Building an online ebook library is easy if you have an Amazon account. If you have Kindle and read, you probably already get most of your books on Amazon; but even if you don't have Kindle, you can still download the Kindle app for either your tablet or smartphone. Amazon has a lot of books that are always free; and they also have books that they put on special for free for about a day, and then they go back up to the regular price. To find the free books, you go to the kindle store, choose a catagory (cooking, romance, computers, etc.) and then choose to sort by price from low to high. You will get all of the free books first, then the 99 cent books, then the $1.99, and so on. Since these book are often only on sale for one day, you need to check back often to see the new books that are listed. Also, if you have an Amazon Prime account, and a Kindle Fire or e-reader, then you can also use the Kindle Lending Library, and borrow many of the higher priced books for as long as it takes for you to read them. (You can only borrow one book at a time though.)
This is a very helpful post! I have a Kindle Fire and have accessed a lot of free books, but I have a hard time keeping up with the free ones. I tried websites like Daily Free eBooks, but the e-mail updates I got from them just cluttered up my inbox. Thanks for the idea of sorting through the books directly through the Amazon store. I have tried that once or twice on my Kindle (without much success; the bookstore on the Kindle itself isn't great), but I hadn't thought about searching them through the Amazon website on my laptop and then ordering the books there. It makes sense because the books will automatically download to my Kindle even though I got them from the website on my laptop.
My library is quite big now, though I could do with sorting out the books I will read versus the ones that are good to have 'just in case'. Like HFL, I download them when they are free as they are for a limited time, but you can loan books to people too. Most books will have a free kindle version of a book, another one I use isLog In which also has a reading club so you can get books free. They send you more details when you sign up, but I have found some good launch books here that I hadn't thought of looking for.
I also use Bookbub.com for finding books. They will send you an email once a day listing books theythink that you might be interested in. At forst, I was not specific enough when I filled out my interest profile, and must have had half of the books on Amazon listed in the earliest emails that I received. Each time, I went to the profile, and narrowed it down, and now I only get a few each day, and they are more likely to be things I want to read about . Anyway, Bookbub is free to use, and will also five you some good possibilities. I shop on my ipad, when I look at books in the Kindle store, and then I have the book sent to my Kindle. If I want it to be larger (going to be looking at pictures or directions), then I have it sent to my kindle app on the ipad where it is easier to read and see pictures. Theo, I usually leave the books in the cloud storage until I am ready to read them, and then I will download the book to the ipad or kindle so I can read anywhere.
I love Kindle for this. I have gotten so many older, now public domain books for free. My kindle paid for itself in less than a year because of that. I figured out how long it took to be a worthwhile investment by calculating $4 per book if I had bought them in cheap paperback used, as that was about the average price of a low quality used paper back in the local shops. While I still try to support local shops now and then when I can, I am really appreciative for Kindle because I simply would not have access to nearly as many books that I want to read if I had to pay for each and every one.
