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Browsing for non-English books at Kindle Store is not easy. You can follow these tips to get most of it. However if you don’t find books in the categories of your interest, you can try to get them from other legal sources.

Remember, for your Kindle ereader or application, third-party books have to be:
- in prc/mobi format (also described as mobipocket or kindle),
- without DRM (unprotected).

Before you’ll buy a Kindle, check whether in your country there are any legal sources of DRM-free prc/mobi books. Some local ebook distributors may be selling books in this format, knowing that Kindle is the most popular ereader in the world – it ships to over 170 countries and is probably cheaper than ereaders officially sold by local ebookstores.

There are a couple of great services which can be a valuable source of non-English books for your Kindle.

Smashwords

The catalog contains over 60,000 books from contemporary authors. It’s one of the most popular self-publishing services in the world. Not only English-speaking authors use it to publish their books.

Description of every book includes also a language. But don’t get disappointed – if you click on a language it returns no results. Apparently, there is apparently a bug which prevents language search at Smashwords.

A good way is to type in a search box your language pronounced in English (f.e. Finnish or Portuguese). You can also browse Smashwords via Google. Go to Google web search page and paste into the search box (replacing Spanish with your language):

site:smashwords.com "Language: Spanish"

You can also go directly to Smashwords satellite sites for language-specific ebook collections:
Spanish – approx. 750 titles
French – approx. 550 titles

Feedbooks

Feedbooks is a great source of free ebooks from self-published authors (apart from public domain classics). Search by language is available for 5 languages: English, German, French, Russian, Spanish. To reveal it, find in the left panel a section called Language and click on More options (see picture below).

Direct links to supported languages:
German
French
Spanish
Russian

If your language is not supported, you can replace two last letters in the address bar – they are the language tag:

http://www.feedbooks.com/userbooks?lang=es

Tag es stand for Spanish. If you want to find, for instance, Polish books, replace es with pl. A full list of two-letter language tags is available here.

Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg is a mother of all public domain books in digital format. Books from PG can be found at Feedbooks, Manybooks or Internet Archive. The great thing about this service is that you can search by language easily and comfortably – just go to this page.

You can search for language, sort languages by popularity or alphabetically. What’s important, next to each language there is a number of books available.

Most popular languages are French, German, Finnish, Dutch, Portuguese and Chinese.

Internet Archive

The site lists public domain books, but it’s also open for the contribution of free Creative Commons texts.

Currently, Internet Archive collects almost 3,000,000 titles. You can search for books in your language using advanced search. From a Custom field drop-down menu select language, then in a field next to contains type a two-letter tag of your language (see picture below).

Open Library

Open Library is a community-driven ebook resource. Over 1,000,000 titles are available. Search doesn’t give an option to select language. You have to paste into the address bar the text below:

http://openlibrary.org/search?language=spa

The site is using three-letter language codes (different from Feedbooks and Internet Archive). You can find them here.

Scribd

Scribd is a YouTube for texts. 10 million files are shared here, majority for free. Available file formats are “only” pdf and plain text (txt), but if you’re really looking for a wider choice of books, you should try browsing this site.

Language search is easy. You can first select a category you’re interested in. On a list of result look for a bar with options (see picture) and choose your language from a drop-down menu.

* * *

Note, that you can’t use third-party books in your account the same way as books bought at Kindle Store. For instance you can’t sync them between devices associated with your account.

Originally published at Ebook Friendly

Related posts

• 14.09.2011 -- Get Updates of Kindle Daily Deal via RSS or E-mail
• 26.08.2011 -- “Look Inside” for Kindle Books – 3 Tips for Authors
• 19.08.2011 -- Now “Look Inside” Feature Is Available for Kindle Ebooks!
• 18.08.2011 -- Easy Tip to Reduce Clutter While Browsing Amazon
• 25.07.2011 -- 6 Tips and Tricks to Use Kindle for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch

"6 Sites Where You Can Find Non-English Kindle Books" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

Image: Fotolia

Buying ebooks is different from buying print books. You are much more tied with the ebookstore as it’s also giving you the access to your virtual bookshelf with all the titles you’ve bought.

Does comparing ebook prices between different sources make sense, then?

Definitely yes. There are at least three instances you may want to use the tools described in this post:

1. You are about to decide which ereader to buy – which is very strongly related to which ebookstore will be your primary source of ebooks. Checking prices of a device is one thing, but it’s also reasonable to check the prices of the books you’re planning to buy.

2. You own a tablet (or a smartphone) and have a couple of ereading applications installed, like Kindle, Kobo or Nook. You have accounts in all those ebookstores. It doesn’t matter which app you’ll pick to read a new book. You want to buy this book for the lowest possible price.

3. You are using price alert tools as you don’t want to overpay for the ebooks you buy. You can compare prices in different ebookstores, set up an alert at the lowest level found and wait until a bargain offer comes.

Price comparison tools are also a great way to check the general price level of ebooks comparing to print books, for instance the ones you have already bought.

Inkmesh.com

This innovative site compares prices from as much as 34 sources, including Kindle Store, Kobo, B&N, Lulu, iBookstore, Smashwords as well as free ebook sites (Project Gutenberg, Internet Archive, Feedbooks).

You can search by title, author or keyword. You can narrow your search only to free ebooks. This can be done by clicking a separate button next to search box.

On a front page you have direct links to lists of current free ebooks from major ebookstores. This way you can find and add free titles to your device or app from a primary ebookstore, not as third-party.

Each title on a search results page is accompanied with the information about how many sources offer the book, the list of supported devices and a first line of description. The price shown is the lowest found.

You have several tools to narrow down and sort your search. You can pick up a price range or select results by content type (i.e. textbooks, audiobooks), device and average rating.

Luzme.com

Luzme is as simple and friendly as Inkmesh. You can search books by author, title or ISBN.

Search results are displayed in groups: book series, authors and suggestions of particular titles. Tip: it’s good to type author’s full name or the full title of the book to get most relevant results. Otherwise the list of suggestions may be too long.

On a book page you’ll see buying options split into two currency sections: GBP and USD. You also have information about available ebook formats. You’ll see whether the book has Adobe DRM. What is especially helpful, also regional restrictions are listed, so that you can immediately know whether the book is available in your country.

Another helpful option is the information about the date of a latest price check, so that you can be aware of a possible price change if you move to a bookstore.

The site is a bit slower than Inkmesh and it doesn’t have that advanced search features, but it’s a great way to compare prices and availability for readers in different countries.

Originally published at Ebook Friendly

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• 19.10.2010 -- iPad vs. iPhone 4 – size comparison [infographic]
• 30.06.2010 -- Prices of e-readers down by 40% since June 2009
• 13.10.2011 -- 6 Sites Where You Can Find Non-English Kindle Books
• 14.09.2011 -- Get Updates of Kindle Daily Deal via RSS or E-mail

"2 Great Ebook Price Comparison Tools" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

The only disadvantage is that you won’t get updates exclusively for Kindle Daily Deal.

After reading a great tip by Chris Walters from Booksprung, I played with some RSS tools, but eventually decided to set up a special feed at Ebook Friendly with books featured at Kindle Daily Deal. The big benefit is that you can get free updates powered by Feedburner – either by RSS or e-mail.

We create posts manually, shortly after the new book appears at the official page, that is around 12 AM, Pacific time. In every update you’ll get the information about the list price (yesterday’s price), the discount in dollars, how much you save (%), and the today’s discounted price. What’s important, you can also read the book’s description in your feed.

Get updates via RSS | Get updates via e-mail

So far the savings ranged from 57% to as much as 88% – check the Kindle Daily Deals archive here. Among the featured books there were Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen and The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly. Some of the discounted books are not available outside US. I’ve also noticed that two or three times there was a difference between the price of the book on the official Kindle Daily Deal page and the price displayed on the book’s page. Luckily the latter one was lower.

To make it even easier to keep up with new deals, I’ve also set up a short and memorable link amzn.to/kindeal. If you’re on Twitter, you may also follow a special tag – #kindeal.

There is one more benefit of subscribing to the Kindle Daily Deal feed. Ebook Friendly’s site is adjusted to small screens of mobile devices. If you get an update, want to buy a book, but don’t have access to a larger device, you can easily buy the book, even from a smartphone.

Check below how Kindle Daily Deal looks in a Google Reader.

Kindle Daily Deal as seen in Google Reader

 Originally published at Ebook Friendly

Related posts

• 13.10.2011 -- 6 Sites Where You Can Find Non-English Kindle Books
• 26.08.2011 -- “Look Inside” for Kindle Books – 3 Tips for Authors
• 19.08.2011 -- Now “Look Inside” Feature Is Available for Kindle Ebooks!
• 18.08.2011 -- Easy Tip to Reduce Clutter While Browsing Amazon
• 25.07.2011 -- 6 Tips and Tricks to Use Kindle for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch

"Get Updates of Kindle Daily Deal via RSS or E-mail" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

You'll see a Look Inside logo over the cover of a Kindle Book | The cover of Mortal Pursuit - a bestselling title from Michael Prescott

Recently Amazon added to Kindle Store a new, very useful feature – Look Inside. It is the same feature as Look Inside for printed editions but it’s showing the content of the relevant Kindle book. More details about the this functionality you can find in this post and now I’d like to focus on how writers can benefit from it.

First of all, Look Inside is conveying for Kindle books the same task as a free sample. In fact it is a free sample. Comparing to the older method (sending to the device) it is much better – as the reader can immediately make a decision to buy the book. The decision is therefore not delayed and that’s why this is so important to take care about the details.

It’s much easier to read the first paragraphs of the books immediately rather than send a free sample to a device and clutter it – in case the reader wouldn’t like the book at all.

There are three areas you can improve the beginning of your book to maximize the impact of Look Inside feature – which could help you sell more ebooks. They are: description, links and formatting.

Description

An average book page in Kindle Store is highly cluttered. Before the readers find what the author of the book would like to say (in a Product Description field), they have to go through many prices, formats, technical details and similar items. Actually you have to scroll the page to reveal the description.

I’m sure many users will use Look Inside to jump directly to the content of the book and check what is it about.

This is an opportunity – as you can treat the beginning of the book as an extension of the product description. Maybe you’ve noticed that a product description field is positioned within Editorial Reviews section. It could be a nice idea to place reviews on a book page, under Editorial Reviews and describe a plot at the beginning of the book, at the next page after the title and author.

You can also use the beginning of the book to add your bio and list other books.

No matter how you split a message, just keep in mind that the beginning of your book is now visible in a web page and you have a lot of space to draw reader’s attention.

Links

The major benefit of Look Inside is that the links are clickable. Opposite to free samples, where you have to leave the ereading application, the links here just open another page in the same web browser.

My prediction is that users may use links to a much wider extend from within Look Inside rather than from Kindle devices or apps.

It looks like a very effective, but you have to be very careful with it. Definitely don’t place too much links at the beginning of the book. Clicking on such a link is moving the user away from buying a book at Kindle Store. You may use the links to your blog, where you sell books by yourself.

Or even simpler. Place only those links which move to your other books, electronic or print, at Amazon.

Formatting

With Look Inside available for your Kindle book, a bad formatting becomes a real issue. If your book has formatting errors, your potential readers will see it before they buy a book. Also, this would be very good to include a working table of content, so that users would see that they’ll buy a quality product.

I wouldn’t add an image of the cover at the beginning of the file. It’s placed as a metadata anyway and your book will always display cover on a Kindle device or in the application. If you add a cover as an image you waste space

* * *

I love to write about important things and tools which look small and not useful. I think Look Inside is a very good way to improve the sales of your book. All you have to to is to improve the beginning… of this book.

Related posts

• 19.08.2011 -- Now “Look Inside” Feature Is Available for Kindle Ebooks!
• 13.10.2011 -- 6 Sites Where You Can Find Non-English Kindle Books
• 14.09.2011 -- Get Updates of Kindle Daily Deal via RSS or E-mail
• 25.07.2011 -- 6 Tips and Tricks to Use Kindle for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch
• 07.05.2011 -- Kindle for the Web – How It Can Be Used by Authors

"“Look Inside” for Kindle Books – 3 Tips for Authors" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

The cover of currently bestselling self-published book in Kindle Store - Caribbean Moon by Rick Murcer

Recently, somewhere around the launch of Kindle Cloud Reader, I’ve noticed another new functionality for Kindle users – and in my opinion this is big. Now Look Inside, the feature you well know from printed editions of books sold on Amazon, works also for Kindle ebooks!

Already in late May some Kindle authors were reporting at Kindle Boards having this feature on their books’ pages. KDP explained in an e-mail:

“We’re currently testing our Look Inside the Book feature for various Kindle titles.”

I’ve checked several titles and all of them were displaying the Look Inside logo above the cover. It seems that the feature is being currently implemented, also in UK and German Kindle Stores.

When you click on the cover, a window opens with the same interface as in printed edition. You can easily switch between editions (if print is available, otherwise the Print Book tab is dimmed), so that you can compare the content. However, opposite to print version, you can’t search through the content of the Kindle edition.

I’ve checked how the feature works in Safari on an iPad and I don’t recommend to use it. The book’s content box is behaving oddly. The feature is clearly not formatted for mobile browsers yet.

I’ve also compared a couple of free samples downloaded to Kindle for iOS with the content displayed in Look Inside. Both length and formatting are similar. In other words, Look Inside is a free sample of the book you can read in a web browser before downloading it to a device.

When it comes to minimizing the harm from Apple’s new in-app purchase rules, Look Inside is a much smarter solution than Cloud Reader. I’ll hardly use the web-based reader as it never will be as fast as seamless as a native app. The whole Apple-Amazon fight was about Buy Now links at the end of free samples. Instead of creating a possibility of having them at all (Cloud Reader), it’s much better to reduce the number of downloads of free samples to Kindle for iOS (Look Inside).

One more thing. Look Inside is not the same as Kindle for the Web. The second one, described in more detail here, can be found on pages with print edition and is displaying its content – but linking to Kindle version.

Related posts

• 26.08.2011 -- “Look Inside” for Kindle Books – 3 Tips for Authors
• 13.10.2011 -- 6 Sites Where You Can Find Non-English Kindle Books
• 14.09.2011 -- Get Updates of Kindle Daily Deal via RSS or E-mail
• 25.07.2011 -- 6 Tips and Tricks to Use Kindle for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch
• 07.05.2011 -- Kindle for the Web – How It Can Be Used by Authors

"Now “Look Inside” Feature Is Available for Kindle Ebooks!" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

Sometimes, if you are on your computer and visit Kindle Store, you’d like to start reading a book immediately – before making a decision to buy.

You can obviously send a free sample to a device connected with your account, but some people just don’t want to clutter their Kindles or Kindle apps with too many book samples.

Here is a simple tip to read a free chapter of a Kindle book without sending it to a device – and even without leaving a web browser.

1. Check whether the Kindle ebook you’re interested has a print version: paperback or hardcover.

Click on a link to a paperback (or a hardcover) version of a Kindle ebook

2. Click on a link to a print version. It’s where you’ll find a green widget on the right side of a screen saying Kindle Edition.

3. Click on a Read first chapter FREE button. A large window will open with a preview of a Kindle ebook.

You can read a book in a full screen preview

4. If you like a book and want to buy it, click on an orange button in the top right corner and you’ll go back to a Kindle edition.

* * *

If you want to test the reading experience, check right now the web preview of the book I’m showing in this post, A Girl Like You, by a self-publishing superstar John Locke.

Originally published at Ebook Friendly

Related posts

• 13.10.2011 -- 6 Sites Where You Can Find Non-English Kindle Books
• 14.09.2011 -- Get Updates of Kindle Daily Deal via RSS or E-mail
• 26.08.2011 -- “Look Inside” for Kindle Books – 3 Tips for Authors
• 19.08.2011 -- Now “Look Inside” Feature Is Available for Kindle Ebooks!
• 28.07.2011 -- Use Readability to Add Web Content to Your Kindle

"How to Preview Kindle Ebooks in a Web Browser" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

Readability, a great service which turns web pages into a reading-friendly mode, announced a cool feature many Kindle owners were waiting for. Now you can send web content directly to your Kindle e-reader.

How to set up your Kindle device

1. Visit your Amazon Kindle settings page and add to your approved e-mail list a new address: kindle@readability.com.

2. Go to your account at Readability, click on a Kindle Settings tab and type in your Kindle’s e-mail address.

How to send content to Kindle

After connecting Kindle with your Readability account, you can now start sending content to your e-reader. There are two ways to do it.

You can send articles to Kindle from a reading mode, using a Kindle icon

1. Manually – if you use Readability’s browser add-on, you’ll now see a third icon, Send to Kindle, next to Read Now and Read Later. Also, if you turned a page into readability mode, by using Read Now option, you’ll see a new icon in a panel (see picture) . Click on it and the article will be immediately sent to your e-reader.

2. Automatically – if you checked Yes to “Receive daily reading list updates to your Kindle” in your Readability account’s Kindle settings, every morning you’ll receive a digest with all articles saved for later the previous day.

* * *

The new feature is available for registered Readability users. You can sign up at this page. Subscribers can declare much money they want to pay monthly. The minimum contribution is $5.

Watch below a video introducing Readability’s Kindle support and read more about this useful service. Enjoy happy reading without distractions!

Originally published at Ebook Friendly

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"Use Readability to Add Web Content to Your Kindle" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

Kindle for iOS has just been updated to version 2.8 (iTunes link), which complies with Apple’s new in-app purchase rules.

Kindle Store button was removed from home page – it was obvious. I’ve also checked endings of free samples to see what Amazon did with their Buy Now link, which in older versions was switching to book’s Kindle Store page in Safari. Buy Now button is still there (as well as See details for this book in the Kindle Store). However, both links show an alert: “We’re sorry. This operation is not currently supported.”

Apple and Amazon are playing games, which are more and more annoying. Status for today: Apple won’t earn money, Amazon won’t lose money. The only losing part is the reader.

Below you’ll find tips on how to make the most of Kindle on your device – especially after making our lives harder by removing any option to buy a book from within the app. A good thing to do is to change attitude: Kindle on iPad or iPhone is not only about using a Kindle application.

1. Browse Kindle Store in Safari

After 2.8 update it will be reasonable more than ever to browse and buy books right away from Safari browser (without bothering to open Kindle app). Never tried it? Don’t worry. Amazon mobile site looks really well on iPhone/iPod Touch. On the iPad a regular site is displayed, works well, I haven’t noticed any flaws.

2. Add Kindle Store to your Home Screen

Add Kindle Store to your Home Screen

It’s good to add Kindle Store either to a list of bookmarks in Safari or to a Home Screen. On the iPad just go to Amazon site and select Kindle Store from a drop list.

If you’re on the iPhone/iPod Touch, go in Safari directly to this address http://amzn.to/fW2ffk. It’s Kindle Store’s site optimized for small screens – not the same as regular one. You can add it as a bookmark to Home Screen (see picture on the right) and a nice icon will show up.

Find more information about it here.

3. Browse free Kindle books in Safari

In fact, you can use the browser to add books from other sources than Kindle Store. What’s very important, you can add them directly to Kindle for iOS. This is possible since 2.5 update.

What you have to look for is books in mobi format, without DRM. To add a book to Kindle app, tap on a link to a book file, ending with .mobi.

Best sites with free Kindle books, optimized for mobile reading, are: Feedbooks, Project Gutenberg, Smashwords and ManyBooks.

Read more about this topic here.

4. Add books to your Kindle for iOS – not only via iTunes

iTunes is a default way to add content to applications, but happily it’s not the only one. As I’ve written above, you can add books from Safari.

There are two more options available: via e-mail (just send a file to yourself and open it with a native Mail app) and via cloud storage apps like Dropbox.

Find out more about the topic here.

5. Discover books on Twitter and add them instantly to Kindle app

It’s my favorite topic. If you spend a lot of time on Twitter, using Twitter iOS applications, why don’t you try to find Kindle books there? It’s actually pretty easy. Just look for a keyword Kindle or a tag #kindle and you’ll find out a lot of tweets with amzn.to links.

Or if one of Twitter friends is recommending a Kindle book, just tap on a link and you’ll be redirected to mobile Safari (either within Twitter app or outside it) and you’ll decide whether to download a free sample or buy a book.

For more information read this post.

6. Use Kindle application as a free dictionary

Finally, Kindle for iOS can also work as a great dictionary application, so there is no need to buy another one. This is possible thanks to the The New Oxford American Dictionary installed.

You’ll find more information about it here.

* * *

I hope you enjoyed the tips. Please share in the comments what’s missing. If you want to keep up with what’s going on with Kindle on iOS devices, get free updates of Ebook Friendly Tips (via RSS or e-mail) where I focus on sharing simple Kindle tips.

Related posts

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"6 Tips and Tricks to Use Kindle for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

Anyone who used Kindle for iOS application knows that a Kindle Store button at the top right of the home screen pushes to quick Kindle and open mobile Safari.

Why don’t you use Safari in a first place? Here are a couple of tips how to optimize the experience.

Open Kindle Store

Don’t be afraid to open Kindle Store in mobile Safari, even on an iPhone or iPod Touch. The mobile version of a site is one of the best available on the web. Use search bar or categories to find books. You also have a quick access to Kindle bestsellers and personalized recommendations. A nice option is a separate tab with Kindle books with audio and video enabled. They can’t be read on a Kindle e-reader, but it’s possible on iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.

Adding a book to your account is similar to regular browser. You just have to decide which device you want the book to send to.

Add books from other sources

Most users don’t use this option, but it’s actually very convenient: you can browse the internet on your Safari, find Kindle books and add them directly to Kindle for iOS.

What you have to look for is books in mobi format, without DRM. To add a book to Kindle you have to tab on a link to a book file, ending with .mobi. Check pictures 1 and 2 for details.

Best sites with free Kindle books, optimized for mobile reading, are:

Feedbooks
Project Gutenberg
Smashwords
ManyBooks

Picture 1

Picture 2

Originally published at Ebook Friendly

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• 03.06.2011 -- How to Effectively Publish and Promote Books to iPad and iPhone Users
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"Add Books to Kindle for iOS via Mobile Safari" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.

Two e-books, priced $9.99 and $0.99, start two completely different purchase processes. The price level is affecting how eager we are to get a pirated copy. In case of e-books it’s combined with, in my opinion, the biggest solution to piracy – convenience.

Digital goods (especially the ones under a magical level of 1 dollar) – music, e-books, applications – join a group of impulse purchase products. It’s not only because of a price. It’s because of possibility of immediate consumption. You can use a smartphone to download an e-book or a song. It usually takes a couple of seconds and your effort can be described as a couple of taps. Instant reward is crucial – $0.99 e-book wouldn’t be an impulse purchase if you had to wait for delivery 24 hours.

In the age of instant access to content of any kind, willingness to piracy can be described as “how much will I save for the effort I make”. Let’s analyze it on an example of a $0.99 book from Kindle Store.

"No Good Deed" by M.P. McDonald - #3 in Kindle Store on June 5, 2011

Savings

A perception of price and savings is different if you are an experienced user of piracy sites and different if you started to embrace e-books (or digital goods in general).

For a piracy site users all what’s there is free (or for a price of a premium account/features – which is another case). In fact they don’t really know how much they save, because they don’t know the price of the original copy.

The economics of downloading pirated content is that you download items in bulk. You download a folder with e-books, convert files to your primary format and upload to your device.

Managing pirated content in bulk is saving a lot of time. You’ll also save time on reading those books, because they’re just files and titles for you. You don’t know most of them, and authors of $.99 books are surely not on top of your mind.

Now, let’s move to a second example.

You’ve just bought a Kindle e-reader. You have to learn how to use the device and download e-books legally – enough for a start. You probably keep in mind that there is always a possibility to use illegal sources. The only thing is that it’s a whole new world to learn. Some people, including me, don’t want to bother with it. I want to read books, not waste my time on file conversion and adding e-books to my virtual bookshelf in a way which is not most convenient.

Kindle owner is aware of the price. It’s $0.99, full stop. She or he has a choice: to get the book in less than 60 seconds and start reading it or look for the pirated copy somewhere else. How long would it take to grab it, download, deal with DRM and upload to Kindle? 5 minutes, 15 minutes? 15 minutes every time you’ve found a book you want to read immediately.

At such a low price what usually turns on is an evaluation how much money would one earn by doing his daily job instead. How much do I earn for an hour? How much time do I waste to save $0.99 on one book?

Effort

Let’s go the pirate way first. You download, let’s say 1,000 e-books in bulk. No effort at all, you’re doing this anyway, you’re fixed on getting as much free content as possible, even if you know you’re not going to swallow it till the end of the world.

If you are a Kindle owner with no “torrent skills”, you face a simple choice: a couple of clicks versus a conversion nightmare.

You have to learn how to and where from get a pirated content. You’ll probably have to download some apps, learn some tricks, read some forum threads, fix some problems – all instead of reading a book you want.

Books are different from music. You always had to have a device if you wanted to listen to music. Managing music files and discs is natural. But books… you bought them, you opened them and your read them. Why can’t this be done with e-books? In fact it can, if you are willing to spend a couple of clicks, less than a dollar and a bit of courage to read a book from an unknown author.

* * *

Saving time and money is one thing, but there is also one thing piracy is about. Somebody wants to drain your wallet by setting up a price which is too high. You are the hand of justice and get a pirated copy instead.

In case of $.99 it doesn’t work this way any more. This is a very fair price, set up by the author itself. You are not penalizing all the middlemen, you’re penalizing the man who wants to be honest with you.

Related posts

• 03.06.2011 -- How to Effectively Publish and Promote Books to iPad and iPhone Users
• 31.05.2011 -- Thoughts on Sharing Free Content at Paid Piracy Websites
• 07.05.2011 -- Kindle for the Web – How It Can Be Used by Authors
• 12.04.2011 -- Free Tools for Authors Offered by Ebook Friendly: First Chapter Previews and Book Directory
• 06.04.2011 -- E-book Covers With E-reading Application Look

"Pirating $.99 E-books – Is It Worth the Effort?" is a post from Password Incorrect Blog.