Free kindle ebooks

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Sat Jul 01, 2017 11:53 pm

I have been collecting free kindle books from this series for more than three years:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01ABTC48A/

Meet Amazing Americans Workbook (46 Book Series)

. . .

And today I noticed that 20 of them are free (seemingly selected at random by the publisher), so now — at long last — I have the whole set of 46 books.

That's one of the things that makes this a fun hobby, like completing a set in your stamp collecting book.

Witness · Post by **Witness** » Sun Jul 02, 2017 12:25 am

Good for you!

But does it leave you with enough time to read them?

I'm not the collecting type, save precisely for (paper) books – for a time I surmised I'd one day be killed by the collapse of one of my bookshelves. But now I'm less attached and have started giving them away, makes nice gifts.

And there's a Romanian saying for that: shrouds have no pockets.

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Sun Jul 02, 2017 12:50 am

Witness wrote:. . . But does it leave you with enough time to read them?

Your question reminds me of a review I recently read for a free kindle book. Essentially the complaint was that the book was poorly written. And I thought, there's your problem, free kindle books are not for reading, they're for collecting.

I get that question a lot. And no, I have way more free kindle books than I will ever be able to read in my lifetime. Especially if I reach my goal of collecting a million of them. But I can still do data mining experiments on them, and that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I suppose the ultimate goal (or fantasy, take your pick) might be to develop a computer program that "reads" all the books ever written and then synthesizes a knowledge base from that.

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Sun Jul 02, 2017 1:02 am

Witness wrote:I'm not the collecting type, save precisely for (paper) books – for a time I surmised I'd one day be killed by the collapse of one of my bookshelves. But now I'm less attached and have started giving them away, makes nice gifts.

I'm in the process of disposing of most of my paper books too. I scan them onto dvd-rom and then out of the house they go. Two thousand done, about 2000 more to go. So far: more than 670,000 scans, 244 gigabytes.

Witness · Post by **Witness** » Sun Jul 02, 2017 1:15 am

For the "time to read": I know, just teasing.

xouper wrote:I suppose the ultimate goal (or fantasy, take your pick) might be to develop a computer program that "reads" all the books ever written and then synthesizes a knowledge base from that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyc

If the AI writes articles/books about his findings, infinite regress – we're doomed (again)!

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Sun Jul 02, 2017 1:34 am

Witness wrote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyc

I had not seen that before. Thanks.

I would have been surprised if someone had not already started such a thing. They have a long way to go, but hey, that's what hobbies are for, no?

I'm gonna hafta look into that. Say what you will about wikipedia's shortcomings, but one of its strengths are the citations and "further reading" recommendations. I have the book they cite: Domingos, Pedro (2015), The Master Algorithm, and although it's on my todo list, I haven't got to it yet.

Witness · Post by **Witness** » Sun Jul 02, 2017 1:38 am

For a time you could download (a version of) it. Seems they have changed their mind: http://www.opencyc.org/.
But it certainly is still to be found somewhere.

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Mon Jul 03, 2017 6:57 am

I just bought this free kindle ebook on amazon and I thought I'd share it with our Chicagoland friends:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B073HN35CF/

Weird Chicago: A History of Mysteries, Strange Tales, and Hauntings across the Windy City
by Charles River Editors (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars 1 customer review

eBook $0.00
Paperback $6.99

Print Length: 48 pages
Publisher: Charles River Editors (June 28, 2017)
Publication Date: June 28, 2017

Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Religion & Spirituality > Occult > Unexplained Mysteries
#2 in Kindle Store > Kindle Short Reads > 90 minutes (44-64 pages) > History
#2 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > History > Americas > United States > 19th Century

I don't know how long it will be free. But based on past observations about this publisher, perhaps not long, a day or two.

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Tue Jul 04, 2017 11:30 am

Another of the fun things about my hobby of collecting free kindle books is finding goofy book titles.

For example, I just bought this one today:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073B6BYQM/

You're Worthless And You Know It: The worlds first Anti self-help and De-motivational book
by Will Jorden
4.5 out of 5 stars 8 customer reviews

I assume it goes without saying, I haven't read it.

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Wed Jul 05, 2017 9:29 am

Bought another free kindle book with a noteworthy title:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073HHKBYQ/

Autocorrect Fails: Hilarious Autocorrect Fails Memes and Pictures! Ultimate Memes!
by Morgan Memesfreeman

And because of the recommendations list, I also bought these next two free kindle books by the same "author":

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073NMDRBD/

MEMES: Super Memes! The ULTIMATE Collection of Memes 2017
by Morgan Memesfreeman

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073HLWP8S/

CAT MEMES: Hilarious Cat Memes and Funny Pictures Book - Over 2,000 Pages
by Morgan Memesfreeman

And then I had the not so brilliant idea of searching the kindle store for the keyword "memes" (and then sort by price low to high), and I ended up buying another dozen or so free kindle books. If I can keep up the pace of three or four hundred free kindle books per day, I might actually get to a million before I die.

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Wed Jul 05, 2017 11:05 pm

Exactly.

And no one gets harmed paid.

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Thu Jul 06, 2017 12:01 am

xouper wrote:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073NMDRBD/

MEMES: Super Memes! The ULTIMATE Collection of Memes 2017
by Morgan Memesfreeman

My curiosity wrestled with my better judgment and I took a look in this one. It is, as Abdul said, a collection of clickbait stolen from the interwebs, one per page.

For example, on page eight is this one:

One thing handy about the book is if a bunch of memes all use the same photo, they are grouped together on consecutive pages.
For example, there are 20 memes using the following photo:

I mention all this only in case someone was curious. All I can say is, it's a good thing I didn't have to pay for it.

Rob Lister · Post by **Rob Lister** » Thu Jul 06, 2017 1:22 am

xouper wrote:

I mention all this only in case someone was curious. All I can say is, it's a good thing I didn't have to pay for it.

Since we're gedunkin' here, let me tell you a no-shit cool story, bro.

The first navy jet I worked on was a A6A bomber. A two engine, two man bomber. The nav panel it that it used was an almost identical computer as what flew on Apollo, or so I was told (with the expectation of being impressed). It was an IBM processing unit motherboard with 2K of (mag core) memory and 2K of chip-based rom.

And with that they could track roughly a dozen targets. Every byte counted. There was no room for bugs.

To run programs, the BN (bombardier navigator) would enter the rom memory address of the program he wanted.

That's how we used to point and click, ladies.

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Thu Jul 06, 2017 1:56 am

Rob Lister wrote:Since we're gedunkin' here, let me tell you a no-shit cool story, bro.

The first navy jet I worked on was a A6A bomber. A two engine, two man bomber. The nav panel it that it used was an almost identical computer as what flew on Apollo, or so I was told (with the expectation of being impressed). It was an IBM processing unit motherboard with 2K of (mag core) memory and 2K of chip-based rom.

And with that they could track roughly a dozen targets. Every byte counted. There was no room for bugs.

To run programs, the BN (bombardier navigator) would enter the rom memory address of the program he wanted.

That's how we used to point and click, ladies.

I can identify with that. In my early days as an assembly language hack, every byte counted, as you noted.

I wrote my first machine code program on a DEC PDP 8, like the one below, where you entered the code in binary using the switches, one switch per bit. That was 1976.

Fast forward to the 1980s, I was sent on a mission to Delaware to reconstruct the source code from the binary executable in the ROM. In those days I could literally read the Z-80 hex codes and decode it in my head.

Ahh, the good ol' days.

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Fri Jul 07, 2017 5:37 pm

This happened to me again today. In the recommendations section I see a kindle book with an advertised price of $0.00, so I click the link which will take me to the product page where I can click the buy button. While I'm waiting for that page to fully load, I stepped away from the computer for a moment to visit the women's restroom, and when I come back the price is indeed $0.00, so I click the buy button. Except it tells me the price is no longer $0.00 and that my purchase was rejected. WTF?? I'd only been gone a few moments. This happens several times a month (about once every 3000 to 4000 purchases more or less) with no apparent way to predict when it will happen. Is amazon fucking with me or did I just get unlucky and the publisher/author changed his mind while I was momentarily preoccupied? Enquiring Minds Wanna Know™.

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Sat Jul 08, 2017 3:21 pm

In today's haul of free kindle books,I noticed something peculiar. Twice.

The following pairs of books have what appear to be identical cover images, even though the titles and authors are different.

If you click on an image it will take you to the amazon product page for that book. If you then click on the author link, there is no author information, and each of the four authors have only that one book listed.

All four seem to have some other things in common:

same exact publication date, July 3, 2017
no publisher is listed
available only as an ebook
same genre "interacial fantasy"

And of course all four are free today, which is how I came to acquire them in the first place.

That's as far as I've gone with this mystery. What's that saying about minds that are easily amused?

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Sat Jul 08, 2017 5:21 pm

Abdul Alhazred wrote:May I take it that you are bored now that you have finished reading your "interacial fantasy" novels?

Sheesh, I'm not so bored I would consider reading that stuff. I got too many other books already on my to-read list.

I just collect whatever's free. I'm not real picky about content. They're good for data mining, though. Let the computer read the damn things.

In fact since I rarely ever look at the contents, judging a book by its cover is the only thing I can do.

In some ways it's a lot like collecting postage stamps. Sometimes they come in sets and they look cool. Other times, maybe not so much.

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Sat Jul 08, 2017 7:20 pm

xouper wrote:I got too many other books already on my to-read list.

Like this one I'm currently reading:

Which isn't currently free on amazon, and likely never will be. Instead, I borrowed it from the library.

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Tue Jul 18, 2017 3:46 am

xouper wrote:In fact since I rarely ever look at the contents, judging a book by its cover is the only thing I can do.

In some ways it's a lot like collecting postage stamps. Sometimes they come in sets and they look cool. Other times, maybe not so much.

For example, this set has (somewhat) interesting cover art:

The Starlight Chronicles (7 Book Series) by C. S. Johnson
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06ZYSK7MG/

Back in December I bought #2 and #4 (when they were free of course).

Then in February I bought #5 and #6, and in March I got #7 (each one free at the time).

And then today I got #1 and #3 to complete the set.

So that's what a hobby is for, being patient and collecting the entire set as each volume becomes free.

In fact today, I completed three other sets, though maybe not as interesting to look at as the set above.

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Fri Jul 21, 2017 9:53 am

Cross posted:

viewtopic.php?p=876753#p876753

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 11:00 am

Yesterday, this kindle book was free, so I bought it:

Grit (King's Harlots MC Book 1)
by J.M. Walker

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01D7Y1FEK/

Obviously it is book one of a series.

A series of three books . . . or so it says on the product page.

However, if you look real close, the third book is titled:

Rude (King's Harlots MC Book 4).

The three book series shows books 1, 2, and 4. So what happened to book 3?

Here it is:

Grim (King's Harlots MC Book 3)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N7B72EG/

And yet that product page does not show the series it is part of.

Anyway, I now have books 1 and 3, and do not yet have books 2 and 4, of this set:

Sometimes hobbies are good for surprises, head scratches, and chuckles.

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 11:10 am

xouper wrote:
Abdul Alhazred wrote:May I take it that you are bored now that you have finished reading your "interacial fantasy" novels?
Sheesh, I'm not so bored I would consider reading that stuff. I got too many other books already on my to-read list.

I just collect whatever's free. I'm not real picky about content. They're good for data mining, though. Let the computer read the damn things.

. . .

I just had a thought (having just read some articles about Artificial Intelligence), what if someone could develop an AI that could evaluate and review fiction? It would then be easy enough for a single program to rate and compare thousands of new books on a regular basis and have some sort of consistency (and perhaps some objectivity) in the ratings.

Or maybe not.

One problem I foresee with using my collection as a database is that it doesn't contain a truly representative sampling of authors. That is to say, my collection seems to have an under-abundance of best-selling authors.

Related:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... s-calling/

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 11:50 am

crossposted:

viewtopic.php?p=877512#p877512

gnome · Post by **gnome** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 12:56 pm

xouper wrote:
I just had a thought (having just read some articles about Artificial Intelligence), what if someone could develop an AI that could evaluate and review fiction? It would then be easy enough for a single program to rate and compare thousands of new books on a regular basis and have some sort of consistency (and perhaps some objectivity) in the ratings.

It will be used to rate commercial viability before it will be used to rate actual literary quality

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 1:04 pm

Here's another puzzle that makes this hobby more "interesting".

Sometimes two books by the same author will have different links to the author's page, one of them might link to the author by ID number and the other uses the author's name.

Example, given these two book product pages:

book #54: https://www.amazon.com/book54/dp/B0744YJ344/
book #51: https://www.amazon.com/book51/dp/B0731RQCT8/

Those are two books from the same series by the same author.

The author link in book #51 uses the author ID and book #54 does not.

Here are the author links from the above two product pages:

by name, book #54: https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=dp_byline_ ... evancerank

by ID, book #51: https://www.amazon.com/Susan-Gillard/e/ ... t_ebooks_1

The consequence is that book #54 does not show up when you click the author link by ID.

Or do a manual search:

Type "B01D23TXMM" in the search box for the kindle store and the results will not include book #54.

But of you type "Susan Gillard" in the search box for the kindle store, the results will include book #54.

I never noticed until today that amazon has this defect. It is yet another example of how amazon's search function is broken and unreliable.

In this case, the fault may lie with the author for not ensuring that her newest book has the correct author link. However, I predict it will be corrected by this time next week. Perhaps that is a deliberate strategy by the author. In which case,

gnome · Post by **gnome** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 1:07 pm

Are the contents different?

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 1:14 pm

gnome wrote:
xouper wrote:
I just had a thought (having just read some articles about Artificial Intelligence), what if someone could develop an AI that could evaluate and review fiction? It would then be easy enough for a single program to rate and compare thousands of new books on a regular basis and have some sort of consistency (and perhaps some objectivity) in the ratings.
It will be used to rate commercial viability before it will be used to rate actual literary quality

Good point.

If it is used that way, then it might behoove the developers to guard against a feedback loop that rewards self-fulfilling prophesies.

Reminds me of a book I read last year:

Weapons of Math Destruction — by Cathy O’Neil

http://time.com/4477557/big-data-biases/

. . . Her work makes particularly disturbing points about how being on the wrong side of an algorithmic decision can snowball in incredibly destructive ways . . .

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 1:16 pm

gnome wrote:Are the contents different?

I'm not sure I understand your question. Can you be more specific?

gnome · Post by **gnome** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 1:45 pm

For those books that have identical covers, same genre, and little author info: is the text of the books actually different, or is it the same book under different titles?

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 2:55 pm

gnome wrote:For those books that have identical covers, same genre, and little author info: is the text of the books actually different, or is it the same book under different titles?

Good question. I did not think to look until you asked. For the first two books, here are the table of contents:

Table of Contents

BOOK 1: THE INTER-GALACTIC LOVE (ALIEN GAY ROMANCE)
BOOK 2: THE CURSE TRILOGY (GAY SHAPESHIFTER)
BOOK 3: SATURN’S CHILDREN (ALIEN ROMANCE)
BOOK 4: THE COMPLETE CIRCLE (ALIEN ROMANCE)
BOOK 5: THE OTHER WOMAN (BWWM ROMANCE)
BOOK 6: THE OUTLANDISH (ALIEN ROMANCE)
BOOK 7: THE ARTIST’S KISS (BILLIONAIRE ROMANCE)
BOOK 8: THE SEXY OFFICE ROMANCE (GAY ROMANCE)
BOOK 9: ONE NIGHT AT THE PUB (GAY ROMANCE)
BOOK 10: THE SECOND CHANCE (GAY ROMANCE)
BOOK 11: LOVING UNDER THE STARS (LESBIAN ROMANCE)
BOOK 12: COMING OUT (LESBIAN ROMANCE)
BOOK 13: THE DROWNING THAT SAVED ME (LESBIAN ROMANCE)
BOOK 14: THE RIDE (MILITARY ROMANCE)
BOOK 15: LOVER AVENGED (MILITARY ROMANCE)
BOOK 16: THE NEW CHAPTER (MILITARY ROMANCE)
BOOK 17: DECEPTION (REGENCY ROMANCE)
BOOK 18: COMING HOME (WESTERN ROMANCE)
BOOK 19: ONE NIGHT AT THE RANCH (WESTERN ROMANCE)

Table of Contents

BOOK 1: THE CURSE TRILOGY (GAY SHAPESHIFTER)
BOOK 2: THE INTER-GALACTIC LOVE (ALIEN GAY ROMANCE)
BOOK 3: THE OTHER WOMAN (BWWM ROMANCE)
BOOK 4: SATURN’S CHILDREN (ALIEN ROMANCE)
BOOK 5: THE COMPLETE CIRCLE (ALIEN ROMANCE)
BOOK 6: THE ARTIST’S KISS (BILLIONAIRE ROMANCE)
BOOK 7: THE SEXY OFFICE ROMANCE (GAY ROMANCE)
BOOK 8: ONE NIGHT AT THE PUB (GAY ROMANCE)
BOOK 9: GOOD ENOUGH (GAY ROMANCE)
BOOK 10: THE SECOND CHANCE (GAY ROMANCE)
BOOK 11: LOVING UNDER THE STARS (LESBIAN ROMANCE)
BOOK 12: COMING OUT (LESBIAN ROMANCE)
BOOK 13: THE DROWNING THAT SAVED ME (LESBIAN ROMANCE)
BOOK 14: THE RIDE (MILITARY ROMANCE)
BOOK 15: LOVER AVENGED (MILITARY ROMANCE)
BOOK 16: THE NEW CHAPTER (MILITARY ROMANCE)
BOOK 17: DECEPTION (REGENCY ROMANCE)
BOOK 18: COMING HOME (WESTERN ROMANCE)
BOOK 19: ONE NIGHT AT THE RANCH (WESTERN ROMANCE)

It appears they are collections of short stories, one per chapter.

Chapters 10 through 19 appear to be the same in both books. I only spot checked some of the paragraphs, so there could be differences I suppose. If I were truly motivated, I could convert them from kindle format to text format and do a document compare.

The other chapters appear to be the same stories but in a different chapter order.

Except each book has one chapter that is not in the other book:

In Flavor of the Week: BOOK 6: THE OUTLANDISH (ALIEN ROMANCE)
In Set Up: BOOK 9: GOOD ENOUGH (GAY ROMANCE)

I did not check the other pair of books (The Stranger vs Don't Arrest Me).

I'm glad I didn't pay good money for them. It might be interesting to read some of the reviews, assuming there are any. Except all four books have gone missing from amazon. Good thing I archived the original product pages on my hard drive.

Wait, I found them. All four are still there on amazon but using different ASINs. All four have a new publishing date of July 24, 2017, and they are priced at $0.99. Same covers, same titles, and same authors. Probably same content, although I have no way to verify that unless they become free some day (they're on my watch list).

Fascinating.

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 3:13 pm

Abdul Alhazred wrote:Amazon authors can provide their own cover art if they want to go to the trouble (as "Elbow Jobertski" did).

But I expect Amazon also presents authors with a gallery of cover art to choose from, perhaps broken down by genre.

This one?

https://www.amazon.com/Elbow-Jobertski/ ... dp_epwbk_0

Looks like a generic amazon cover to me.

Fuck, I didn't know he published a book. That one's worth buying. And I'll keep it separate from my collection of free kindle books.

Rob Lister · Post by **Rob Lister** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 4:34 pm

Abdul Alhazred wrote:That's not the cover art I recall, but what I said in general still goes.

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 4:38 pm

Rob Lister wrote:
Abdul Alhazred wrote:That's not the cover art I recall, but what I said in general still goes.

I like that cover better. Does anyone know why the amazon store shows a generic cover?

gnome · Post by **gnome** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 4:46 pm

xouper wrote:
It appears they are collections of short stories, one per chapter.

Chapters 10 through 19 appear to be the same in both books. I only spot checked some of the paragraphs, so there could be differences I suppose. If I were truly motivated, I could convert them from kindle format to text format and do a document compare.

The other chapters appear to be the same stories but in a different chapter order.

Except each book has one chapter that is not in the other book:

In Flavor of the Week: BOOK 6: THE OUTLANDISH (ALIEN ROMANCE)
In Set Up: BOOK 9: GOOD ENOUGH (GAY ROMANCE)

I did not check the other pair of books (The Stranger vs Don't Arrest Me).

I'm glad I didn't pay good money for them. It might be interesting to read some of the reviews, assuming there are any. Except all four books have gone missing from amazon. Good thing I archived the original product pages on my hard drive.

Wait, I found them. All four are still there on amazon but using different ASINs. All four have a new publishing date of July 24, 2017, and they are priced at $0.99. Same covers, same titles, and same authors. Probably same content, although I have no way to verify that unless they become free some day (they're on my watch list).

Fascinating.

I'm envisioning a particularly spazzy author with little sense of version control.

Rob Lister · Post by **Rob Lister** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 5:11 pm

xouper wrote:
Rob Lister wrote:
Abdul Alhazred wrote:That's not the cover art I recall, but what I said in general still goes.

I like that cover better. Does anyone know why the amazon store shows a generic cover?

It's actually a very good, if quick read; worthy of an afternoon. More entertaining than most things on Netflix. I'm a little surprised none of the publishing houses picked him up.

gnome · Post by **gnome** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 6:48 pm

I concur, I really enjoyed it myself.

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Sat Jul 29, 2017 11:05 pm

cross-posted: viewtopic.php?p=878207#p878207

Witness · Post by **Witness** » Mon Jul 31, 2017 5:20 am

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Mon Jul 31, 2017 6:31 am

As part of today's haul, I bought this free kindle book by Chris Michael Wilson, what appears to be book one of a series:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074875L4L/

So I thought I would search the kindle store for other books by the same author, so (from the book product page) I clicked on the author link and here's what I got:

10 results for Kindle Store: "Chris Michael Wilson"

Heaven Was Detroit: From Jazz to Hip-Hop and Beyond (Painted Turtle)
by M. L. Liebler and Dave Marsh

The Strong Gray Line: War-time Reflections from the West Point Class of 2004
by Cory Wallace and Jim Wilson

The Best Australian Poems 2010
by Robert Adamson and Ali Alizadeh

Children and Adolescents in Trauma: Creative Therapeutic Approaches: 18 (Community, Culture and Change)
by Chris Nicholson and Michael Irwin and Kedar Dwivedi

An Occupational Therapist's Guide to Sleep and Sleep Problems (Occupational Therapists Guides)
by Carly Brown and Andrew Green

The Best Australian Poems 2015
by Geoff Page and Michael Sharkey

Intellectual Disability and Dementia: Research into Practice
by Karen Watchman and Trevor Chan

Campbell Biology, Canadian Edition
by Jane B. Reece and Lisa A. Urry

Magium: The Mage Tournament: Book 1
by Chris Michael Wilson

A New Imperative: Regions and higher education in difficult times (Universities and Lifelong Learning MUP)
by Chris Duke and Michael Osborne

Seriously??

Only one of those books is by the author I was searching for.

Yet another example that amazon's search function is borken.

Witness · Post by **Witness** » Mon Jul 31, 2017 8:59 pm

xouper wrote:Yet another example that amazon's search function is borken.

Not at all, it just "expands your choices".

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Mon Aug 07, 2017 4:40 am

One of the interesting things about this hobby is finding some strange stuff.

In today's haul of free kindle books, I got this one:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0713X13Y6/

It's The Worst Book Ever Written:
Don't Waste Your Money Buying This,
You're Not Going to Get a Refund
by Lucas Robak

1.0 out of 5 stars 19 customer reviews

Kindle $0.00
Paperback $21.77

Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Biographies & Memoirs > True Crime > White Collar Crime
#3 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Education & Teaching > Teacher Resources > Education Theory

Maybe later I'll look through it to see if I should ask for my money back.

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Sun May 13, 2018 11:51 pm

Another free one, and topical for this forum:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=47859

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Thu Aug 16, 2018 12:07 am

Today I hit a milestone. As of a few moments ago, I now have more than 300,000 free kindle books, according to amazon. And I have an email invoice for each and every one of them.

It took me three years to get the first hundred thousand.
It took me another year to get the second hundred thousand.
And then six months to get the third hundred thousand.

That's about 550 books per day, every day for six months.

At that rate it will take me maybe another 3.5 years to get to a million. Assuming I can actually get that many. And assuming I can keep up that high rate, which at this point seems less than certain. I found out recently that Amazon only has about 5 million kindle books, so it may not be possible to get to a million freebies. We shall see.

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Thu Aug 16, 2018 12:14 am

The most expensive free book I got so far is this monster, which I got about a month ago shortly after it was published. Retails for $500.00.

Safety and Reliability – Safe Societies in a Changing World
Proceedings of ESREL 2018, June 17-21, 2018, Trondheim, Norway
Print Length: 3234 pages
Publisher: CRC Press; 1 edition (June 15, 2018)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DV5F71F/

It's also available for free (as a pdf) directly from the publisher, which is a reputable publisher of technical books.
https://www.crcpress.com/Safe-Societies ... 0815386827

I now have both, the kindle and the pdf. In fact, I suspect the kindle edition is merely the pdf in a kindle wrapper, since the kindle edition text does not reflow like a normal kindle book does.

Previous years proceedings are $494.99 for the pdf. I was not able to find any of those previous years for free, not even on amazon. Thus I am predicting that the 2018 edition will also be $500 by this time next year, when I hope to get the 2019 edition for free.

That's a lot of pages. Thumbing through the table of contents, there is a lot of interesting stuff in there — and I do mean a lot, since the average chapter is maybe ten pages — and I can now say I have actually read one of my free kindle books. Well, one chapter anyway, called, "Safety analysis of autonomous driving using semi-Markov processes". I was curious to know how they used Markov models and what their conclusion is. I was surprised to learn they recommend skipping level three autonomy mode and going straight to level four. Makes sense to me.

Witness · Post by **Witness** » Thu Aug 16, 2018 12:19 am

xouper wrote: ↑Thu Aug 16, 2018 12:07 amThat's about 550 books per day, every day for six months.

You automated the downloading process?

xouper wrote: ↑Thu Aug 16, 2018 12:07 amAt that rate it will take me maybe another 3.5 years to get to a million.

1 h / book, 8 h / day, it would take 300+ years to read that million. But I understand it's not for reading…

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Thu Aug 16, 2018 12:45 am

Witness wrote: ↑Thu Aug 16, 2018 12:19 am
xouper wrote: ↑Thu Aug 16, 2018 12:07 amThat's about 550 books per day, every day for six months.
You automated the downloading process?

The kindle app for windows automatically downloads my purchases to my hard drive. And it crashes regularly while trying to do that. I suspect the programmers did not anticipated this level of usage. I'm watching the memory usage and I predict that by 500,000 books, because it is a 32-bit app, it will hit the 2 gigabyte limit and crash permanently, even though I have 8 gb ram installed. I am hoping by then they will release an update that might (perhaps inadvertently) solve that problem.

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Fri Oct 19, 2018 10:35 pm

Of the 627 free kindle books I got today, this one seemed (somewhat) noteworthy:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=48483

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Wed Nov 21, 2018 9:58 pm

Of the 663 free kindle books I got today, this one seemed especially noteworthy:
viewtopic.php?p=937801#p937801

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Fri Nov 23, 2018 4:47 am

I like when this happens (which isn't often), an author offers their entire catalog of kindle books for free on amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/entit ... B079M74VTF

They write cookbooks and all 44 of them are free today so I scarfed them up (the kindle versions, of course). I have no idea how long this promotional price will last.

At an average of 80 or 90 pages each (no I didn't look at them all), that's more than 3000 pages of recipes. The paperback versions list for seven dollars each.

I know nothing about these authors and having read none of the books, I cannot comment on their content, other than it appears they are self published.

I found them accidentally when doing a keyword search for "green". Go figure.

Anyway, I'm now that much closer to my goal of one million free kindle books.

Pyrrho · Post by **Pyrrho** » Sat Dec 01, 2018 2:01 am

Harry Leslie Smith's two books are currently free.