The Kindle: Why I think it’s the best public domain ebook-reader
By Paul Biba
One of the most neglected aspects of the Kindle is its ability to access the vast amount of public domain books wirelessly. I have a Kindle 1 and 2 and I would say that 75% of the books I have on them are free, public domain texts. A Kindle is well worth owning even if you never intend to spend a penny on buying a book from Amazon. Why? Wireless access.
This evening I was going through my RSS feeds looking for articles for TeleRead. One of the feeds I get is the new book listing from manybooks.org. I saw they had "Japanese Fairy World", a collection of Japanese fairy tales, so I just fired up the Kindle browser, went to the Manybooks site, and then downloaded the book directly to the Kindle. No computer necessary.
Some sites make it even easier. MobileRead and Feedbooks, for example, have actual catalogs of their books that you can download to the Kindle, browse through, and download from directly using the wireless connection. Using the Kindle web browser you can access the entire Project Gutenberg collection. Munseys’ vast collection is also available through the Kindle browser. All of these sites have their selections available in the Kindle/Mobipocket format, so there is never a problem with conversion.
So, despite all the fuss about book pricing you read here, or the fussing people make about ebook formats, any serious public domain ebook person should consider a Kindle for public domain alone. You won’t find an easier way to build a DRM-free, no charge collection of ebooks than using a Kindle. Of course this will change as other wireless units come on line, but the "universal" Mobipocket format of the Kindle, coupled with wireless access, makes it the market leader at this point in time.
July 8th, 2009 at 9:21 am
Funny, Paul. I did the exact same thing with “Japanese Fairy World” just this morning. And I should mention, also, that my Kindle is almost 100% free ebook downloads, some public domain, some others I’ve found. I think I’ve only bought two or three books from Amazon itself. With the DRM I just can’t bring myself to do it.
July 8th, 2009 at 9:36 am
The Kindle and the iPhone and iPod Touch (via the Stanza catalog) all can serve as relatively easy ways to pick up public domain books. Enjoy whatever your prefer, and hope that Amazon, which owns Stanza, doesn’t spoil the free fun!
Great to see Paul’s reminders of nonDRMed possibilities. Now if Amazon will encourage authors of commercial books to shed “protection”!
Thanks,
David
July 8th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Shhhh… this is the Kindle’s little secret! It’s the last thing Amazon wants publicized, and is probably one of the reasons why the browser on the K is still ‘experimental.’ If enough owners ‘freeload’ on whispernet like this, Amazon will look seriously into pulling the plug on these capabilities.
July 21st, 2009 at 3:24 pm
So does it back up the non-Amazon downloads on the Amazon site?