It's almost as if they want to discourage peple from getting the ebook and push them onto paper.
They do. Publishers aren't in the business of providing books to readers (that's what libraries are for); they're in the business of selling paper. And they are trying to figure out how to allow digital books (as if they could stop them) without losing the tiniest bit of their paper market. Their model is falling apart, because books are not produce and don't spoil after three months.
I guess books bought in the Kindle store have DRM as well?
Some do; some don't. The way to check is in the book listing; if it says "Device limit: Unlimited," that means no DRM. If there's a number, that's enforced with DRM. (Or you try to open the ebook with Calibre or Mobipocket or some other .prc/.mobi reader; if it won't open, it's DRM'd. But the device limit is how you check before buying.)
There are tools that will strip the DRM; if you want to be certain of keeping access to your books in a few years when Amazon changes their software setup, you should use one of those programs.
Non-US here, I don't see many freebies coming my way.
Smashwords.com has lots of free ebooks; so does feedbooks & gutenberg. But those are either public domain releases, some creative commons professional books like Cory Doctorow's, and a huge swarm of self-published things, with quality ranging from "wow, someone get this person a publishing contract so she can push Stephanie Meyer off the damn charts" to "OMG, so *this* is what an novel written in txt-speak looks like."
no subject
They do. Publishers aren't in the business of providing books to readers (that's what libraries are for); they're in the business of selling paper. And they are trying to figure out how to allow digital books (as if they could stop them) without losing the tiniest bit of their paper market. Their model is falling apart, because books are not produce and don't spoil after three months.
I guess books bought in the Kindle store have DRM as well?
Some do; some don't. The way to check is in the book listing; if it says "Device limit: Unlimited," that means no DRM. If there's a number, that's enforced with DRM. (Or you try to open the ebook with Calibre or Mobipocket or some other .prc/.mobi reader; if it won't open, it's DRM'd. But the device limit is how you check before buying.)
There are tools that will strip the DRM; if you want to be certain of keeping access to your books in a few years when Amazon changes their software setup, you should use one of those programs.
Non-US here, I don't see many freebies coming my way.
Smashwords.com has lots of free ebooks; so does feedbooks & gutenberg. But those are either public domain releases, some creative commons professional books like Cory Doctorow's, and a huge swarm of self-published things, with quality ranging from "wow, someone get this person a publishing contract so she can push Stephanie Meyer off the damn charts" to "OMG, so *this* is what an novel written in txt-speak looks like."