Kindle First Choices for March 2017 are up

And just like that, March 2017 is here, which means, for Prime members, a new e-book pre-release freebie is available to get right now and read right now before its official April 2017 release through the Kindle First program. If you are not a Prime member, you can purchase one of the six for $2.

Without further ado, here are the six choices for March 2017:

  • “Hemingway Didn’t Say That: The Truth Behind Familiar Quotations” by Garson O’Toole in Nonfiction (398 pages) – this looks to be the most promising of this lot (I got this one)
  • “The Practice House” by Laura McNeal in Literary Fiction
  • “The Last Paradise” by Antonio Garrido, Simon Bruni in Historical Fiction
  • “A Criminal Defense” by William L. Myers Jr. in Legal Thrillers
  • “The Halo Effect: A Novel” by Anne D. LeClaire in Suspense
  • “The Breaking Light (Split City Book 1)” by Heather Hansen in Scifi

As usual, if none of these “speaks to you” (so to speak), you don’t have to get one immediately. You have until March 31st (2017) to make a choice. In a few more days, each book will have a lot more reviews as the “early adopters” and voracious readers go through them. Then you can use the customer reviews to figure out what to get, or what to avoid (reviews seem to be better at this than the former).

March 1, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With: , ,

30 Kindle ebooks for $2 each with coupon

If you are fond of reading e-books but don’t want to break the bank on them, we have good news for you! A new coupon offer! Coupon code READFEB17 gets you any number of these thirty Kindle e-books for $2 each. You only enter the coupon code once in your account. You can buy one, or buy them all. The offer expires 2/28/17.

Four of the thirty are in Prime Reading, so if you are a Prime member, you can check them out and start reading beyond the Kindle sample to see whether it’s something you would be actually interesting in completing.

Happy reading 🙂

February 22, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With: , ,

Octavia Butler’s Parable Book series on sale for 25c per ebook

Reading is fun-da-mental! If you want to explore some of the critically-acclaimed science fiction / speculative fiction, a two-book series called “Parable” by Octavia E. Butler is on sale for the Kindle for 25c (yes, that’s $0.25) per ebook. Or you can buy them both together for $0.50 (it saves you an extra click). They are about 800 pages total. Book #1 is the “Parable of the Sower”, and book #2 is “Parable of the Talents”. Both ebooks average 4.4 out of 5 with a combined total of over 600 customer reviews.

February 8, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With: ,

Free Samsung Books choices for February 2017 are out

If you have a participating Samsung device, and you have installed the Kindle app from Samsung’s own Android app store (not Google Play or Amazon’s), you may be eligible to get one free e-book every month from a choice of four. Some devices are eligible for this benefit for the life of the account/device, while others only have it for a year. You can tell if you are eligible by looking at the price of the ebooks, if it’s $0.00, you are eligible 🙂

Unlike Kindle First, the Samsung Book Deals are NOT new releases. Almost all of them are previously released ebooks that are part of Kindle unlimited. The plus side of this is that most of them have a handful of customer reviews, so you can use those to help you select which one of the four to get for free.

So without further ado, here are the four choices:

  • “Lily Love” by Maggi Myers
  • “Artful” by Patrick David
  • “Plea of insanity” by Jilliane Hoffman
  • “Lord of the Nile” by Constance O’Banyon
February 3, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With: , ,

FREE until February 7: The Tor Monthly FREE eBook

Good until February 7 (2017), you can get the ebook “The Bloodline Feud” for FREE in DRM-free ePUB and .mobi by signing up for the Tor emailing list at the Tor eBook Club. They offer a new ebook every month, but the catch is that you have to claim it within the first week of them. Unlike Kindle First which runs for the whole month.

PS: if you are already signed up for their emails, page further down on the download page and look for the “Already Registered?” section. You enter your email (the one you used to sign-up for the list) and then you get the download options.

February 2, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With: , ,

Kindle First choices for February 2017 are up

Time flies these days and we are now in February 2017, which means, among many other things, a new round of six pre-release e-books are loaded up on Kindle First. These will be released to the general public on March 1st, but if you are a Prime member, you can get one of those six RIGHT NOW and start reading it RIGHT NOW for FREE. If you are not a Prime-member, you can buy one right now for $2. The rest will be available to everyone on March 1st for $5 each. Many of these end up appearing in Kindle Unlimited, so if you are a subscriber to that service, you can bookmark them until then…

So, without further delay, the six choices are:

  • “Extracted Trilogy Book #1” by RR Haywood in Scifi (yes, scifi is back at Kindle First!)
  • “The Marvelous Misadventures of Ingrid Winter” by authors JS Drangsholt, Tara F. Chace in Contemporary Fiction
  • “Only the Truth” by Adam Croft in Suspense
  • “Signature Wounds” by Kirk Russell in Thrillers
  • “In Farleigh Field: A Novel of World War II” by Rhys Bowen in Historical Fiction
  • “Duck and Hippo in the Rainstorm (Duck and Hippo Series Book 1)” by Jonathan London, Andrew Joyner in Children’s Picture Books

You have until February 28 in 2017 to make a choice, but don’t wait until 11:59pm of that day. Having said that, I tested it in January, I made my pick late on the 31st, after 9pm pacific time, and it was all good. Amazon is in the pacific time zone, so things on their website chance on the pacific time zone day-change – such as the Gold Box deals.

February 1, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With: , , ,

Kindle ebook: “The Art and Craft of Tea” for $3

If you are interested in tea and want an ebook to go along with it, there is a limited time promotion at Amazon, the Kindle edition of the book “The Art and Craft of Tea” by Joseph Wesley Uhl is on sale for $2.99. This is a 160 page ebook. It has many pictures, so it’s best enjoyed (the visual part at least) on color screens (bigger phones or tablets). The text of course is great on e-ink e-readers. This currently averages 4.8 out of 5 based on 19 customer reviews.

You can both request a sample of the Kindle edition, and if you go to the page for the hardcover edition, you can also do the good old “Look Inside” which shows you random content within the book. Both are useful in evaluating an e-book, because the Kindle samples are always the first few pages, while the “Look Inside” jumps all over the book.

January 22, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With: ,

Samsung Book Deals options for January 2017

If you have an eligible Samsung device, you can get one free e-book per month from a choice of four options, if you use the Kindle app downloaded from the official Samsung app store. This app is tuned to work with the S-Pen, so that’s a plus if you have a Note device!

Your benefit and how long it lasts depends on which Samsung device you purchased and when. I have no clue which devices qualifies for what, so that’s up to you to determine. IF you have an eligible device, the four e-books, under the “Book Deals” section of the Kindle app downloaded from the Samsung app store show a price of FREE/$0. If you see an actual price, it means you will pay for it. But fear not, even if so, you can always go to amazon.com/myk and reverse/cancel the purchase.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, these are the four choices for January 2017. You have until 1/31/17 to make a choice. Unlike Kindle First that offers brand new e-books, almost all the Samsung Book Deals options are already part of Kindle Unlimited, so they have a built-up review profile, which can help you device if none of the books shout “read me” immediately.

The choices are:

  • “First Activation” by the Wearmouth brothers (book #1 in a post-apocalyptic series)
  • “Katwalk” by Maria Murmano
  • “Opal Fire” by Barbra Annino in a Mystery series
  • “The Kentucky Bride” by Norah Hess in Steamy Romances

OPTIONALLY, once you buy the e-book of your choice, you can add audio narration (Audible audiobook) for typically an extra $2 more. In the strange world of e-book pricing, sometimes it is cheaper to buy the ebook + audiobook, than buy the audiobook directly!

January 15, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With: , ,

Free January 2017 ebook from University of Chicago Press (DRM’ed)

The monthly free e-book promotions continue with the University of Chicago Press. This one sadly is Adobe DRM, so to download it you need an Adobe ID that is used for the evil DRMalia. Still, if you have an Adobe DRM ePUB ecosystem device or app, you may already be setup for it anyway, so not a lot of hassle. On the other hand, if you are a Kindle-only reader, then this is a kerfuffle.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, the free ebook offered for January 2017 (you have until 1/31/17 to claim it) is a 2013 book, “Looking for Strangers: The True Story of My Hidden Wartime Childhood” by Dori Katz, 184 pages long. This is not a famous book, but it averages a solid 4.6 out of 5 with 12 customer reviews at amazon.com. You have to get the free e-book through University of Chicago, I am including the link to Amazon so you can read reviews and a sample if you wish!

This is a screenshot below visually explaining how to claim the free ebook. The link in the first paragraph is how you can claim it…

January 15, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With: , ,

$2 Kindle ebooks with coupon (30 choices)

If you like discovering new authors, Amazon has just launched a new e-book promotion. Coupon code READJAN17 can get you any of the thirty participating ebooks for $2 each. You can buy as many as you want with this promotion. Make sure you enter the coupon code _BEFORE_ you buy any of them! Here’s how:

You can find all eligible books and read details at the Kindle January 2017 promotion which expires 1/31/17.

NOTE: I do not know if this promotion is targeted or everyone can use the coupon. I have no way of finding out, so YMMV if you haven’t received an email with this promotion. Try it on one e-book first, then check your account history to make sure you are charged $2 not the regular price.

January 7, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With: , ,

Free Tor e-Book: “Off Armageddon Reef” (until 1/10/17)

If you like FREE and scifi, we have good news for you! The Tor free e-book of the month, good until January 10 (2017) is the e-book “Off Armageddon Reef” by author David Weber. You can get it by entering your email address at the Tor e-book club. You don’t even have to sign up for their e-mailing list to get the free ebook. After that, you can download it in .mobi (eg Kindle devices) or .ePUB (most reading apps and other e-readers).

This is book #1 of an 9-book series. This book (book #1 in the series) averages 4.1 out of 5 based on 300+ customer reviews at amazon.com.

Speaking of Amazon, if you are a Prime member, you can score one free e-book from a choice of six every single month. These are the choices for January 2017.

Happy reading 🙂

January 6, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With: ,

Kindle First choices for January 2017 are here (pick one from six for FREE if a Prime member)

January 2017 is here and with it, we get the first round of Amazon Kindle First free e-book options for Prime members. As before, you pick one of the six pre-release e-book choices for free if you are a Prime member. If not, you pay $2. If you want to read more than one of the six books, you have to wait until they are released on the first of the following month (February 1st in this case).

The six choices are *drumroll*

  • “The Mutual Admiration Society” by Lesley Kagen in Family Life
  • “The Night Bird” by Brian Freeman in Suspense
  • “Never Again So Close” by Claudia Serrano, Anne Milano Appel in “Lit Fiction” ~ that’s one way to make literary fiction trendy in the eyes of younger readers 🙂
  • “Palm Trees in the Snow” by Luz Gabás, Noel Hughes in Sagas
  • “In the Shadow of Lakecrest” by Elizabeth Blackwell in Historical Fiction
  • “The Winter Over” (Ned Stark would disagree with that statement!) by Matthew Iden in Thrillers

As usual, if none of them screams at you (READ ME NOW!), just wait a few more days until they pick up more reviews. Since they are pre-release, Kindle First-ers are the only ones reviewing them. You have until January 31st in 2017 to make a pick from this lot. eBooks don’t run out 🙂

January 2, 2017 Filed Under: media Tagged With: , ,

1-Year Prepaid Kindle Unlimited subscription for $89

Reading is good, and if you like to read a lot and take chances on authors or genres you haven’t read or heard of before, a Kindle Unlimited subscription may be a good idea, sort of like a Netflix-style service for e-books. For a limited time during the holiday shopping season (they don’t specify an expiration date), you can get a prepaid 1-Year Kindle Unlimited Subscription for $88. You pay $88 right now, and for that, you get 12 months of membership. It comes out to just under $7.50 per month. The month-to-month price is $10.

You can see which ebooks are eligible when you search around the Amazon website, they have the “Kindle Unlimited” signs next to them. The service now also includes select audiobooks (a subset of the ebooks available for Kindle Unlimited) along with a monthly selection of digital magazine issues (they change on a monthly basis).

You don’t get to keep any of the above, but you can read/listen as long as you are a paying subscriber.

PS: I am not sure how this works in conjunction with Prime Reading as I haven’t had both subscriptions live at the same time. “Prime Reading” is essentially a mini-me version of Kindle Unlimited, available for FREE for Prime members. “Prime Reading” only has 1000 ebooks, while “Kindle unlimited” has over 1 million ebooks.

PS2: Kindle Unlimited (KU) kinda makes it very hard to use the older “Kindle Lending Library” (KLL), which still continues. You’d have to use a Kindle hardware device for the KLL, and you don’t see the kLL option if a book is available through KU, so the only way to get your KLL item is to find something that is in KLL but not in KU. Impossible task on an e-reader, but more doable if you have time to spend on a Fire tablet or the Fire Phone 🙂

December 9, 2016 Filed Under: ereaders Tagged With: ,

Classic scifi e-book for just $0.25: “The Forever War”

A great deal on one of the classic science-fiction books, the Kindle edition ofJoe Haldeman’s “The Forever War” is on sale for a limited time for just a quarter, that’s right $0.25, at amazon.com. This is a limited time promotion, but I do not know when it expires. It is a 294 page book. At this price, it is really a must-have for your digital reading collection!

December 5, 2016 Filed Under: media Tagged With: ,

Kindle First Choices for December 2016 are available

If you are a Prime member and a book fan, the start of a new month is extra special, because you get one more ebook for free, a pre-release one at that, as part of the Kindle First program. Non-Prime members can buy one of the six choices for $2. All these will be released to the general population on January 1st, in 2017.

Your choices for December 2016 are…

  • “Fate of Perfection (Finding Paradise Book 1)” by K.F. Breene (this one already has 41 customer reviews!)
  • “The Missing” by Caroline Eriksson, Tiina Nunnally in Psychological Suspense
  • “The Original Dream” by Nukila Amal, Linda Owens in Magical Realism
  • “Into the Thickening Fog” by Andrei Gelasimov, Marian Schwartz in Literary Fiction
  • “Sisters One, Two, Three” by Nancy Star in Contemporary Fiction
  • “Hope’s Peak (Harper and Lane)” by Tony Healey in Thrillers

kindle_first_december_2016

As usual, you don’t have to hurry and pick one right now. You have until December 31st to make your choice, and they are e-books, so they won’t “run out” of copies. IF none of them stands out, you can wait for 1-2 weeks until they get a lot more reviews, which can be helpful is figuring out what to avoid (more so than what to get) 🙂

December 1, 2016 Filed Under: media Tagged With: , , ,