Fictionwise ebook store

Fictionwise (www.fictionwise.com) was purchased in 2009 by Barnes and Noble but still operates as a separate store. Fictionwise has a affiliate program and you can find the same store rebranded at a number of sites including Stanza (iPhone only), eReader.com, Palm eBook Store, and others.

Fictionwise supports a wide variety of common and not some common ebook formats. The Secure eReader (epub) is the recommended format and many books currently offer a 5% rebate when purchased in as an epub ebook. To download and purchase books from Fictionwise (or it's affiliates) you have to sign up for an account, even to download the free ebooks.

Joining the Fictionwise BuyWise Club entitles you to discounted prices and access to the Fictionwise Lending Library, however the lending library only seems to support the Mobipocket ebook format at this time which is not supported on my Sony Reader.

Go to Fictionwise

Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.org) was one of the first (maybe "the first") sites to start digitizing books that are out copyright and making the text available for download.

The Project Gutenberg site is not really a store (as all the books are free) and provides more function over form. Full text search available for the books, but if your just browsing the "Top downloads" is a good place to start, listing may great classics.

Project Gutenberg ebooks are primarily in HTML and plain text formats, but can also be downloaded in epub and other popular formats suitable for ebook readers.

Go to Project Gutenberg

Feedbooks

Feedbooks (feedbooks.com) is a great source for free ebooks. Feedbooks provides a selection public domain and free self published ebooks from original authors made available under the Creative Commons licensing. Supported ebook formats include epub, pdf and Mobipocket.

Feedbooks is also a self publishing platform for authors, but unlike Lulu which I covered in my previous post, Feedbooks is does not offer an option for hard copy publishing.

Go to Feedbooks

Lulu Marketplace

Lulu (lulu.com) is primarily a site for self publishing for both printed and e-books. The Lulu Marketplace offers a variety of ebooks for purchase from Lulu authors and mainstream titles. Prices vary and the mainstream titles are not discounted so you can likely find the same ebooks in the Sony Reader Store or Kobo for (alot) less. However Lulu's selection of unique self published books is worth a browse.

My very first ebook purchase was from Lulu last year, and it was probably that event that made me start to consider ebooks in general and having a dedicated ebook reader as a viable alternative to buying printed media.

Multiple ebook formats are supported so check before purchasing. Most ebooks are available as pdf or DRM'd pdf and epub (tagged as "PDF for Digital Editions" or "ePub for Digital Editions"), some ebooks are also (only) available in Microsoft Reader format.  

Go to the Lulu Marketplace 

Kobo ebook store

Kobo (kobobooks.com), formerly Shorcovers, re-launched at the end of 2009 and is an impressive online ebook store, with backing from the likes of Indigo and Borders. They claim to have over 2 million titles and certainly seem to have a good selection of popular and recent releases. Prices are typically around $12 for best sellers.

Purchased books are in ePub format and can be downloaded to Adobe Digital Editions (or the Sony Reader Library). One nice feature is ebooks purchased from Kobo are also made available for viewing online on the Kobo website and on mobile devices (iPhone, Blackberry, Palm Pre and Android) using Kobo reader.

Go to Kobo

eBooks from your local Public Library

This one surprised me, yes it's possible to borrow ebooks from your local library. Many public libraries subscribe to the Overdrive network which provides access to a catalog of ebooks that can be downloaded.
You can find out if your local library supports borrowing ebooks through Overdrive using the library search.

I don't know if the selection changes form library to library, but I was able to find and borrow many recent and popular titles. The "borrowed" ebooks have DRM protection and must be downloaded to a supported ebook library/reader application such as Adobe Digital Editions or the Sony Reader Library. The DRM limits the amount of time they can be read (7, 14 or 21 days), after which the file becomes unreadable. As the right to read the book expires the book is essentially "returned" to the library for someone else to borrow.

Go to the Overdrive Library Search

Google Book Search

Google Books (books.google.com) has a very comprehensive index of books including a vast collection of free public domain and out of copyright books and magazines that have been scanned in collaboration with a number of Public and University Libraries.

Not all books can be downloaded, as Google also indexes details on commercial books (and offers links to locations to purchase the hard copy) some are only available for limited preview. To limit your search to books that can be put on to an ebook reader limit your search to "Full View only" or "Public Domain only". Only Public domain books appear to be downloadable and it's worth limiting your search by publication date as a vast majority of the public domain content was published before the 1900's, this can be done using the advanced search or adding a date range search filter to your query e.g. to find travel books published between 1980 and 1990 try the search

travel date:1980-1990

Books can be viewed online using Googles online viewer, downloaded directly as a pdf or epub, or as mentioned in the previous post the Sony Reader Store includes integration with Google Books to download and sync directly with the Sony Reader

Overall, in spite of the quantity of books available, the quality is somewhat limited for general ebook downloads, unless you are looking for old classics.

Go to Google Books

Adobe Digital Editions Sample Library

Adobe Digital Editions is a nice lightweight ebook reader and library manager available on Windows and Mac OS. Along with the reader software Adobe have a Sample eBook Library with a small selection of about 30 free books and previews to download in epub and pdf format.

Go to the Adobe Sample eBook Library

Sony Reader Store

The Sony Reader Store (ebookstore.sony.com) is probably the closest thing to an iTunes for ebooks that I've seen so far and it's built into the  software for easy access (Windows/Mac)

The Reader Store has a reasonable (but by no means complete) selection of books, with most best sellers hovering around the $9.99 price point. Purchased books are automatically downloaded into the Reader Library and sync'd to a connected Sony Reader device.

Through the Reader Store in the Sony Reader Library software you also get integration with Google Book Search (which I'll cover in more detail in a future post) which provides convenient access to a vast array of free and public domain books that Google has been scanning

Go to the Sony Reader Library

Feeding my ebook appetite

My Sony PRS600S Reader Touch Edition arrived today, and now I'm on the hunt for content, so on this new blog I intend to capture the best sources I find for free (as in beer) and for purchase epub and pdf format ebooks.

The ebook market has probably been around for at least 10 years, by my best guess, probably longer, but the online sources of ebooks is still very fragmented and niche. While the landscape is certainly changing with the introduction of the Amazon Kindle last year and slew of new eBook readers and related technology being announced at CES, there is still no definitive source that is to ebooks what iTunes is for mp3s

And so I set out on my journey to find and fill up my reader with quality content (and of course, to find time to actually read some of it).