Free e-books? Where????

[Tarana]

A serious question: why do so many people write ".99c" when they actually mean "99c"?

They want to be clear that they are referring to money. There are many shortcuts that lots of people don't know, so they simply don't want misinterpretation.

To see lots of ebooks priced at 99c, just go to Amazon. I buy lots of them at 99c. Most of those I buy are being offered at the discount for a day or a couple of days to promote a new book by the author. At other times, just a promotion.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Tarana

They want to be clear that they are referring to money. There are many shortcuts that lots of people don't know, so they simply don't want misinterpretation.

That still doesn't explain why they write ".99c" when they mean "99c". The "c" symbol clearly specifies that it's money, does it not?

[CWatkinsNash]

Originally Posted by HarryT

That still doesn't explain why they write ".99c" when they mean "99c". The "c" symbol clearly specifies that it's money, does it not?

I don't know either. I put it in the same category as rogue / incorrect apostrophes. I generally write out "99 cents" because I prefer it over "$0.99" for some reason.

As for free books - I can't turn around without running into free books. They are everywhere. Once you start finding a few, suddenly you find them everywhere.

Not that all of them are worth reading, but that's a whole different thing.

[HarryT]

The "Kindle Daily Deal" is also worth keeping an eye on. Not free, but so cheap that it's as good as, and these are often big-name books, not independent authors you've never heard of. I've picked up hundreds of books at 99p from the Kindle Daily Daily over the years.

[CWatkinsNash]

Also, the Countdown Deals. Scattered within the self-pub fare, there are often small-house reissues of major works. I grabbed some of the Rosetta releases of Vonnegut for 99 cents that way.

[sharphamster]

Project Gutenberg, in case it hasn't been mentioned yet. Huge! And it will DropBox your titles right to your device too.

I love Munseys personally. My readers are packed full of old pulp titles, thanks to them.

[Dr. Drib]

Where????

Why, right here, of course!!!!

Why????

Because we have hard-working members who like to assemble ebooks that look better than the other sites that offer free ebooks!!!!

Here????

Yes!!!! And FREE!!!!





Don

[QuantumIguana]

I think I understand the confusion. On the Kobo web page, there is a link to free e-books, but none of them are free. http://www.kobobooks.com/lists/freee...ampaign=freeus When I sorted the list by price, not one book was free.

There are free books at the Kobo store, just do a search for a book and sort by price. For example, I searched for A Tale of Two Cities, and sorted by price from low to high, and there were several free versions. I have no idea why a link to free e-books would not have any free books, and I could see how that could be frustrating. There are other sources for legal free books, in addition to those already mentioned. Manybooks.net is one you might want to consider.

Or to find free e-books on the Kobo store, just don't click on the Free Books link. Just do a normal search. Say you're looking for free science fiction, you enter "science fiction" in the search box, and when you get the results, just sort by price from low to high. You will see a lot of free e-books.

[Shopaholic]

Originally Posted by Little.Egret

A huge overstatement since on that basis the Amazon Kindle store is a pirate haven. As others in this thread have noted lots of authors have a few of their titles free as an introduction and others for a few days as a marketing ploy.

I would never ever suggest that the Amazon store is a pirate haven. I neglected to use certain qualifying words in my post. Sorry. I didn't mean to imply that any and all sites offering free newly released books are pirated. I was referring to sites that offered ALL newly released, popular, in high demand or however you want to phrase it, for free, would, generally speaking, be problematic/not legal.

[Difflugia]

Originally Posted by HarryT

A serious question: why do so many people write ".99c" when they actually mean "99c"?

That still doesn't explain why they write ".99c" when they mean "99c". The "c" symbol clearly specifies that it's money, does it not?

My guess is that it's peculiar to the US because one cent has always been .01 dollar. Since $.99 and 99¢ are equivalent and both are seen interchangeably on signs in shops, it's easy for Americans to get confused and add the extra decimal point if we're not thinking about it carefully. I've even seen professionally prepared sales flyers that make the mistake.

The English never got in the habit of writing £.99 instead of 99p because until relatively recently, 99 pence wasn't £.99, it was 8s 3d.

[calvin-c]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The "c" symbol clearly specifies that it's money, does it not?

No more than S indicates money. I've never really understood why the cent symbol was removed from keyboards. Maybe it was considered redundant because you can use the $ and a decimal-but many people are clearly uncomfortable doing that so they use a "c" when they can't find the cent symbol. Personally I prefer a designation such as USD as that is unambiguous. (Does $0.99 mean US, Aus, or other currency?) Internationalization is a problem with money just as it is with language.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by HarryT

That still doesn't explain why they write ".99c" when they mean "99c". The "c" symbol clearly specifies that it's money, does it not?

In the old days of typewriter keyboards there was an actual cent symbol (a c with a line down through it) but while we still have an easily accessible dollar sign $ the cent symbol isn't included in the standard keyboard for computers, so I think that people put it as .99c in order to do the next best thing because they did do something similar back in the day of the typewriter.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by Difflugia

My guess is that it's peculiar to the US because one cent has always been .01 dollar. Since $.99 and 99¢ are equivalent and both are seen interchangeably on signs in shops, it's easy for Americans to get confused and add the extra decimal point if we're not thinking about it carefully. I've even seen professionally prepared sales flyers that make the mistake.

The English never got in the habit of writing £.99 instead of 99p because until relatively recently, 99 pence wasn't £.99, it was 8s 3d.

Is that 8 shillings 3 ducats Difflugia?

[exscentric]

Originally Posted by Difflugia

My guess is that it's peculiar to the US because one cent has always been .01 dollar. Since $.99 and 99¢ are equivalent and both are seen interchangeably on signs in shops, it's easy for Americans to get confused and add the extra decimal point if we're not thinking about it carefully. I've even seen professionally prepared sales flyers that make the mistake.

The English never got in the habit of writing £.99 instead of 99p because until relatively recently, 99 pence wasn't £.99, it was 8s 3d.

Actually, it was an I didn't think it through.. so sorry I will self punish ..bad boy, bad boy you are banned from posting for two days .. bad bad!

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by crich70

Is that 8 shillings 3 ducats Difflugia?

Couldn't it be 3 dime?