New Free Kindle Books + Newly-Discounted Ones Found by Forumners + Amzn specials + Other discussions (8/8/11)

ONGOING FREE PLUS DISCOUNTED KINDLE BOOKS DISCOVERED BY FORUM MEMBERS

After today, the forum alerts for temporarily free books as well as discussions of newly discounted Kindle books will be on a separate page.

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Amazon's own ongoing listing  - of LIMITED-TIME OFFERS Promos
  Amazon sorts these by Bestsellers first.
  I've added a separate sorting by Low-to-High pricing.

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Other forum threads on books that might interest some
  . What have been your favorite public domain books not so well known?
  . Best "Free" books you've read (many are no longer free, however).
  . Highly Recommended Books That I Didn't Like

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ONGOING UPDATES
This blog entry regularly changes the forum-topic-links below, updating them to the most recent forum recommendations, especially since the message threads are often difficult to find.  The dates are in Red to make them easier to see.  These will be kept for about 3 weeks (unless they're reported to be no longer free or discounted) and then scroll off.

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NOTABLE DISCOUNTED BOOKS
Am regularly pointing you, with this changing blog entry, to the latest messages on Kindle-customer recommendations for newly-found discounted Kindle books:
7/18-7/20, 7/20-7/21, 7/21-7/22, 7/23-7/25, 7/25-27, 7/27-29, 7/29-30, 7/31-8/2, 8/2-3, 8/4-6, 8/6-8, 8/8-9

  8/3 - Publisher Harper Perennial: sale of 20 titles for $20, for August
      reported by Emily Bronte.
  8/2 - Macmillan's Kane & Abel series, $2.99 is a popular entry.
  7/25 - Amelia Peabody, now all $4.44
  Many of the ones mentioned in June are still discounted.   While you're reading the message threads with links to the discounted Kindle books in them, Kindle customers will be adding new recommendations there for ones they've found while you're reading the thread.  I can check these daily and give a good starting point for the day.  It's been suggested (and I agree) that I remind people that on the first visit there they should go to Page 1 of the message thread (you can click on the number while there) and read the opening post by  RandomizeME, which includes

' This thread is NOT a book promotion thread for authors, or for people to post about indies. (And it's not for posting freebies either.) This thread is to post discounts and price drops that readers find for books from publishers." '

  Amazon made a separate forum for "Meet Our Authors" where authors can talk with customers about their books.
  Some here will just follow the discounted-books forum thread daily.

  On a couple of posts there, I saw that people had seen a couple of books drop even further right after they bought them, partly due to people noting that the two were lower at B&N's sales, and Amazon has given (with no problem, they say) $credits on those further drops in that short time.

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THE KINDLE COMMUNITY FORUM'S NEW-FREE-BOOKS RECOMMENDED BY OTHER CUSTOMERS
(Mainly contemporary books) - Main Finder: Happy Reader "Joyce"
  These are almost daily, and I'll link you to these also, so you can quickly see the latest that other Kindle owners have found from various sources.  Will keep them here for about 3 weeks.

  Here are: July 19, July 19 - afternoon, July 19 - add'l, July 20, July 21, July 21 - afternoon, July 22, July 24, July 25, July 26, July 26 - afternoon, July 26 - late, July 27, July 27 - afternoon, July 28, July 28 - evening, July 29, July 29 - midmorning, July 29 - afternoon, July 30, July 31, Aug 1, Aug 1 - Evening, Aug 2, Aug 3, Aug 4, Aug 4 - afternoon, Aug 5, Aug 5 - Evening, Aug 5 - Very Late Evening, Aug 6, Aug 6 (later), Aug 7, Aug 7 - Evening, Aug 8, Aug 8 - evening.

Additional info for the dates above:
  Customer "A" at the forum reminds everyone that the "Vook" series includes some "enhanced" books with video and says those are listed for iPads and iPhone apps and not for the Kindle e-reader, and they tend to have file sizes of 100-500 megs (an average regular Kindle book is less than 1 meg).
  Luckily, some Vook books are regular and not "enhanced" books.

  July 19 - 1 book (Innocent Monster), 9 books (afternoon), 4 add'l in horror/fantasy
  July 20 - 3 books
  July 21 - 6 books, 2 books (afternoon)
  July 22 - 3 books
  July 24 - 10 books + 31 Vook Kindle-app books w/Audio/Video content for Apple devices
  July 25 - 6 books
  July 26 - 4 books (2 "Enhanced", for iDevice apps), 1 book (afternoon) Children's, 1 book (late) Christian.
  July 27 - 1 book (1st of Fey series), 14 books + 1 game (late morning)
  July 28 - 1 book (morning), 10 more-diverse books (evening)
  July 29 - 7 books, including Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith #7
  July 29 - 7 more books (mid-morning), 14 books (afternoon)
  July 30 - 1 book (short mystery-thriller)
  July 31 - 3 books
  Aug 1 - 20 books (some repeats + some with good reviews), 10 more (evening)
  Aug 2 - 5 books
  Aug 3 - 4 books
  Aug 4 - 23 books (a.m.), 2 books (afternoon)
  Aug 5 - 14 books (a.m.), 1 book (evening), 9 books (very late evening)
  Aug 6 - 3 books (a.m.), 1 book (later)
  Aug 7 - 4 books, 1 book (evening), the 2nd book of 3, for
      The Days and Months We Were First Born-Family By Fate is back after being free only a few hours last week, but it's $2.99 now.  Book 1 is still free
  Aug 8 - 8 books (a.m.), 19 books (evening)


  The main (speedy) free-book finder is Happy Reader "Joyce", and she lists them each day and is the originator of that regular topic thread.
  While you're reading the latest there, other customers and Joyce tend to find more that day.


ONGOING, NEW FREE KINDLE BOOKS - MANY TEMPORARILY FREE (mostly contemporary)
On the usual free Kindle books, the links in the box below will give you most of them with several sorting methods, and the listings are usually limited, to eliminate previews, chapters-only, and single short stories to save people time (although some of the lists linked to in the box will point to the most popular free Kindle books and you'll see some short-stories there), so they are doable when short on time.

  Some of the free contemporary Kindle books are growing by 30 to 70 free books per day and it's not practical to list them all, and I must say, there are free ones which aren't of the highest potential as seen in the writing just for the product descriptions!), but you can see those books in lists via the links-box at the bottom of this and other blog articles here and can decide quickly -- with Amazon summary product info -- which might be worth trying.

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For daily free ebooks, check the following links:

Temporarily-free books - Non-classics - USA: by: NEW:  June  July  Aug 2011    Publication Date   Late-listed    Bestselling   High-ratings UK: PubDate   Popular What is 3G? and "WiFi"?       Battery Care Highly-rated under $1,  Newest: $1-$2, $2-$3

Most Popular Free K-Books U.S. & Int'l (NOT UK):    Top 100 free UK-Only:    Top 100 free USEFUL for your Kindle (U.S. only, currently):   99c Notepad 1.1,   99c Calculator,   99c Calendar,   99c Converter

Kindle 3's   (UK: Kindle 3's)   K3 Special ($114)   K3-3G Special ($139)   DX Graphite

Tips for new Kindlers on Mother's Day. Free Kindle books. Battery use.

Mother's Day greeting at left, is from the Manhasset Library.

Since many will be opening new Kindles today, I thought I'd mention a couple of things that can help with finding free books, to give it a workout, and do a reminder on tips for getting the most out of the Kindle battery.
  At the top of this blog's reference column, you can always find free books available at the moment (some are temporarily free due to promos).

Temporarily-free books - Non-classics - USA: by: NEW: Last 30+ days  May 2011    Publication Date   Late-listed    Bestselling   High-ratings UK: PubDate   Popular

Most Popular Free K-Books U.S. & Int'l (NOT UK):    Top 100 free UK-Only:    Top 100 free USEFUL for your Kindle (U.S. only, for now):   99c Notepad for Kindle,   99c CalendarPro

You can also get an idea of other sources for over a million free books as well as get some pre-set links for low-cost Kindle books, at the Free Kindle Books guide here

SPECIAL BOOK DEALS TODAY - temporary promos
The Amazon Kindle Forums often has message threads on discounted books that include some free books.

  Yesterday's included a tip on Kindle books from Rosettabooks that have tie-ins with movies, available at $0.00 today.  I've no idea for how long.  These include: A Passage to India, The Graduate, Midnight Cowboy, and others.

  There are also some Dr. Vook TextVooks available for $0.00 today BUT BEWARE of any that are animated, with audio/video, as those features work ONLY on the iPad, iPhone, or iPod (Touch) -- they don't work on the Kindle or even the Kindle for PC app either.

    However, the NON-animated TextVooks are extremely "brief" (maybe 15-20 pages only) and said to be good 1/2-hour refreshers for some.  For $0, those may be worth a download for the Kindle.  I have to believe the product descriptions are thoroughly tongue-in-cheek, by a cheeky professor who says outfront that these are written by graduate students.  The "Did you know?" boxes can be fun, and the TextVooks are like more-filled-out outlines.

More from The Complete Works Collection
The blog entry just before this had to do with the Complete Works Collection offerings for $2.99.

  What I hadn't noticed among the sets was the Harvard Classics set, which my family actually had when I was growing up.  A lot of families did.  They must have been sold by radio or door to door.  This is quite a set though.

TIP 1 - for using Table of Contents to get to Chapters and back
I've read that some who jump to a chapter have felt that they must then page through until they can get the next chapter or another one they want.

  The trick is that if you want to go back to the LAST place you were when you 'jumped' by clicking a link, you just press the "Back" button and you're back where you were before the 'jump.'  This works for footnotes too, generally.

  For those who bought Shakespeare sets, some families might be interested in a not-free but much-praised Shakespeare GLOSSARY.  Warning: it's $12 but many feel it's well worth it while trying to read that old English :-)

BATTERY LIFE
The Kindle is known for its long battery life, but certain functions use a lot more battery power than others, and one involves a process that's a part of putting new books on your Kindle (UK: K3).

  Indexing - The Kindle allows you to do a Search on the entire device to find a key word or phrase that may occur in any book or magazine on the Kindle.

  In order to do that, the Kindle "indexes" all new text material that is placed on it, which means it makes lists of key words found in each so that they can be found when you decide to do a Search, either within a book (commonly done) or of all the text on the Kindle (less common and it takes awhile to get search results but this can be very useful).

  That indexing takes a LOT of battery life.  New Kindles seem to use a lot more juice than people had expected, and that's because they are usually getting a lot of new books on them, with a lot of indexing to be done.

  Sometimes, a book might not finish indexing for some reason, and that can cause slowdowns.
  TIP 2 - If you think the Kindle is being a bit slow and you want to check to see if a book has not completely finished indexing but should have completed (a day later, say), do a SEARCH on a nonsense word, such as "xwzq" and the search will end without finding that (normally!).  However, if a book has not completed indexing, you'll get a message to that effect.

  It shouldn't take more than an hour or 4 to do indexing, but I've seen that people put hundreds of books on right away, or even a thousand, in a couple of cases.  That will take quite a bit of time to index.

  If a book never finishes indexing (after a day or two), it probably became corrupted during a downloading session due to weak reception with the WiFi or 3G. I'd delete it and re-download it.

  TIP 3 - Plug in the charger when you're putting a LOT of books on it, because you can read while the device is charging.  That way, the indexing won't use battery power, and you won't be surprised by the battery being unusually low after you've added a great many books.  A few books, no big difference -- but as I say, some just download or transfer hundreds right away.

BATTERY ADVISORIES FROM KINDLE CUSTOMER SERVICE FORUM MESDAGES
I collected the ones that were made over a year ago, and they still hold.

  Essentially, no battery power is used for a screensaver/screensleeper or for any page of content, until something changes in that page. Kindle Team recommends you just let the Kindle go to sleep rather than power it down.  It takes more power to turn it on often, actually.

  TIP 4 - When you're through reading for a while, CLOSE the book by pressing the "Home" button.  This records the last-page you read so that you return to that page when you next open the book (or when you next open the book but you're using your smartphone which is sync'd with the Kindle - a nice feature).  Closing the book by pressing the "Home" button also saves, to a special file, your highlighting and notes, so it's important to do that.

  The type of battery in the Kindle shouldn't be brought down to Zero.  Amazon recommends you not let it get below 25% or so.  Leaving enough there prevents problems.  There's no harm in topping off, because there's no "memory" effect as with the older type of batteries.

  Read much more in the Battery Advisories from Amazon Kindle Customer Service.

That should do it!