Chapter 3. Finding Content
The books available in the Kindle Store are only a small fraction of the great books available for your Kindle, many of which are free to download. One of the greatest things about a Kindle is how easy it is to rediscover (or discover for the first time!) classic novels.
Kindle books use a kind of file called Mobipocket. Amazon customized the file type a little bit so that it could add copy protection. However, you can also read unprotected PDF files, HTML files, Microsoft Word documents, and text files on your Kindle.
Note
Microsoft Word documents can be read on a Kindle after converting them. Conversion of these files is covered in Chapter 4, “Managing Your Kindle Content.”
The most convenient source of content for your Kindle is the Kindle Store, especially if you are in an area with Whispernet service. You can browse the store and purchase books on the Kindle. As you soon see, you can download books from other sources directly to the Kindle as well, but the presentation in the Kindle Store is second to none.
One more advantage to the Kindle Store is that any book you buy from the Kindle Store is easily available via Archived Items on your Kindle. If you delete a book you purchased from the Kindle Store, you can copy it back to your Kindle easily. The Whispersync feature is also available only on books purchased from the Kindle Store.
Note
I say “buy” books from the Kindle Store, but there are always free books available in the Kindle Store, and many of them are newly released novels.
Now look at different sources of Kindle content available to you, beginning with Amazon’s own Kindle Store.
Using Amazon’s Kindle Store
One of the best features of the Kindle is it offers immediate access to the largest e-book store in the world: the Kindle Store. The Kindle Store offers many features other than the capability to simply buy books. You can
• Get free samples of content to read.
• Subscribe to a free trial of a magazine, newspaper, or blog.
• Download free books.
• Add books to a Save for Later list.
• Read reviews of Kindle content.
• Write reviews of Kindle content.
Accessing the Kindle Store
You can access the Kindle Store a couple of ways. From the Home screen menu, selecting Shop in Kindle Store takes you to the Kindle Storefront. However, my favorite way to access the Kindle Store easily from any screen on the Kindle is to press Alt+Home.
Note
You can also search the Kindle Store from any search screen. Searching on the Kindle is covered in more detail later in this chapter in the “Using Search on the Kindle” section.
The Kindle Storefront features links for browsing Kindle content, Kindle Top Sellers, New and Noteworthy Books, National Best Seller List, Kindle Daily Post, and other recommendations for you.
Tip
The Kindle Daily Post features Kindle-specific news and information. This is often the place where you first find out about special Kindle content such as free books and other promotions. Check it often.
When you select a book, several links are available to you.
• Book Description: A description of the book displays next to the cover. If the entire description doesn’t fit on the screen, a More link appears next to the description.
• Buy: Purchases the current book using Amazon’s 1-click ordering.
• Try a Sample: Downloads a free sample of the selected book to your Kindle. The amount of content included in the free sample is determined by the book’s publisher and can vary from a portion of a chapter to several chapters.
• Add to Wish List: Saves the selected book to your Save for Later list, which you can access by selecting Your Wish List Items from the menu while in the Kindle Store.
• Customer Reviews: You can read reviews written for a book by selecting the Customer Reviews link. While reading reviews, a Write a Review link appears at the top of the screen so that you can review the book. However, it is more convenient to write a review from your computer than from the Kindle.
You also get a list of other books that were purchased by Amazon customers who purchased the selected book.
When you select a newspaper or magazine, instead of the option to try a sample, you have the option to subscribe with a 14-day free trial. However, you can have a free trial to a particular subscription item only once. If you cancel your subscription, you are not eligible for a free trial of that particular item at a later date.
In addition, you can subscribe to Internet blogs on the Kindle. You also have the option of a 14-day free trial for blogs available in the Kindle Store, and considering that you can access blogs free on the Kindle, it’s a good idea to carefully sample a blog before paying for it.
Note
Magazines, newspapers, and blogs that you purchase from the Kindle Store are only available on a Kindle device. They are not available on the Kindle application for other devices.
→ For more information on reading blogs free on the Kindle, see “Reading Blogs on the Kindle,” in Chapter 5.
Note
If you don’t want to subscribe to a newspaper or magazine, you can buy a single issue by clicking Buy Current Issue. This option is not available for blogs.
You can obtain a refund for content you purchase in the Kindle Store as long as you ask for the refund within 7 days of the original purchase. Simply click the Contact Us link on the right side of any Amazon page, or browse to https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/contact-us/kindle-help.html. (Note this is an HTTPS address.) After Amazon issues a refund for Kindle content, the item is removed from Your Media Library and from your Kindle.
The Kindle and Digital Rights Management (DRM)
Quite a bit of misinformation has spread through the Internet regarding the Kindle’s use of Digital Rights Management (DRM) for Kindle Store content. According to many people, the Kindle requires wireless to be turned on periodically so that it can check the license on content purchased from the Kindle Store.
I spoke to Amazon about DRM and the Kindle, and it confirmed that after you purchase an item from the Kindle Store, you can read that item on your Kindle as often as you want without ever turning on Kindle’s wireless service.
Finding Books from Other Sources
In addition to purchasing books from Amazon, you also can get books from many other sources. Most of the books you can get from other sources are free and work perfectly on the Kindle. However, the formatting in some of these books might not be quite as polished as what you get from the Kindle Store.
The following sites provide books that you can use on your Kindle. Although there are illegal sources of free content for your Kindle, all the sites detailed here are 100% legal.
Note
A great way to organize and manage eBooks from third-party sources is to use Calibre, a free application you can install on your PC, Mac, or Linux computer. Chapter 4 covers Calibre in detail.
Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.org/catalog/) has a catalog of free books available that you can read on your Kindle. Books in the Project Gutenberg catalog are in the public domain, meaning they are free of charge.
To use Project Gutenberg books on your Kindle, you need to download the book to a computer and then transfer it to your Kindle via a USB cable or by emailing it to your Kindle account. You can use the Kindle’s web browser to access the Project Gutenberg site, but it’s incredibly painful to try to browse and download books on the Kindle.
→ For more information on transferring files to your Kindle via USB, see “Transferring Files To and From Your Kindle,” in Chapter 4.
Project Gutenberg offers e-books in text format and some in HTML format. Either of these formats works on the Kindle. You can use the convenient Magic Catalog of Project Gutenberg to easily access Project Gutenberg titles, and because the Magic Catalog is in MOBI format, it opens in Kindle for PC or Kindle for Mac for easy reading on your computer. You can access the Project Gutenberg Magic Catalog at www.freekindlebooks.org/MagicCatalog/MagicCatalog.mobi.
manybooks.net
manybooks.net (www.manybooks.net) is a website that provides a large catalog of free books. Many of the books available on manybooks.net are from Project Gutenberg, but the site also offers other texts distributed by the authors or publishers as free books in the public domain.
The manybooks.net site has a couple of major advantages for Kindle users. First, it offers the iPhone View (www.manybooks.net/m/), and this view is perfect for the Kindle. Second, it provides books in the Kindle’s native file format. These two benefits together mean you can browse and search the manybooks.net website from your Kindle and download books directly to your Kindle. Simply browse to www.manybooks.net/m/ and select the Kindle format when you are downloading a book.
MobileRead
MobileRead (www.mobileread.com) has a wide assortment of e-books in MobiPocket format as PRC files. You can download these files directly to your Kindle either by browsing the MobileRead website on your Kindle or by downloading the files and transferring them to your Kindle later.
MobileRead also makes a guide available that lists all Kindle-compatible books available from its site. You can download this guide at www.mobileread.com/mobiguide. Just as with the Project Gutenberg Magic Catalog, the MobileRead guide is a MOBI file and can open in Kindle for PC or Kindle for Mac for easy reading and downloading of books.
Planet eBook
Planet eBook (www.planetebook.com) provides access to a small selection of classic literature in unprotected PDF format.
Baen Free Library
If you’re a science fiction fan, you’ll love the Baen Free Library located at www.baen.com/library/. This site has a large selection of free science fiction books in Kindle format. The website doesn’t work well when you’re browsing directly on the Kindle, so you probably want to download the files and then transfer them to your Kindle.
Feedbooks
Feedbooks (www.feedbooks.com) offers a wide variety of free books, many of which are classics no longer under copyright.
The easiest way to download books from Feedbooks is to download the Feedbooks Kindle Guide from www.feedbooks.com/kindleguide. Download this file directly to your Kindle, and you can then browse the Feedbooks library from the web browser on the Kindle and download books directly to the Kindle.
Tip
You can also download the Kindle Guide on your computer and it automatically opens in Kindle for PC or Kindle for Mac.
Feedbooks offers another unique feature for Kindle users. Feedbooks can turn any RSS feed into a .mobi file that you can read on your Kindle. Most of these files automatically include a link at the beginning of the file that updates the file with the latest content from the RSS feed.
Note
RSS feeds are offered by many websites and enable you to easily subscribe to content on the Internet. For more information on RSS, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/rss.
If you need assistance with using your Kindle with Feedbooks, visit www.feedbooks.com/help/kindle for walkthroughs.
Fictionwise
Fictionwise (www.fictionwise.com) offers a large assortment of books. Contrary to the name, Fictionwise offers both fiction and nonfiction. Some of the books from Fictionwise are free, and it does offer books in Kindle format.
The Fictionwise site is not suitable for browsing directly on the Kindle.
FreeTechBooks
FreeTechBooks (www.freetechbooks.com) is a repository of free textbooks related to computer science and programming. The selection isn’t large, but the site does offer books you often can’t find at other sites.
Most of the books hosted by FreeTechBooks are in PDF format and require conversion before reading on the Kindle, unless you own a Kindle DX.
Other Sources
You can often find other sources of e-books by searching using Google’s book search (books.google.com) or by searching the Internet for e-book sites. You should make sure that books you download are in the proper format for the Kindle. If a site doesn’t offer a book explicitly for the Kindle, you can use Mobipocket or Mobi format as long as the book isn’t encoded with DRM.
Tip
Sometimes books are offered for free by publishers. When this happens, Amazon often provides the same books for free on its Kindle Store. In such cases, I think you’re better off downloading the free book from Amazon because it is stored in Amazon’s Your Media Library feature, so you can always retrieve it even after you delete it from your Kindle.
If you would like more information on finding free books for the Kindle, including a discussion of the various file formats available on the Internet, check out Bufo Calvin’s book Free Books for Your Kindle. You can get Bufo’s book in the Kindle Store.
Creating Your Own Kindle Content
One of the most useful ways to take advantage of your Kindle is to create your own content. I’m not talking about writing your own books but using the Kindle’s support for basic text files to store all kinds of information that you’d like to keep at your fingertips.
Create a text file on your computer that contains important information, and then transfer the file to your Kindle.
Tip
If you’re going to store sensitive information on your Kindle, it’s a good idea to set a device password so that unauthorized people can’t gain access to your information.
Address Book
Save a text file with your addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses. Name the file Address Book, and it is listed close to the top of your Home screen when sorting by title.
If you want to take this tip to the next level, export your contact list in your email or contact list program as a text file (most applications enable this), and transfer it to your Kindle so that you have all your contact information available with a minimum amount of work.
Use the Kindle’s search features to easily locate someone in your address book.
Shopping Lists
Save your shopping list to a text file and store it on your Kindle. It helps you to avoid forgetting items while you’re at the store.
Your Medications
One of the questions doctors always ask is whether you are on any medications. If you take a lot of medications, it can be hard to remember all of them.
If you save a text file on your Kindle with your medications and your medical history, you can just pull up that file and hand your Kindle to the doctor or nurse instead of having to recite all your information. This helps to communicate accurate information and prevents other patients in adjoining exam rooms from overhearing your medical history.
This tip is also helpful when you need to relay medical information for children or pets.
Your Travel Itinerary
When you travel, you often have to keep track of a lot of information such as hotel reservation numbers, rental car confirmation number, flight information, phone numbers, frequent customer numbers, and so on. By saving all this information in a text file, you have that information right at your fingertips when you need it.
If you’re traveling by car or truck, you can keep a file that includes all the interesting things you want to see along the way.
Study Notes
If you’re a student, save your study notes to a text file on your Kindle so that you can study for that upcoming exam any time you have a few free minutes.
Meeting Notes
If you belong to an organization that generates meeting minutes, you can store those meeting minutes on your Kindle, so you can quickly access what happened in past meetings by searching the previous meeting minutes right on your Kindle.
Inventory List
Keep an inventory list of items on your Kindle. The following are just a few examples:
• Keep an inventory of items and box numbers when you move.
• If you are a collector, keep a list of all your items on your Kindle. It’s not only helpful for reference, but also helpful for insurance purposes.
• Keep a list of your CDs and DVDs on your Kindle, so you don’t unintentionally buy a duplicate while shopping at your favorite music or video store.
• Keep a list of your Kindle books. That way, you don’t unintentionally buy a book you already own. Because the Kindle has no way to let you know which books were purchased from Amazon and are backed up in Your Media Library, note those books in your file as well.
If you’d like to share your own ideas with other Kindle users, feel free to email me at [email protected]. Your idea might even be used in the next edition of this book. (Naturally, I’ll be glad to give you credit if I use your idea.)
Using Search on the Kindle
After you download a library of books to your Kindle, you soon discover that finding content also involves searching content that’s already on your Kindle. Fortunately, the Kindle has an excellent search feature to help with that task.
When you add content to your Kindle, it immediately starts indexing that content. That means the Kindle starts to build an internal database of all the information in that content. You can quickly perform searches against all the content in your Kindle, and search results are returned almost instantaneously.
To search on the Kindle, type the text you want to search for from the Home screen; then press right on the 5-way, and select Search My Items. If you want to search the Internet, press right on the 5-way again to reveal other search options. Figure 3.1 shows the search options available after pressing right on the 5-way.
Figure 3.1. Searching the Kindle.
• Store: Searches Amazon’s Kindle store for the word or phrase entered.
• Google: Opens the Basic Web browser and conducts a Google search for the word or phrase entered.
→ For more information on using the Basic Web browser, see “Browsing the Web on the Kindle,” in Chapter 5.
• Wikipedia: Opens the Web browser and conducts a search on www.wikipedia.org for the word or phrase entered.
• Dictionary: Searches the Kindle’s dictionary for the word or phrase entered.
• Go To: Launches the Web browser and enters the word or phrase entered into the address bar. For example, enter www.amazon.com to browse to the Amazon website.
Tip
If you prefer, you can limit your search to a particular book or subscription item by opening the item before initiating your search. Even when searching within a specific item, you can still increase the scope of your search by pressing the 5-way to the right and selecting My Items, Store, Google, Wikipedia, or Dictionary.
When you search using My Items, search results display each individual item in which the search term is found. To the left of each item is a number indicating how many times the search term is found in that item. To see each occurrence of the search term in any particular item, move the cursor to that item, and press the 5-way.
By moving the cursor to the top of the screen and pressing the 5-way to the right, you can select how search results are sorted. By default, they are sorted by relevance. (In other words, the item with the most occurrences of the search term is listed first.) However, you can choose to sort by Most Recent First, Title, or Author, as shown in Figure 3.2.
Figure 3.2. Sorting search results.
You can also search on your Kindle by selecting Search from the Home screen menu. After entering your search term, select where you want to search, as shown in Figure 3.3.
Figure 3.3. The Search screen.
As you’ve seen, Kindle owners have a wide array of content available from many different sources. Much of this content is offered in a format natively supported by the Kindle, but some require conversion before you can read it on your Kindle. As the amount of content on your Kindle grows, learning how to manage that content becomes important.
In the next chapter, you learn how to manage your Kindle content and how to convert content for use on your Kindle.