The employee who bought the Kindles for our retirement community retired the end of December. The Kindles were her dream/vision, and my husband worked with her and the development officer to apply for a grant. By default, my husband and I have inherited the job of selecting books for the Paperwhites and loading them to 4 devices. Since we have no budgeted monies, only donated funds and a small amount of a foundation grant left from the initial purchase of the Kindles can be utilized. It is amazing how quickly one can blow thru funds buying ebooks. The best-sellers especially are only 4 or 5 dollars less than the print version. We needed to find a way to identify free books for the Kindles besides the classics.
With this organized web site we now can do a categorized search for newly offered free books. Mind you, these are not new books, but ones now being offered for no cost and usually only for a short time. A lot of the titles are by unknown or lesser authors, but some are quite well known. For example, for Christian fiction, I have found works by Lynn Austin, Dee Henderson, Jane Kirkpatrick.
We were missing book 1 of Austin’s Refiner’s Fire series. It popped up for free. Now if only we can get the residents to switch from print to digital. Not many are willing to try yet. Little by little, we nudge them with the carrot of a “missing series book” available to them only on the Kindles, not on the library shelves.
The freebie list changes daily. A few items stay on for several days, but mostly it is a whole different bunch each day. I am checking regularly but not necessarily every day. I only have so much time to devote to library matters. Rounding up the 4 devices so the new items can be loaded is a struggle. Takes less than a few minutes to load, but we do have to have the physical device in hand to access the wireless connection. It is tough to keep track of which device is up-to-date. We do not circulate the e-readers. That is done by the front desk personnel, and they also are the ones who charge them up when the batteries get low. It takes many hours to recharge the battery. That is a problem for folks because if they want to read several books on the device and keep track of where they left off, they have to wait for the device to be recharged which only happens during working hours Monday thru Friday. Not like owning your own device and letting it charge overnight.
What sites can you suggest for us to find freebies for the Kindles?
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