Free kindle ebooks

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.

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Sat Dec 01, 2018 4:52 am

Pyrrho wrote: ↑Sat Dec 01, 2018 2:01 am Harry Leslie Smith's two books are currently free.

Thanks. I just now snagged these two for free:

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Tue Dec 04, 2018 9:44 am

In today's batch of free kindle books, was this one, which may (or not) be noteworthy:

viewtopic.php?p=938922#p938922

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Sun Dec 23, 2018 3:29 am

Of the 647 free kindle books I got today, this one caught my eye:

viewtopic.php?f=20&t=48711

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Mon Dec 31, 2018 3:49 pm

Three more free kindle books that were mockworthy:

viewtopic.php?p=941634#p941634

Anaxagoras · Post by **Anaxagoras** » Tue Jan 01, 2019 8:27 am

Here's something I think you'll be interested in:

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Mon Jan 07, 2019 11:25 pm

Another free kindle book worthy of note:

Science with the Cherenkov Telescope Array
(c) 2019, hardcover list price $128.00

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=48756

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Fri Feb 01, 2019 6:43 pm

Among today's haul of free kindle books is something I haven't seen before, two versions of the same science fiction book,

for young adults:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07JGRNRJC/

for adults:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07JDQ4Q8V/

The one I got free today is the adult version. The author is now on my watch list, and if the YA version becomes free some day, then perhaps I might be interested in merging the two books to see what the differences are. Or maybe not. I have a soft spot for science fiction, so I might actually read it, in addition to using it for my computer science research. Also, it's book one of a trilogy and the other two aren't yet on amazon, so who knows how long before I get all six. Which is fine, since I predict it will take another three years (or maybe more) to reach my ultimate goal of collecting a million free kindle books with an amazon email invoice for each and every one of them.

Nyarlathotep · Post by **Nyarlathotep** » Fri Feb 01, 2019 7:38 pm

I wonder what exactly is the difference between the two.

Nyarlathotep · Post by **Nyarlathotep** » Fri Feb 01, 2019 7:45 pm

Abdul Alhazred wrote: ↑Fri Feb 01, 2019 7:42 pm
Nyarlathotep wrote: ↑Fri Feb 01, 2019 7:38 pm I wonder what exactly is the difference between the two.
I'm guessing exactly the same, but pitched to different notional genres.

My guess is that they started as the same book but were edited differently to emphasize different things. But I am not willing to read the same book twice to find out.

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Fri Feb 01, 2019 8:48 pm

Nyarlathotep wrote: ↑Fri Feb 01, 2019 7:45 pm
Abdul Alhazred wrote: ↑Fri Feb 01, 2019 7:42 pm
Nyarlathotep wrote: ↑Fri Feb 01, 2019 7:38 pm I wonder what exactly is the difference between the two.
I'm guessing exactly the same, but pitched to different notional genres.
My guess is that they started as the same book but were edited differently to emphasize different things. But I am not willing to read the same book twice to find out.

If I get the YA version for free (it's on my watch list), perhaps I will be able to answer that question with some specific examples.

I too don't want to read the book twice, which is why I would merge them with annotations for the differences. Easy to do automatically with modern word processors.

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Fri Feb 01, 2019 10:04 pm

Also new this week, a new genre of kindle book? Or a scam?

Perhaps this discussion deserves it own thread?

viewtopic.php?f=12&t=48826

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Fri Feb 22, 2019 5:45 pm

In yesterady's haul of free kindles books was a "noteworthy" piece of garbage:

viewtopic.php?p=948534#p948534

Well, I assume it's garbage, since I haven't actually read it. I am, obviously, judging the book by its cover.

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Fri Dec 18, 2020 5:08 am

In yesterday's haul of free kindle books, I got an entire science fiction series of nine books:

The entire nine book series is still free as I write this, so get 'em while you can:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079C6GVP5

I haven't read any of them (yet), so I can't comment.

If they aren't any good, you can of course always ask for your money back.

You might be asking, why would an author offer this kind of promotional giveaway? One common answer is that it boosts the sales ranking on Amazon. Seriously. When you see the sales ranking for a kindle book on Amazon, you have no idea how many of those were free promotional "sales". I am tempted to infer that such a tactic works, else the authors would not keep doing it.

Pyrrho · Post by **Pyrrho** » Fri Jan 01, 2021 10:49 pm

Here's one:

https://www.amazon.com/Optimal-J-M-Berg ... op?ie=UTF8

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Fri Jan 01, 2021 11:50 pm

What would be really cool is if Amazon would simply have a single button that says "buy all the kindle books that are free today". Or even better, a button that says "send me all the free ones from now until I say stop". Instead, I have to go find them myself, the old fashioned way.

Well, I get a little help from websites like this: https://ohfb.com/

Hotarubi · Post by **Hotarubi** » Sat Jan 02, 2021 1:32 am

xouper wrote: ↑Fri Jan 01, 2021 11:50 pm What would be really cool is if Amazon would simply have a single button that says "buy all the kindle books that are free today". Or even better, a button that says "send me all the free ones from now until I say stop".

Sod that. My kindle would be loaded with adolescent shite about vampires, shape shifters and insecure women fucking billionaires.

xouper · Post by **xouper** » Sat Jan 02, 2021 1:58 am

Hotarubi wrote: ↑Sat Jan 02, 2021 1:32 am
xouper wrote: ↑Fri Jan 01, 2021 11:50 pm What would be really cool is if Amazon would simply have a single button that says "buy all the kindle books that are free today". Or even better, a button that says "send me all the free ones from now until I say stop".
Sod that. My kindle would be loaded with adolescent shite about vampires, shape shifters and insecure women fucking billionaires.

Then that button would not be useful to you, obviously. Even better, no one is making you click such a button, even if it existed.

Everyone gets to choose their own hobby.

To confirm your worst fears, yes, my collection includes shite from all manner of genres, including the ones you mentioned, and worse. I have plenty of room on my hard drive, so that's not an issue for me.

As always, Your Mileage May Vary™.

Hotarubi · Post by **Hotarubi** » Sat Jan 02, 2021 2:05 am

You'd be a big hit at parties.