eBooks by the shovel full

I picked up my first Nook this weekend.

The stated purpose of this second eReader is to proof the EPUB version of the fractal book, and indeed I’ve already learned a number of formatting tips I’ll be passing along in a future post. But one clear advantage to the Nook is the SD expansion slot. This one hardware difference gives the Nook the ability to carry as much as ten times the content of the Kindle.

Now how am I going to fill it?

One way I’ve been trying recently is NetGalley. NetGalley offers advanced galleys of upcoming books, some immediately available and some available upon request. I got ahold of Burning The Page from this service, and have already queued up the next couple of books including Love and Math. NetGalley’s especially good for bloggers, or those with healthy GoodReads followings, as requests for books have a greater likelihood of going through if you have a lot of followers. And best of all, it’s free, and you get to read things before the general public.

Another bundle service I came across from my PW Daily e-mails is the simply titled ebookbundles.com. This site is actually four sites, or four bundles, general fiction\non-fiction, romance, sci-fi, and fantasy. The prices tend to be between $5.99 to $9.99 for four to five books, most of them DRM free. I bought my first of these bundles about a month ago, in large part because the cost of one book in the bundle on Amazon was the same as the cost for five on this site. Not all of the books are available for direct download, however. For those with DRM you’ll need to work with Adobe Digital Editions to retrieve the books. NetGalley uses this program for some of its books as well. Adobe Digital Editions is not perfect, and doesn’t seem particularly good at transferring libraries between computers, but it will work for transferring books to your eReader. The site seems a little dodgy at times, but tech support is very helpful if you have problems. There are a couple of free books as well you can get by signing up for their newsletter. I’ve been signed up for about a month and only get the occasional e-mail to it’s not too spammy.

Last but not least is a bundle starting yesterday from the StoryBundle site. For $10 you can pick up eight science fiction titles including a never before published novel from Frank Herbert (author of Dune), or you can pay as little as $1 for six books. I have heard of a number of these authors , and this seems like a low risk way to try them all. The books are available in Nook and Kindle formats so I can read them on both my eReaders. And they are DRM free. Definitely recommend if you are the least bit interested in sci-fi, though the site runs all sorts of bundles so check back to see if they have something more your speed.

And speaking of Bundles, the fractal bundle should be ready in a couple of weeks. Keep watching this space.

Any other places you get eBooks, particularly in bundles?