Ravind Budhiraja, a US-based Web developer, has read a bunch of e-books. “I have the very first Sony e-reader, which I am looking to get rid of. Not because I don’t like e-readers, but because I’ve been drooling over the Nook.”
The Nook is Barnes & Noble’s latest e-reader, a sleek, grey slab priced at $259. It joins a range of e-readers, including the better-known Kindle from Amazon.com (priced at Rs 17,000-18,000). Users can visit the Website of the respective seller and download, usually for around $10, the full text of a book onto their e-reader. With the addition of a memory card, the Nook can hold over 17,000 titles.
Naturally, the first appeal of such gadgets and e-books in general is for tech-lovers and readers who cannot carry around or store conventional books. But e-books can also be read on iPhones and BlackBerrys. One need not be a techie to enjoy e-books — any computer will do. And, although you will have to pay for the e-books of a recent release or for books still in copyright, there are hundreds and thousands of titles available free, usually because the copyright has expired. These include most classic literature, everything from the Rig Veda to Mark Twain.
There are other, newer kinds of books distributed over the Internet — such as audiobooks, vooks (books with video elements) and even comic books. Here are some suggestions on where to find e-books.
For e-reader users, it makes sense to use the seller’s website to find e-books in the right format. “The official Sony bookstore,” Budhiraja says, “doesn’t have that great a selection, but you should find most current bestsellers on it. It is, however, a really good source for classic stuff. By buying their e-reader, I am eligible for 100 free downloads, and the entire works of Edgar Allan Poe count as one download, so you are never short of reading material for a long journey.”
One of the oldest sources of out-of-copyright e-books is www.Gutenberg.org, the website of the Gutenberg Project. Here you can find 30,000 free titles in different formats, and up to a lakh with associated sites. You can sign up on Distributed Proofreaders, www.pgdp.net, to offer your services as a volunteer proof-reader to check e-texts.
Other good sources are university websites — mainly Western, though some Indian university sites also offer digitised texts. An example is Onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu. Then there are eager netizens who help make books available, see for example www.Pagebypagebooks.com.
For truly hands-free reading, you need an audiobook. Audio versions of many titles are available on retailers’ websites. Bestselling author Alexander McCall Smith has two novels in free audio versions on www.Telegraph.co.uk, the newspaper website. For free audio versions of public-domain books, visit www.LibriVox.org, where you can listen and volunteer — you even have podcast options.
Lastly, Web comics. Despite their huge fan following, it’s not easy to find free comics online — most are still in copyright. Fans recommend peer-to-peer file sharing, through tools like BitTorrent and IRC chat — though this is not strictly legal unless you also own a purchased copy.
