Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Where to buy e-books

For the beginner e-book reader, there are an astounding number of e-book sellers on the web. To help you work out where to start I’ve divided them into three categories: Publisher, Third-Party, and Free book sites.

Publisher sites:

Not all publishers sell their own author’s work on the internet, but quite a few, especially e-book first publishers, do. If you’re wavering between buying from a publisher or a third-party website consider that the author makes marginally more per book when the sale is through their own publisher's website. If you can, I’d encourage you to support the publisher – we need them to thrive. Some publisher’s that sell direct are:

Noble Romance
Samhain via their MyBookStoreandMore
Carina Press
eHarlequin
Loose-id
Lyrical Press


Third-Party Sellers:

Third-party sellers take books from all sources and combine them all under one site. In most cases, signup and downloads to your computer or device is incredibly quick and simple. Here are some of the third-party sellers I’ve used:

Amazon
Book Depository (has free world-wide postage for print books too)
Books on Board
Mobipocket


Free reads:

Ah – free books. The nirvana of all rabid readers. But I am definitely not taking about pirate site here - because every author deserves to be paid fairly for their work. These book sites offer royalty free work for free download and include a wide variety of material from older eras. The oldest work I’ve downloaded is an 1801 Ladies Monthly Museum from Google books, the strangest – The Art of Angling. These sites are well worth exploring thoroughly:

Google books
ManyBooks
Project Gutenberg

Also check author websites for free reads.

From time to time publishers and third party sites offer some fiction as free reads for limited periods. However if you reside outside the United States, be sure to check the download is still free for you before you complete the transaction.

This is by no means the definitive list. It’s very likely I’ve missed quite a few. If I have other great sites please leave the web address as a comment. Other readers will appreciate it too.

Heather Boyd
~Lady Wicked
Recently released historical romance e-book editions available through Amazon (available to Australian readers too):
Lydia Dare – The Taming of the Wolf
Diana J. Cosby – His Conquest
Mary Balogh – A Secret Affair

5 comments:

  1. I have a kindle and I always buy through Amazon. I probably should figure out how to buy from other companies, I just haven't taken the time to do it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's good to get the word out that authors make a little more if you buy directly from the publisher. That's something that I never would have thought of, so I would likely have gone to one of the bigger sellers.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Heather,

    You're always a great source of information. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Heather,
    I usually use Amazon but now that I know about authors making more from thier publishers I will be sure to do that. Great advice as always.

    ReplyDelete
  5. From Twitter:
    @GirrlitsBooks purchases from Liquid Silver and from OmniLit too

    ReplyDelete
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