Read an eBook Week

If you read my book review blog, you know that I'm pretty gung ho about ebooks these days.  I started reading them on my iPhone over the summer, and once I discovered this fall that I can now read library ebooks on my phone with Bluefire Reader, well, I've given up physical books almost altogether.  I don't love "real" books any less, but ebooks don't require any driving to pick up or return to the library, don't fine me if I'm late returning them, are never any heavier than my iPhone, are always with me, and can often be had for free when the publisher or author has a promotion.  Plus, I can turn the pages one-handed.  What more can you ask for?

But I digress.  This week is, apparently, Read an eBook Week, celebrating 40 years (?) of ebooks.  Forty years might be stretching the definition a bit, but hey, whatever gets the word out.

To celebrate, a bunch of websites are offering free and steeply discounted ebooks — click here for a list of sites offering free ebooks.  One of the most extensive offerings is at Smashwords, an ebook publisher for independent authors.  They have a list of free and discounted ebooks so long that I ran out of steam long before I found the end, but I did get a dozen or so free ebooks.

One interesting free ebook I downloaded was Are You Still Submitting Your Work to a Traditional Publisher? by Edward C. Patterson.  It's free with the code, until March 12th only, but it's normally pretty inexpensive — just 99 cents.  Adobe Digital Editions page counts aren't exact, but it's about 125 pages, and is presumably about e-publishing.  The ebooks ratings are quite good, which is how I found it (I was filtering by highest rated ebooks first).

Who here reads ebooks?