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Amazon adds over 18,000 free public domain titles to Kindle Store
Of course, Amazon's in the business of selling books, not giving them away. But by giving away these books, Amazon may be able to convince potential customers to buy the Kindle eBook reader... and once they own it, odds are they'll spend a few bucks now and then on newer titles in the Kindle store.
It would have been nice if Amazon had thought of this tactic before launching the Kindle. But the rapid growth of the public domain library in the Kindle store is more likely a response to the fact that Sony eBook readers can access Google's massive collection of scanned public domain works.
So while Amazon's 18,000 public domain downloads are a good start, Google has over half a million titles, which means Amazon still has some catching up to do.
[via The Kindle Nation and C.K. Sample]
Comments
6
Subscribe to commentsAdamOct 12th 2009 6:57PM
It's likely they have picked 18k of the most popular books. As in they probably account for over 90% of reads. It's a good start even if they aren't providing the extremely long tail that Google is... It's free after all.
The Quintessential GeekOct 12th 2009 8:08PM
And another great product not available in Canada!
gloomyOct 12th 2009 8:08PM
If those are public domain books (free), then why on hell is the "Digital List Price" = $1.99. Clever marketing strategy? More like a manipulation of sorts.
DavidOct 12th 2009 10:52PM
This isn't new. Amazon put all their Mobipocket.com public domain books in the Kindle Store ages ago.
What would be new is if Amazon ever bothers to fix that annoying author name metadata (ex. "Benjamin, 1706-1790 Franklin") and add Table of Contents in the books, among other issues.
RnadyOct 13th 2009 7:28AM
How is this a big deal? Project Gutenberg has over 30,000 free titles already.
JD RobinsonOct 13th 2009 11:11AM
What a depressing group. This is an incredible shift in the way human beings absorb knowledge with stunning technology, and it elicits largely sour griping. My work as an historian and author has been transformed by the availability of books on Kindle, Google, Amazon, etc. So what if it costs $1 for a public domain book or $259 for a Kindle? Back in the day, just getting access to a single book for a research project could take months and cost an arm and a leg. Today I can access 10x as many sources in an hour. Last week I downloaded a $1 book onto Kindle and had it read to me aloud while I purchased a stack of other books online and downloaded half a dozen more from a Google PDF to my high speed printer. Probably three months worth of effort in a single night. Sad to see nothing but complaining about what is literally a miracle. Sorry to see you "youngins" all so horribly inconvenienced by the paradigm shift. Tough life you lead. And exactly what did you do to make the world a better place today? Get a life.