library or free ebooks

[Toystoryfan32]

I got a Nook for Mothers Day and I love it but I am having difficulty figuring out how to download books from the library, its an Overdrive system. I wanted the Nook because I thought I would be able to get some great books from the library or other sites for little or no cost. So far I can only get things from Barnes and Noble. I have noticed that many of the free ebooks on Barnes and Noble arent that great. Is there a better website than Barnes and Noble to get free or discounted e books? Any thoughts or tips?

 

[magik]

For the library OverDrive books, you'll need to download Adobe Digital Editions, set up an Adobe username and password, authorize your Adobe Digital Editions software and then with the software open, plug your Nook into your computer. The Adobe Digital Editions software should recognize it, ask if you want to authorize it, and once you say yes, the Nook should let you put downloaded Adobe PDF and Adobe EPUB books onto it. You should then just be able to download them from the library website, open them in Adobe Digital Editions and send them to the Nook. Different libraries have different variety of e-books to offer. I know mine offers a very random selection. Adobe Digital Editions is good to have anyway, because it lets you buy Adobe DRM e-books from other stores like Fictionwise or Kobo or many others.

As for other free e-books, it depends on what type of book you enjoy. I have found the vast majority of free e-books are romance novels or public domain.

For free public domain books, I first like to search Feedbooks, and then if they don't have it, I go to Project Gutenberg. These tend to be much more readable than the free classics you can download from B&N or Google Books because they weren't just scanned in and converted to e-books, they were proofed by real people.

A nice search engine that can be used to find free e-books is Inkmesh. There's a link for "Free Nook Books," which I like to check every few days because it helps you see if anything new has been listed. This search engine also lets you search for non-free books and price compare. Sometimes buying direct from B&N is not the best way to go. If you're willing to go through the hassle of downloading the Sony store software, the free Sony books also work on the Nook (and you also need the Adobe Digital Editions software that's needed for the Overdrive library books).

If you like scifi and fantasy, Baen offers a bunch of free e-books at their Free Library.

If you're willing to sift through the offerings, you can also potentially find some good free and low-cost e-books at Smashwords. This is mostly independent authors, so there's a fair amount of..."less good" stuff , but it's also possible you might find a gem, and some of the e-books there are by traditionally published authors who got the electronic rights to their books back or never sold them in the first place who make their own e-books of their traditionally published books.

If you like romance, Mills and Boon and Harlequin offer a handful of free e-books too. There is overlap here between what's on these sites and what's free from B&N, but there are some different ones too.

 

[Toystoryfan32]

Wow! Thank you so much. I cant wait to give these sites a try. Now I just hope I can get them on my Nook! My husband did download the Adobe software but for some reason we could not open the file I donwloaded on my Nook. I am going to give it another try tonight. Thanks a million.

 

[eeyorefan74]

Thanks for the great info, Magik. I checked Inkmesh and got 2 free books from B & N, one of which I had just put on my Nook wish list a few days ago!

 

[magik]

Any of the e-books from Feedbooks, Project Gutenberg, Smashwords, the Baen Free Library, or the free Mills and Boon romance novels are extremely easy to get on the Nook (or any other non-DRM e-book). If given a choice of format, EPUB is usually the best to go with for the Nook. Save the e-book to your computer somewhere that you remember. Have the directory you saved them in open. Then plug your Nook in, go to My Computer, double-click on the Nook, then open up the "my documents" folder on the Nook. Copy and paste the e-books from your computer into "my documents" on the Nook (or drag and drop).

E-books with Adobe DRM (such as from the library) also get put into "my documents" on the Nook, but you have to do the step of opening them in Adobe Digital Editions first to make sure they are authorized, then you can either send them to the Nook from ADE, or find where ADE saved them on your computer (usually some folder called "My Digital Editions" or something like that) and copy and paste them into "my documents" on the Nook. This only works if ADE recognized the Nook and you authorized it. Usually when you download an Adobe DRM book, whether from the library or from some store, the default option is "Open with Adobe Digital Editions," and this is what you want to do. You don't want to choose the one that says save it to your computer. It was a pain to get it working the first time for me, but once I got it figured it, I've had no problems since.

Once you have the books that you want copied on there, you eject the Nook from the computer. You can then click on the library button on the Nook and instead of your B&N library, you'll want to "View My Documents." You may then need to click on check for new content, but not always.

I don't know your genre preferences, but here a couple of other one-off free e-books I've found since getting my Nook:

• Little Brother by Cory Dctorow (young adult dystopian fiction)
• Various short story collections (some fantasy, not sure what the others are)
• Raetian Tales 1: A Wind from the South by Diane Duane (fantasy) - you have to scroll to the bottom of the page for this one
• Free online samples from Book View Cafe - reasonable prices to buy the full books. Sometimes the site is slow, but you do have the opportunity to read a chapter or more online before deciding if you want to buy (various genres)

If you don't mind using a conversion software, I sometimes have better luck using the free software Calibre to convert an e-book from HTML to EPUB or from .LIT to EPUB rather than reading PDF or PDB, even though those formats are supported on the Nook. I don't know why. Sometimes the books just end up looking better. This only works on non-DRM e-books, but I like it for organizing and converting when necessary.

I also recommend keeping an eye on the Deals and Freebies board on the Mobile Read forum. Anything that sounds interesting that says it's free for Kindle or Sony, I usually check if it's also free on B&N. Even if it's not available immediately from B&N, chances are usually good that in a few days or week, it shows up there too. This is a good way to get informed of promotional freebies. It seems some authors have started giving away a free e-book of the first in a series for a limited time to promote the latest book in a series. For example, there was recently an offer for the first Blossom Street book by Debbie Macomber in conjunction with the release of the newest book in that series. You can also usually find these same sorts of deals through the inkmesh search in my original post, but sometimes that can be hard to sort through.

 

[mousecruzer]

I just stumbled upon kobo (www.kobobooks.com) but haven't had a chance to download anything yet to my Kindle. Too busy reading and trying to learn how to work my Kindle!

 

[Berrie]

Wow! What famtastic sites!! I've been searching for a while but didn't find anything like this! You guys are the BEST!! Thanks for giving me a lot of ammunition for my nook!!

 

[debbiemomto4]

How about for a kindle? Anyone know how you can get library books on it?

 

[3boymthr]

I have a Nook and I love, love, love, it but I have noticed a few idiosyncrasies which drive me wild. Not least of which is the content that I want is not always available or is more expensive thru B&N than it is in other places. (I want the new J.R. Ward book, but their e-book is more expensive than Amazon's hard cover so I'm waiting till it comes out in PB to see if the price drops)

Referencing back to the free Debbie Macomber book. Be aware that the Debbie Macomber book is now no longer free on B&N. Every friday Barnes & Noble has one book available for one day. Usually a former best-seller or one from a best-selling author. The free book is listed in a blog on the daily section of your nook.

Also, you noted that you loaded the book but couldn't find it afterward. There are a couple of problems that have been noted with regard to books disappearing on the Nook. First and foremost, the nook will delete non-B&N content that is loaded into the B&N directory. Make sure to load all content that is not purchased from B&N in to the My documents directory. Also, if there are problems with the meta data details of the book, the nook won't display the book and may make all the other books loaded on your nook "disapppear" until this problem has been fixed. You can fix meta data problems with the aformentioned Calibre. For more info on these problems you can visit the nook forum on the B&N website.

 

[magik]

How about for a kindle? Anyone know how you can get library books on it?

Unfortunately at this time, the Overdrive library e-books only work on Nook and Sony readers, not Kindle. Kindle doesn't support the Adobe DRM scheme used by the Overdrive system.

I could be wrong about this, but my understanding is that the only non-Amazon purchased e-books that work on Kindles are non-DRM .mobi, .prc, .txt, and non-DRM PDF (at least on Kindle 2).

That being said, you should be able to get free e-books from places like Feedbooks, Project Gutenberg, cheap and free books on Smashwords, Baen Free Library (just get the mobi format). You can also use the inkmesh search to find free Kindle books.

 

[JoanGirardi]

Thanks so much for all of the information on this thread. I just discovered that some of the apps available on my iPod Touch allow me to read e-books on there, and these sites have been great for finding books.

 

[Toystoryfan32]

Thanks so much for everyone's tips. I got a few more free books from B&N yesterday but didnt get a chance to try to download any off the websites that were referenced. I did browse through some of the titles and there were a lot of titles that interested me. Cant wait to get started. I agree with you 3boymthr about B&N prices, I had sticker shock on some of the new release books. I hope the prices come down a bit.

 

[deerhart]

don't expect prices to drop especially if the book comes out first in hardback. Apple required ALL publishers who wanted to have their books sold in Apple's store for the IPAD to start the new release (in hardback) at $12.99 (so not $9.99) on ALL sites on ALL their books.

Books starting out solely in paperback, the prices still seem to be fairly more reasonable.

 

[magik]

don't expect prices to drop especially if the book comes out first in hardback. Apple required ALL publishers who wanted to have their books sold in Apple's store for the IPAD to start the new release (in hardback) at $12.99 (so not $9.99) on ALL sites on ALL their books.

Books starting out solely in paperback, the prices still seem to be fairly more reasonable.

My understanding is that it's worse than that. Several large publishers chose to go forward using what they call the agency pricing model. This means that e-books from these publishers must be sold at the price set by the publisher, and retailers are not allowed to discount that price unless the publisher says they can. This means books from these publishers should be the same no matter where you buy them, but it also means for new releases, chances are good that the e-book (which the retailers can't discount) will cost more than the hardcover (which retailers can discount).

So, from these particular large publishers, you're likely to see higher than $9.99 prices on e-books not just for new releases, but also for older books that are really popular. But, those prices are likely to be the same whether from Amazon, B&N, Sony, or the Apple iBook store.

Publishers who didn't agree to agency model pricing, will still hopefully be more reasonable prices, and maybe the publishers that did agree to it will realize that people don't want to pay more for an e-book than they'd have to pay for a hardcover and stop charging ridiculous prices for them.

 

[dex08]

Unfortunately at this time, the Overdrive library e-books only work on Nook and Sony readers, not Kindle. Kindle doesn't support the Adobe DRM scheme used by the Overdrive system.

I could be wrong about this, but my understanding is that the only non-Amazon purchased e-books that work on Kindles are non-DRM .mobi, .prc, .txt, and non-DRM PDF (at least on Kindle 2).

That being said, you should be able to get free e-books from places like Feedbooks, Project Gutenberg, cheap and free books on Smashwords, Baen Free Library (just get the mobi format). You can also use the inkmesh search to find free Kindle books.

You can get library eBooks on your Kindle but you have to go through multiple steps to do so and can't directly download to your Kindle. You have to download to your computer then convert the format then connect your Kindle to your computer. Google it and you'll find the instructions.

 

[deerhart]

My understanding is that it's worse than that. Several large publishers chose to go forward using what they call the agency pricing model. This means that e-books from these publishers must be sold at the price set by the publisher, and retailers are not allowed to discount that price unless the publisher says they can. This means books from these publishers should be the same no matter where you buy them, but it also means for new releases, chances are good that the e-book (which the retailers can't discount) will cost more than the hardcover (which retailers can discount).

So, from these particular large publishers, you're likely to see higher than $9.99 prices on e-books not just for new releases, but also for older books that are really popular. But, those prices are likely to be the same whether from Amazon, B&N, Sony, or the Apple iBook store.

Publishers who didn't agree to agency model pricing, will still hopefully be more reasonable prices, and maybe the publishers that did agree to it will realize that people don't want to pay more for an e-book than they'd have to pay for a hardcover and stop charging ridiculous prices for them.

or we simply have to wait for the prices to drop.

It doesn't affect me to much since I usually read romance novels and they are pretty much all the same price whether in paperback or e-book, but I save on shipping/gas!

 

[peter238]

Many of the texts that were not migrated can be found among other university online text collections,
=======
peter

 

[karinbelle]

Thank you for the tips. I've had an I-pod before, but now with my new Android phone I wanted some portable books. These are a great resource!

 

[RitaE]

If your Overdrive books are displaying okay on your computer in Adobe Digital Editions but not on your nook then you probably haven't authorized it correctly to the ADE account. They should have instructions on how to do that @ Barnes and Noble.

 

[wendypooh]

WOW - you guys are amazing!!! Thanks for all the info here! My son has an ipod - how would we go about getting some of these? He has to read 2 AR books for 6th grade - and I'd love for him to get them on his ipod!!

Thanks for any help!!!