Freeman by Clare London

[Nigel Gordon]

This is a well-written story involving a runaway eighteen-year-old, a rather seedy businessman George, and some questionable business activities. Add to this mix the return of Freeman to the city, who used to George's right-hand man and life starts to get complicated. Especially given that Freeman's late sexual partner is now George's right-hand man. The story is available on Amazon for Kindle and is currently on offer for free. Be careful though, after reading it I found myself buying some more Clare London stories.

[Bruin Fisher]

How wonderful to read this here. Thanks for posting Nigel!

Clare London is a great writer - and a friend of mine, so I can't claim to be unbiased. But I can highly recommend her books, for instance...:

A Good Neighbour
A Twist and Two Balls
Chase the Ace
Romancing the Wrong Twin
Romancing the Undercover Millionaire
How the Other Half Lives
The Accidental Baker

[Trab]

You shouldn't let your admiration for her writing affect your friendship. (chortle, snigger) Bias works in two directions. 😈

 

I've never bought (rented?) books online, from any of the various sources, and don't know how it works. Can someone explain it to me, simply? Does one need a dedicated reader for the various types, or are there apps to use on an iPad, and would that be one app or several? What are the various outlets to acquire the different books? Are they listed by category/genre? Plus any other information that is relevant, please.

[Bruin Fisher]

Okay, Trab I'll do my best, although others here might be more knowledgeable than me.

E-books are just books that exist as computer files rather than paper pages. I suppose a document in Word or other word processor format could be an e-book, but there are a number of file formats specially designed for e-books. In the same way that Word document files are identifiable by the suffix on their filename such as letter.doc or story.docx, e-book suffixes (suffices?) are:

.epub - used by NOOK readers and SONY readers and Apple iPad

.mobi - used by Amazon Kindle readers and Fire tablets

.azw3 - used by Amazon Kindle readers and Fire tablets, usually with DRM, which is copy protection

There are lots of other less-used file formats.

You can buy an e-book reader, and then over time purchase a collection of e-books to read on that device, which is I think what most people do. The disadvantage of this approach is that if and when that e-book reader becomes obsolete, you might lose access to your books. And you can't easily switch to another brand of reader. Many people buy and use the Amazon Kindle reader, and buy their e-books from the Amazon Kindle store. These books are almost invariably encrypted with DRM (Digital Rights Management) which means you can't read the book on anything except your own Kindle or the Kindle app, installed on your own computer or tablet.

For this reason I generally fight shy of buying DRM-encrypted e-books. Many, but not all e-books are available from multiple sources. If you buy direct from the publisher you can generally buy your e-books in whatever format suits you best, un-encrypted. I buy all mine in .epub format, but I'm sure .mobi would work just as well. You can still read these books on e-book readers, but there are also free software applications for all computer platforms which allow you to read your e-books on whatever device you prefer to use. There is also a rather wonderful e-book manager called Calibre, available for Windows, Mac and Linux, which not only allows you to catalogue your e-books but also allows you to convert them from one file format to another (so long as they're not DRM-encrypted). I use Calibre for my e-book library. It comes with its own reader application, which is simple but works well. I read my e-books on my laptop computer, which I know wouldn't suit everyone but it works fine for me.

Why not have a go and see how you get on? Publishers from whom you can buy un-encrypted e-books include:

Dreamspinner Press

Riptide Publishing

Calibre is downloadable from:

Calibre Download page

I believe the Apple iPad comes with a very good e-book reader. If you use an Android tablet, one of many readers available from the Google Play Store is Moon+Reader.

If you want any suggestions of authors you might want to try, just post here with an idea of the genre you're interested in (historical, modern, whodunnit, cozy romance, hot erotica, whatever) and I'll make some suggestions and I'm sure others will chip in too.

There is a trend among authors to self-publish, and those books are often just as good and worth reading as those from established publishers. The self-published books are likely to be available only on Amazon, though - and that generally means DRM encryption. There is a way around that, and if you're interested, let me know and I'll post separately on the subject.

Hope this helps!

 

[Nigel Gordon]

Trab

I tend to use an Amazon Kindle e-reader to read books on. Basically because it is small and fits easily into my pocket, so I can carry it with me to read on the bus or train. I also have the Amazon Kindle app on most of my devices, my phone, my tablet, my iMac and both my Windows and Linux laptops. All my Amazon sourced books are available to me on all my devices. I can also put up books that I get from other sources, to my Amazon library, though I usually have to convert them to epub format using Calibre first.

Regards

Nigel

[colinian]

Like Nigel, I read using the Kindle app which is available (free!!!) for every device I have (PC, laptop, LG Android phone, Samsung Android tablet). I can start reading on one device and it syncs across all of my other devices where I can continue reading from the point I left off. I can have two books (or more) open at the same time; I use this primarily for technical texts like having an advanced Photoshop book and a Lightroom book both open at the same time and switch back-and-forth as I'm learning about something new. I can put bookmarks in books so I can reference topics (no dog-eared corners like in a printed book). I can search for words or phrases. I can highlight sections of text (and remove the highlight from something with one click). I can look up obscure words I don't know and find the definition in the dictionary.

I still buy printed books – sometimes. Many technical books aren't available as ebooks. Same with most textbooks. When I was in college I constantly complained about the unavailability of textbooks in ebook format. Whatever.

Colin 

 

 

[Merkin]

Trab:

  Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org/ ) offers over 59,000 free eBooks. Choose among free epub and Kindle eBooks, download them or read them online. They state  'You will find the world's great literature here, with focus on older works for which U.S. copyright has expired.' There is no charge.

A number of other sites offer free ebooks, although many have very specialized lists.  Google ‘free ebooks’ and you will find quite a few choices to explore.