Life’s Weirder Than Fiction

…but you have to own them, ebooks has always been the solution for me. Libraries are great, and so are used bookstores, but sometimes I want brand-new. Thing is, I can’t afford them. Well, I can afford a few, but for the same amount of money I can buy several ebooks instead of one hardcover.

Fictionwise has a cute marketing gimmick right now, using last week’s market crash:

eBook Bailout Plan Saves the World??

Last week the stock markets had tanked 20% and the world was spiraling down into certain depression. Not content to leave the fate of the planet in the politician’s hands, last Thursday Fictionwise launched our eBook Bailout Plan: 50% Micropay Rebates on every single title in our store when paying by credit or PayPal. And guess what? On Monday the Dow Jones Average spiked 936 points, the largest gain in history, and world markets responded in kind!

Coincidence? That is for history to judge. To be on the safe side, we have extended our eBook Bailout Plan only through Thursday, October 16, or until we give away $700 billion in rebates, whichever comes first. So don’t wait! We’ve done our part: come load up your shopping cart and buy today!

So if you’ve never tried reading an ebook, now’s the time to try one. You don’t have to read an ebook on your computer, you know. You can read them on your Blackberry, your Palm Pilot/Phone, your iPhone, and any semi-dedicated reader that uses a wonderful new technology, eink.

And while you’re curious and decide to try it, I’ll be crass and recommend one of my books. You can find them all at Fictionwise.com and eReader.com.

Tags: ebooks, reading

Way in the beginning when I was first published –my, how time flies– you could read my book only as an ebook. I’d always been a proponent of the medium, but the number of ebooks available, in formats I could read on my Palm Pilot, were scarce.

Today, it’s not the case, especially with e-ink technology, which is used by the Sony Reader and Kindle. There also have been many projects over the year to make available most of the classics online for anybody to read. These, of course, are one way or the other, copyright-free. The site below has put together a list of online sites where you can find free ebooks for download. The site has a scholastic goal, but I like the fact that they’ve added a site for children’s stories and poems, which are usually difficult to find. Some sites such as fictionwise.com and eReader offer only a limited number of free ebooks but offer a bookstore of tens of thousands of great books, including current best-sellers. Fictionwise.com has all the available formats (and carries my own books, of course!)

List of Online Archives for Free Unabridged Books Online

Tags: e-books, ebooks, electronic medium, Kindle, Publishing, Sony Reader, technology