Amazon Kindle Books – Get Them For Free

The Amazon Kindle ebook reader family has made a huge impact on the book scene in a very short space of time. The original Kindle was released in November 2007. The Kindle 2 was launched in February of 2009 and the larger format Kindle DX, aimed at readers of newspapers, magazines and textbooks followed rapidly in June of 2009.

Even although the Kindle 2 and the DX were released during a fairly gloomy economic downturn, they still sold well. There has been some criticism of the high ticket price for both the Kindle 2 and the DX, but it does look as if Amazon’s target market are quite happy to pay $359 and $489 for the Kindle 2 and the DX respectively.

One of the selling points of the Kindle series is the fact that there is no monthly fee required for the ability to download ebooks. Amazon use a 3G connection – called Whispernet – which means Kindle owners can download books from the Amazon store in less than a minute – without the need for a notebook or a WiFi connection.

A further perceived benefit is the availability of cheaper books. In the absence of the normal printing, paper and distribution charges, ebooks can be offered at a reduced price when compared to the hardback equivalent.

Not only that, it’s even possible to get free kindle books directly from the Amazon store. All you need to do is visit the Amazon site, open up their Kindle store and search for books for the Kindle. If you then select the option “order by price – lowest to highest” you’ll be presented with a list of books starting at $0.

There is a good choice of classics available – 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, Treasure Island, Sherlock Holmes etc. – but there are also quite a few more modern books available for selection. Many of these are made available by publishers wishing to showcase particular authors and the list changes regularly, so it’s a good idea to check back once in a while.

In addition to books which are completely free, there are a good number of volumes which are available for purely nominal fees, $0.01 for example.

So, if you like the classics – or indeed any book which has been in print long enough to have entered the public domain – you could very rapidly recover the cost of your Kindle reader.