Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Free digital books.

So you've got (or you're going to get) a tablet, and you're wondering how to make use of it, without spending too much money: Free books!

  • Library -- Oregon libraries participate in Library2Go which gives you access to some digital titles.
  • Google Books -- Has a lot of free digital book titles that have expired copyrights (older classic novels, etc).  If you apply a search filter for free ebooks, you can either download a file (plain text / ePub / PDF) or you can grab the ebook to add to your Google Play bookshelf.
  • Free Digital Reads -- It has a daily selection (good only for that day) of titles at Amazon, that are free (requires Kindle reader / app and an account).

Some related thoughts.

Not all ePubs are created equal.  Some have been haphazardly converted from a printed book layout format (e.g. InDesign) to digital inline text; sometimes it seems as though there wasn't any proofing after the conversion -- some look terrible.

I would have included Open Library, but having to download software to download books, especially when the software's certificate is signed by a third party whose website is suspiciously empty (and half-written in Russian), was a red flag (the certificate should have been signed by Open Library, not a third party).

There aren't many eBooks for graphics / photos / architecture / design, except for scanned historical books -- think Vitruvius.

I'm wary of buying digital content that has DRM; I have no problems with borrowing or owning digital content that has DRM, but is free, however.

PDFs are not so good on the small screens of tablets, because unlike ePubs (which are really just zipped HTML and associated files), texts aren't scalable (without zooming in and out) and images aren't inline (they're anchored).

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