Kindle Bargain Bundles

One of the major advantages of ebooks is that you don't have to try to hold those huge volumes that are produced when authors release omnibus editions. With an ebook, the only difference between a three (or six) volume book is that the progress bar moves slower. And in ebook form, these multi-volume bundles are often a bargain, so long as you want all the volumes bundled together. With trilogies and series, the most often encountered bundles, this is usually not an issue, unlike movie bundles, where the genre (action, thriller) may be all that ties the bundle together.

The Alex Kava Bundle is one of the largest bundles I've seen offered at Amazon. This bundle contains A Perfect Evil, Split Second, The Soul Catcher, At the Stroke of Madness, A Necessary Evil, the first five novels in her popular Maggie O'Dell series and One False Move, a stand-alone novel, all for the price of $18.12. That's $3.02 per book and purchased separately they would cost $30.12 (at today's prices/discounts). Exposed, currently the last in the series, is available, but at $13.47, while Black Friday is scheduled to be released in October of this year.

The Study Series by Maria V. Snyder is one that I read in paperback and really enjoyed. This bundle includes Poison Study (not available otherwise on Kindle), Magic Study and Fire Study, and also includes as a special bonus, the online read written exclusively for eHarlequin.com, Assassin Study! The Heather Graham Bundle combines romance, suspense and a dash of paranormal and contains four titles (The Island, Ghost Walk, Killing Kelly and The Vision) for $14.37 (under $3.60 each).

In Her Name by Michael R. Hicks is somewhat unusual in the trilogy/bundle category. This volume, a bargain $5.59 (versus the $19.75 print price), was released as a single book. But the author has had numerous reviewers and book clubs tell him that it is more suited to be published as a trilogy. Some were reading it in print and it is large and heavy to hold open, while book clubs like to tackle books of smaller length. At 684 (9"x6") pages and 2.1 pounds, it's definitely a long book. So, it's being broken up into three volumes and will be published as single volumes. I've no idea if the price will rise once this occurs (and the cool blue swordswoman won't be on the cover of the first volume; no word yet on the last two covers), but the original bundled volume will still be available.

Almost Human - paranormal vampire series - volumes 1, 2 & 3, by Melanie Nowak, is $9.99 as a bundle, while the separate volumes (Fatal Infatuation, Lost Reflections and Evolving Ecstasy) are $4.79 each, saving you $4.38 when purchased together. This is the beginning of an ambitious series - there will be four trilogies, a total of 12 volumes when complete. This author hasn't hit the bestsellers lists (most self-published authors never will), but has great reviews at Amazon and on several forums, some of which she stops in, from time to time, and answers questions directly. The series is in the vampire/romance genre and has a somewhat controversial relationship, which an older vampire and a young girl/woman (it's unclear from the description exactly how old she is and I haven't read this one ... yet). Then again, just because the vampire in Twilight looks physically young, he's also much, much older than the teen heroine.

Jennifer Armintrout's Blood Ties Bundle ($13.47) is another vampire themed series and this bundle contains four volumes (The Turning, Possession, Ashes to Ashes and All Souls' Night). There is only one review of the bundle so far and it is only one star - but the individual books have a number of reviews and tend to be 4 and 5 stars. I've started this series and I like what I've read, so far. If you prefer a more steamy vampire romance, check out Kimberly Raye's Love at First Bite Bundle. Four volumes of vampire cowboys for $9.99.

For those that prefer their romance to be vampire free, Harlequin has dozens of bundles available, mostly in the $7.96 to $9.99 price range. One noticeable exception is the Men Made in America Mega-Bundle, which contains 11 volumes for $31.68 ($2.88 each) and "features stories from all fifty states starring all-American cowboys, sailors, policemen, businessmen, ranchers and more! The first Men Made in America Mega-Bundle includes The Redemption of Deke Summers by Gayle Wilson, Found: His Perfect Wife by Marie Ferrarella, Arizona Heat by Jennifer Greene, Deceptions by Annette Broadrick, Dr. Dad by Judith Arnold, Send Me a Hero by Rita Herron, Tangled Lies by Anne Stuart, Love by Proxy by Diana Palmer, The Temptation of Rory Monahan by Elizabeth Bevarly, Mysterious Stranger by Patricia Rosemoor, and Bayou Midnight by Emilie Richards." Once you've made your way thru this one, you may also want to pick up Men Made In America Mega-Bundle 2 and Men Made in America Mega-Bundle 3, each containing eleven more volumes at the same $31.68 price. For 95 dollars, you get 33 book in all, enough to satisfy even a voracious reader (at least for a few weeks!).

Another sure bet is the Jennifer Crusie Bundle at $9.99. Crusie blends humor and romance and the four in this series are no exception: Getting Rid of Bradley, Strange Bedpersons, What the Lady Wants and Charlie All Night.

Not all bundles are bargains though. Check out Blossom Street Bundle by Debbie Macomber. At $18.01, it contains three volumes (The Shop on Blossom Street, A Good Yarn and Back on Blossom Street) and costs more than those three titles purchased separately ($16.92). Had they tossed in Twenty Wishes, currently at $13.47, that would have been a bundle I could go for.

The Chronicles of Elantra Bundle by Michelle Sagara is described as high fantasy meets police procedural. Containing the first three volumes in the series, Cast in Shadow, Cast in Courtlight and Cast in Secret, the current price of $16.42 is also slightly above the sale prices of $5.04 for the individual volumes ($15.12 total). The list price of the bundle is also higher than the list prices for each volume separately, so it may always make more sense to buy these separately. Here again, had they included the fourth in the series, Cast in Fury, the bundle would have been incredibly tempting (and I've already sent samples of these individual titles to my Kindle).

Win a Kindle - Author giving away one an hour!

Update Contest is over. Check the author's blog for winners.

Ramit Sethi, author of I Will Teach You To Be Rich, is giving away a Kindle an hour and a bunch of other prizes today, to launch the publication of his new book. He thought the Kindle version would not be available for a few weeks, but it is out now and is already the #1 bestselling book at Amazon (using their hourly ratings), for both print and the Kindle. All you have to do is buy the book, in print or Kindle and email him a copy of your receipt. He's also posted some excerpts of the book and is doing a streaming video interview/chat session today, on his blog, where you can also get more details on the contest. Those of you who buy the paperback version, of course, will have to wait a few days to start reading, but the rest of us can be reading it this afternoon and a few will be waiting for that new Kindle 2 in the mail instead.

Free Ebook: Carrot Cake Murders

Update 4:15PM Deal is over at Fictionwise (now $5.6/$4.55 after rebate).

Carrot Cake Murder ($4.76 at Amazon) by Joanne Fluke. This is the tenth in the series and not all are available in digital form.

This title is actually listed twice at Amazon for the Kindle, once at $6.99 and once at $4.76. However, for what is no doubt a limited time, you can now get this title free at Fictionwise. It is in Mobipocket format, but has DRM incompatible with the Kindle. The reader software for your PC is free and it should work with any of the non-Amazon Mobi readers for phones and a few other reader devices.

Synopsis

Between baking up a storm for The Cookie Jar and unraveling the mystery of her cat Moishe-s recent strange behavior, Hannah Swensen has a lot on her plate. But she-ll always make time for her business partner, Lisa, who-s in the midst of preparing for a big family reunion. Everyone is delighted when Lisa-s long-lost uncle makes a surprise appearance. No one has heard from Gus in twenty-five years. Uncle Gus is immediately the hit of the reunion. He-s almost as popular as Hannah-s scrumptious carrot cake, which is also Gus-s favorite dessert. But the next morning, as the whole family gathers for the group photo, one person is missing. Hannah offers to track down Uncle Gus, but her search leads to a shocking find. Over by the bar at the pavilion, she spots two slices of her infamous carrot cake, frosting-side down on the floor-and Gus-s corpse with an ice pick jutting out of his chest!

Now Hannah-s got to sift through a long list of suspects to find a killer-even if it could mean a recipe for her own demise-

Read an E-Book Week Roundup

Well, Read an E-Book Week has ended and I did manage to finish up the book I was reading at the start and nearly finish the next one I started (Made to Be Broken by Kelley Armstrong). The E-Book Week only giveaways have ended, but I now have enough free books to keep me busy for weeks. There were literally hundreds of giveaways (too many to even attempt to get them all, even if every one appealed to you) and I think I downloaded a couple of hundred to try (on some I grabbed every format, in case there were problems in conversion or as a hedge against future hardware changes, so it's a bit hard to tell). I may not read them all and I'll definitely be more likely to drop one that doesn't grab my interest in the first few pages, but there are bound to be a number of gems in there -- several books I'd had on my wish list turned up free this past week, so I know there are good ones in the pile. But, if you didn't get your fill, I have rounded up a few last freebies and bargains to round out the week.

The first-ever completely online world science fiction convention Flycon 2009 has been going on this week and Vera Nazarian is offering her novella "The Duke in His Castle" as a free PDF download this weekend only. From the comments, it appears you'll still be able to grab this one on Monday, as she'll leave it up for those who don't check their computers on the weekend and those in other time zones.

There are a number of other freebies from FlyCon are available: Chris Dolley has posted Resonance in several formats (including Kindle-compatible mobi), The Admonishments of Kherishdar and The Aphorisms of Kherishdar are online reads (the latter is also available in paperback). Two audiobooks are also available: Spherical Tomi: A Novel of Despair, by Jack Mangan, and Temple of Cod (the first third of Brine, registration required), by Adrienne Jones.

Chris Howard, who released SeaBorn as a free PDF earlier this week, has another ebook, nanowhere, as a free ebook, available in several formats.

Jeffrey Carver, author of The Chaos Chronicles, has previously made Sunborn available as a free PDF, but now, for a limited time, has posted several other formats as free downloads. The PDF should remain free, but the additional formats are coming down when this one is released as a Tor ebook (which could be anytime now). And if you haven't picked up the Chaos Chronicles, they are on the same download page, also in several formats.

Jeffrey Thomas's Deadstock, a science fiction thriller, can be downloaded in PDF and mobipocket reader format. His latest, Blue War: A Punktown novel and Punktown (coming in April), aren't yet available in ebook format, but you can always click on the "Kindlize me" link for the paperback version.

If you're ready for a break from fiction or want to polish up a few work skills, be sure to check out the How to Think Like a Programmer series at Green Tea Press.

Leaving the purely free realm, there are a few bargains in the Kindle store. Pacific Avenue, by Anne L. Watson, is on sale for a penny.

Darksome Thirst by Morven Westfield is $3.98. This is a witches and vampire book, but promises to be a different kind of vampire, for those tired of good vampires or bad ones that run in packs.

BARRACUDA by Mike Monahan is marked down to $0.99 (be sure to check the price - the older listing for $7.96 is still there). Detectives, an island paradise, mafia, yakuza and a barracuda eating the tourists - what more could a story need?

Last, an online comic, Digger, is now online with free archives going back to the beginning (2007). Until recently it was a subscription only comic; now it's all free and updated every Tues and Thurs.

Free Ebook: Chris Howard's Seaborn

Seaborn by Chris Howard is available as a free download (see below). This was scheduled to move to the Kindle, but has apparently been backlisted, so Chris is setting it free. Either format should convert fairly well to the Kindle (although the margins are a bit off).

Synopsis

Corina Lairsey has just clawed her way free from one controlling relationship when she finds herself in another-only this guy, Aleximor, has really gotten under her skin. Literally. A 400-year-old sorcerer who gathers the drowned dead off the ocean's floor for the King of the Seaborn, he's inside her head and is wearing her body like a wetsuit. Corina desperately schemes to regain control of her self, fighting against time as Aleximore trades pieces of her life away in exchange for power over the path between the worlds of the living and the dead . . . Kassandra is the King of the Seaborn's granddaughter. She comes from the sea, but has spent her whole life in exile on the surface, struggling to control frightening powers she barely understands. She declares war on her murderous grandfather and manipulates her family, friends, oceanic royalty, and the US Navy to aid her- but Aleximore intends to use Kass to carry out his revenge against the entire Seaborn royal line. And she's also fallen in love-one more struggle for an already troubled soul.

Free download in PDF or HTML format.

Read an E-Book Week, Day 6

Nanya by Huang Chin-tsu, edited/translated by Edward C Patterson, is a a 12th Century, Sung Dynasty, manuscript. Read online or download the book in three section (under the Files link).

Black Ice by Madeleine Miles and The Realm Of Magic Kingdoms by christopher parrish are both available as free PDF downloads over at LuLu.com.

C.C. Finlay's The Patriot Witch is available as a free PDF download. The rest of the Traitor to the Crown series, unfortunately, is scheduled to release on paper only at this point: A Spell for the Revolution (in May) and The Demon Redcoat (coming in June).

If your tastes run more to SciFi than Fantasy, head over to Concept SciFi and pick up the first four issues of their magazine (PDF and Mobi formats). Then bookmark the site, as the April issue is coming up.

The Heritage (Olivia) is available at Will Ashon's website. It's a printer's proof PDF, as the book was ready to go to print and the publisher pulled out, which not format well if converted for the Kindle. Still, he's put the entire thing up for free (along with a rant against the publisher, so be warned ... he was pretty mad when he posted it and it shows).

Read an E-Book Week, Day 5

I took day 4 off to read. After all, isn't that the point?

This first one isn't free, but a bargain buy of a children's adventure story (looks to be aimed at the tween crowd, as it is 330 pages in the print version and like all good fairy tales has darker side), a category where it can be a bit harder to find good ebooks: The Legend of Witch Bane by Kevis Hendrickson. It's been getting great reviews and looks like a good one for those whose kid's have been left behind in this weeks reading links.

For the slightly older teens, Harper Collins has a free read of The Vampire Diaries (online only), with the full text of The Awakening and The Struggle. They also have a sneak peak inside The Return: Nightfall, the latest in the series. I've tried their free reader before and mostly it motivated me to go buy the book instead, if it was interesting, as reading 500 pages on a backlit screen would make my eyes bleed. These particular titles are only available in paperback - so if you want real ebook versions of them, make sure to click on the titles, then on the Request on Kindle link below the cover pictures. In the meantime, these free reads will only be online until March 27th, so you'd better read quickly.

Tor has posted a new freebie, Charles de Lint’s Spiritwalk. It's a little late in Read an E-Book Week and the "monthly free read" doesn't quite come out monthly anymore, but free is free (you do have to register and log in before hitting the download links). Spiritwalk (1992) is the sequel to Moonheart (which is available in ereader format at Fictionwise). Spiritwalk is currently out of print, although Tor has a trade paperback reissue scheduled for mid-2010.

If you haven't picked up Mars Girl yet, you should definitely download a copy and be prepared for some laughs. You can get pretty much any format or read it online, along with "Webisodes", small scenes cut from the final book (just like the deleted scenes on most DVD's these days).

The Textile Planet, another humorous science-fiction novel, is now available as a free ebook! Download the PDF version or send an email to get another format (.html, .lit, .lrf, .mobi, and .rtf) direct from author Sue Lange

David Sklar (Shadow of the Antlered Bird) has a number of free fiction and poetry ebooks/ereads and satirical articles available.

Plough Books in England has more than 80 Christian/Spiritual titles in nine languages at no charge. All are in PDF format.

For a change of pace, be sure to get this month's free audiobook (hey, it's a book and it's "e", even if you don't "read" it) from Christian Audio. They have a new free audiobook each month, with your choice of MP3 (Kindle compatible) or WMV format. This month it's Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life (Unabridged) by Donald S. Whitney. Just use the coupon code (it's MAR2009 this month) and you won't have to enter any other payment info (you do have to create an account and they send you emails each month to notify you of the new freebie).

Free Ebook: The Treasure of La Malinche

The Treasure of La Malinche by Jeff Hepple.

The ordinary life of college professor Margaret de Vega is forever changed when she discovers the six hundred year old memoirs of La Malinche containing the secret to finding the lost treasure of Montezuma. With the aid of retired Special Forces Colonel R.A. Lincoln, Doctor de Vega undertakes her treasure hunt along a rapidly deteriorating United States – Mexican border.

Jeff was kind enough to let me post this free book here for Read an E-Book Week. Just click on the cover and it will download (if you have trouble, try right-clicking and using the Save As... selection). The ebook is in PRC format, so you can just copy or email it to your Kindle or use Calibre to convert to another format. You can also buy the Kindle version at Amazon ($2.39, with free amazon backup/sync), or get a trade paperback for $19.95 from his website. If you like this one (or just don't want to miss out), rush over to Amazon and get The Treasure of La Malinche Volume 2 (The Legacy of La Malinche) as well, as it is currently on sale for $0.99 (trade paperback $19.95 on his website). He also has published Gone For a Soldier, which deals with the Revolutionary war and the 800 page volume has received good reviews.

Read an E-Book Week, Day 3

More free reads and a few that I hadn't mentioned this week. Mostly non-Kindle formats, although many can be easily converted.

Another author makes a book offer via comments:

Readers can also receive a free e-book by posting a comment on my blog post between now and March 14th. They can choose from among my two novels and five titles from my editing clients (quantities of client books are limited).

Lillie Ammann
http://lillieammann.com

Bullying: A Parent’s Primer is a 19 page booklet, free this week if you request it by email (link is mid-way down their page).

CurrClick provides curriculum material for homeschooling and has a free download of St. Patrick: The World's Greatest Missionary, just in time for the upcoming holiday.

Sharing Books specializes in children's books and they are available on a "shareware" basis. Download it - if you like it - pay a donation.

EcoBrain offers e-books and mp3 audios about the environment. They are offering Understanding The Greenhouse Effect and Global Warming, Secondary Level as a free purchase from March 8-14. They also offer a companion book, Understanding The Greenhouse Effect and Global Warming Inter. Level that is currently marked down to $5.99. Both are educational in nature. NOTE that the files there are watermarked PDF's with cut/paste prohibited; you may not be able to convert them to any other format.

Jean Sheldon has a free download of The Effects of Gravity on the Soul of a Poet, a book of poetry.

If you haven't read Heather Wardell's Life, Love, and a Polar Bear Tattoo yet, be sure to grab a copy. Not only are both the PDF and PRC formats DRM free, you are also free to copy them for others, convert them and give out the converted copies and pretty much anything else you want to do with them other than sell them or print them out and bind them as a book (print out and keep looseleaf and you are fine).

Pauline Rowson's Tide of Death, free in PDF format, is a marine mystery and is the first in a series, with a new book coming this April.
The Eye of Alloria by Rae Lori. Also two short free reads on her web site.

One I missed earlier was Steve Jordan's Berserker: The Kestral Voyages. Steve set up the web site for Read an E-Book Week

Wizards.com (of Dungeons and Dragons fame) has up a free PDF copy of Paul S. Kemp's Twilight Falling. It looks like a printers proof, so I doubt it would convert well for the Kindle, but it's still worth reading.

Libby McKinmer has Fox Hollow up as a free PDF this week (it's on the right side of the web page).

A Veneer of Respect: a free e-book by Alex Domokos and Rita Y. Toews. I'm not sure what it's about, as it isn't mentioned on their web site other than the free link. Another free ebook, Looking In... Portraits of the Canadian Soul , is on their Novels page.

The Long and the Short of It has two sections: Romance and Erotica. Both have a selection of free short story reads and on the main page you can request a PDF of past Friday Recipes.

There are a few additional sites changing the books every day: Twilight Times Books has Darrell Bain's e-book Darrell Bain's World of Books all week and an additional free e-book each day. Among the selections will be Jerome and the Seraph by Robina Williams, Behold the Eyes of Light by Geoff Geauterre and No Place for Gods by Gerry Mills. In an unusual move, Rose Dog Books and Red Lead Bookstore change their free reads at 5 PM, just as they close down for the day - so West Coaster better check early or you'll miss that day's books. I suspect that Whitmore Publishing Company is doing the same, as the book hasn't changed since last night. Calderwood Books has A Falling Down Man by James Lally as today's read and a Pirate Adventure coming up tomorrow.

If you grabbed the ereader formatted books over at Zumaya Publications, you may want to head back over there. They've added a title Better Than Chocolate that wasn't there previously. These are not easily converted to other formats, but can be read on your computer. If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, the fire up Stanza and look for the Ebook Week entry in the online catalog. Not only are many of the other free reads there, but this entire list from Zumaya has it's own entry. Better yet, there is a bonus read you only get there: Kingdom Come by David Lynn Anderson. And for those that will only read on the iPhone - you'll miss out on Better than Chocolate, as that's only on the web download page. For those who haven't used Stanza before, there is an excellent tutorial, featuring this weeks free reads, over on Lexcycle.

All Romance E-Books claims to have "a wide variety of e-books", but nearly all are erotica (there are some "young reads", but even those are for older teens). However, they do have about 80 free reads. I find their web site a little annoying (the car will time out on you while browsing, making you log back in a lot). These reads are also available thru Stanza for you iPhone - but the ordering is less integrated than many others, using the web site in Safar (and you can't see what you are doing when typing in your login info). Still, the short nature of the free reads is a natural for the short reading time that most will use their iPhone for. Note that once you have purchased a book, you can't purchase it again and that you can only download a book in ONE format (even if several are available). So you must decide ahead of time where you'll be doing your reading (or grab the HTML, if available, so you can convert it yourself -- although the effort required seems a bit much for short stories you'll probably delete after reading). If you want something a bit milder in nature, check out the free reads at Wild Rose Press (there are 64 of them).

Olive Tree Software has a number of biblical related ebooks: several versions of The Bible, including translations in a number of other languages, devotionals and commentaries. If you read just the free material on this one website, it would keep you busy for years (of course, to read it all, you'll need a years of language study as well). The only problem is that their materials appear to only be available in PDB format. They have loaders for many of the PDA's and phones out there, including the iPod/iTouch, but no mobi or HTML files that would let you easily ocnvert them for the Kindle. Additionally, these PDB files can't be read with the current ereader software, which is version 3.0.3, as they require 3.0.4 or above, which appears to be limited to handheld devices. Still, if you have a smartphone, PDA or iPhone, they have a large collection.

If you are hunting for a good multi-format reader (software) for your computer, you may want to check out Calibre (version 0.5 just released this week). It reads most non-DRM formats (but not ereader PDB) and will let you convert several older formats to more modern ones. It even understands screen size differences amongst reader hardware and lets you customize things like the margins around text. It's also quite useful for fixing the metadata on mobi/prc files, which have the author names missing or don't sort correctly. The program is completely free (although the author does accept donations).

Women's Adventure Magazine is a new offering on the Kindle. This is a bi-monthly magazine (the price is $1.25 monthly, but it is delivered every other month). and the current issue is Jan 7th. From the best guess and looking at the calendar, if you start your trial subscription today, you should end up getting two issues (Jan and March, which is due any time). It's hard to tell from a single issue if you'll really end up liking the magazine. The January issue is mostly about winter sports, but has a fairly large feature article on the poor selection when dating in winter resort towns ("The odds are good, but the goods are odd") and another on places to vacation in order to escape the snow and cold. There are several other articles, some just oriented to a female audience (retreats and chocolate, anyone?), while others do involve outdoor adventure (top women ski jumpers). With any luck, the next issue will come this week and I'll be able to tell if I'll keep the subscription past the trial period. Remember, you can trial any magazine, newspaper or blog for 14 days, at no charge. But with a bimonthly magazine, you need to be careful when you start the trial, if you want to be able to compare a couple of issues before shelling out for a subscription.

Women's Adventure is the only sports, travel, fitness, and lifestyle magazine published specifically for active women. Published bi-monthly, Women's Adventure is for women who choose to thrive in the wild. Every edition inspires, informs and invigorates. Experience the thrill and excitement of adventure and personal challenge in today's modern world.

The Kindle Edition of Women's Adventure Magazine contains most articles found in the print edition, but will not include all images. For your convenience, issues are auto-delivered wirelessly to your Kindle at the same time the print edition hits the newsstand.

Read an E-Book Week Update

This in from an author, via a comment to an earlier post:

I am offering a free ebook of Book I of my trilogy, When Women Were Warriors. You can download it here.

Catherine M. Wilson

http://www.whenwomenwerewarriors.com/
http://www.catherine-m-wilson.com/

David Bowles is giving away a free copy of Spring House if you leave him a comment (on his March 9th blog post) by Friday.

Wild Rose Press has 64 free ebooks posted (all Romance and pretty much short stories). They are also holding a contest to win a free Sony Reader. They are in the process of moving to a new site and name, White Rose Publishing, specializing in Christian Romance. There are not as many free reads there, but I did find six today.

Books for a Buck has a couple of new ebooks for $1 this week: Frag Limit and The Glove of Shadows. You can also get the entire book Private Lies this week for free (multiple formats).

Read an E-Book Week Continues

The Babysitter's Code by Laura Lippman. This short story was originally published in the collection Hardly Knew Her.

Jasmine Jade/Ellora's Cave is offering a free copy of Gryphon's Quest by Candace Sams. They have several formats available, including Mobi and HTML. You can only pick one format (even if you try to buy the book more than one time), so if you need to do conversions for multiple formats, html might be a better choice. Note that you do have to create an account and give them address and phone info (no credit card info will be required); also, their checkout procedure is cumbersome, requiring five or six clicks and screen refreshes before you are ready to download your book.

BeWrite Books has Poetry today for their free daily downloads: Vinegar Moon by Donna Biffar, Letters from Portugal by Jan Oskar Hansen and sexions by Renée Sigel. These are in PDF format and they had some problems early in the day with the Vinegar Moon download (it was less than 1K and they emailed out replacements), so make sure your files open after you download them.

Smashwords has a long list of titles that are free, free with a Coupon Code or 25%-50% off with a coupon code that are available this week. A great number of these are short stories and erotica/romance seems overly represented, but there are a few gems in there, for those that dig thru the list.

There is a great collection of original Science Fiction put together by Mike Brotherton over at Diamonds in the Sky. Not only great reads, but with enough science in them to be a resource for Astronomy teachers. Read them online or download in mobi, ereader or PDF formats.

Cory Doctorow has two of his books, Little Brother and Eastern Standard Tribe as free download, both in multiple formats.

If you haven't picked up Hal Spacejock yet, now is the time. This one is still free and the next 3 are now out in ebook format. The ordering process is a little rough for those yet (they are in Australia and it's the publisher's first foray into ebooks), but they are DRM free and in two formats, so you can read on most devices.

SciFriGuy has up a bunch of classic SciFi ebooks, all in PDF format.

Clif Burns has two books (also PDF format) on his site: Of the Night and So Dark the Night. Both are supernatural mystery/thrillers.

Ralph Lalonde has FreeGround [First Light Chronicles 1] available in PDF and Mobi formats for free.

M.D. Benoit has one free ebook and another buy one get one free offer for her (The Jack Meter Case Files series. At the least, be sure to grab Metered Space over at Zumaya. You can then buy Meter Destiny at Amazon (or elsewhere), email her proof of purchase and she'll send you Meter Made (and a copy of Metered Space) in return (with any luck, this would be in prc/mobi format; the free download of Metered Space is the ereader PDB format).

Real Goods Solar has an offer for you: a free ebook containing everything you need to know about getting started with solar power. This 70-page eBook exerpts the “Renewable Energy 101—Solar, Wind, and Hydro Electric" section from Real Goods' Solar Living Sourcebook. This massive tome -- now in its 30th anniversary edition -- that covers everything you need to know about generating your own electricity. But this free eBook isn't all. The first 90-plus pages of the book are also available online for free. If you like what you read, you can also order the printed edition of the 600-page book for just $35.