turroni’s Economic Policy For The Thinking Man, or perhaps the Marquis de Nadaillac’s Manners And Monuments Of Prehistoric Peoples, or Charles Marquis Smith’s Electric and...

From the Threepress Consulting blog: Thanks to Hatgirl on MobileRead for this great tip on integrating Ibis Reader with Baen free books: If you use Ibis Reader, you will have seen the “Get Books” link. This allows you to view OPDS catalogs (lists of web-accessible ebooks). The Feedbooks catalogs are pre-installed, and some of you may have set up a Calibre/Dropbox OPDS catalog of your own library. On a whim, I used the “Add Your Own Catalog” link to add the WebScription Stanza link, Code: http://www.webscription.net/stanza.aspx?feed=free It worked! I can access the Baen Free Library directly from Ibis Reader! In “Get Books” I click “Baen” (or...

From the press release: To help the multitude of new owners with eBook reading devices, Kaplan Publishing is offering more than 130 Free eBooks in a promotion that runs from January 4 -10th. Owners of the Nook, iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, and Sony eReader can find select Kaplan titles absolutely free by visiting: www.FreeKaplaneBooks.com. Starting today, high school students; college students; those wanting GRE, GMAT or SAT practice tests; future doctors, lawyers, MBA's and nurses and many more will find a variety of valuable Kaplan test prep guides, practice tests, practice questions, study aids, and related titles that would normally cost hundreds...

From the site: Broadway, the main street that runs through Robert Pinsky’s home town of Long Branch, New Jersey, was once like thousands of other main streets in small towns across the country. But for Pinsky, one of America’s most admired poets and its former Poet Laureate, this Broadway is the point of departure for a lively journey through the small towns of the American imagination. “Pinsky offers a provocative take on the relationship between artists and small-town America. He explicates quotations from Cather, Faulkner and Twain, as well as scenes from filmmakers like Hitchcock and Sturges, and reminiscences about his own...

This is a bit different so I thought I'd post it in full - and its free.  It should be of special interest to our European readers: My Cybook Opus Ebook Reader - Adventures of a New User is a free digital reading ebook by Paolo Amoroso of Nostromics. You are encouraged to freely download, use, distribute and share the book under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported license.About the bookThe book tells the author's experience in selecting, buying and using a Cybook Opus ebook reading device. The Opus is a popular digital reader manufactured by BOOKEEN. These devices are...

CNET has an article with this title. They discuss Jungle-search.com. After they discuss free ebooks they go on to say: ... But what if you want to see more granular lists--say, separating the public domain titles from the modern freebies? (Publishers occasionally give away older books in a series to hook readers on newer ones, for example.) Or what if you want to see only books in a certain price range--only those that are 99 cents, or $2 to $3? That's where Jungle-search.com comes in. The search engine is designed to scour Amazon for all sorts of deals across a...

Stephen Windwalker of Kindle Nation Daily has just published Kindle Free For All. It's available at the Kindle store for $0.99 during the holiday season. Thanks to some great help from talented editor and author April Hamilton, we have worked hard to hit the sweet spot in making this book the most complete and easy-to-use resource yet for finding all kinds of free content for your Kindle and other Kindle-compatible devices, with useful information on millions of free ebooks, free audio books, and free periodical, blog, and research content for Kindle. If any of you are giving a Kindle for...

From Open Culture: In the summer of 1955, Frederick Baldwin, a college student at Columbia University, set out on a pilgrimage of sorts, hoping to meet Pablo Picasso. Baldwin traveled first to Le Havre (presumably by boat), then headed south, down to Vallauris and Cannes, until he eventually reached Picasso’s home on the Riviera, known as Villa la Californie. It took a little craftiness and moxie, but the young American gained entrance into Picasso’s studio. And there he was, the great painter himself, wearing shorts, sandals and not much else. More than five decades later, Baldwin has produced an elegant e-book (available...