Read an E-Book Week!

This year, Read an E-Book Week is March 6-March 11. I certainly plan to read some e-books this week to celebrate :)

Wicked Lovely - free e-book

I mentioned several posts ago that Melissa Marr was releasing a free short story set in her Wicked Lovely universe as a 2-part e-book. As of yesterday, the first novel in that series, Wicked Lovely, is also being offered as a free e-book. You can currently get both parts of the "Stopping Time" short story and the free version of Wicked Lovely from the Harper Teen Melissa Marr site as well as the Amazon Kindle store and the B&N e-book store.

If you don't have a Kindle or a nook, you can read the version from the Harper Teen site on your computer. First you'll need to download and install Adobe Digital Editions BEFORE downloading the e-books from the Harper Teen site. As part of the Adobe Digital Editions install, you'll need to create an Adobe ID and password unless you already have one. Once you have ADE installed and authorized with a valid Adobe ID and password, THEN you can download Wicked Lovely and "Stopping Time" from the Harper Teen site; as with normal downloads, it will ask you if you want to save to your computer or open with - Adobe Digital Editions. You want to choose the option to open it in Adobe Digital Editions because this lets you authorize and read the book. You read it right in Adobe Digital Editions.

Here's the book trailer for it:

Free YA contemporary fantasy e-books

Now that I have an e-book reader, I have been on the lookout for good e-book deals.

In honor the upcoming release of Melissa Marr's newest YA release on 4/20, there are a few related free e-book releases.

You can already download part 1 of a new story ("Stopping Time") set in the same world as her upcoming book, and tomorrow you'll be able to download part 2. I'm not sure if these two parts make up a short story or a novella, but it's not a full-length novel from my understanding.

It looks like on 4/6, you'll also be able to download the first book in the series, Wicked Lovely, with some additional bonus content. The link above lets you download directly from the HarperTeen website, but you can also download from B&N website or amazon directly to either your nook or Kindle. The "Stopping Time" downloads show up as free in both places. I assume that on 4/6, amazon and B&N will show Wicked Lovely as free, even though currently it costs approx. $5.50.

I believe these are only going to be free for a limited time - probably only until Radiant Shadows release on 4/20 or shortly after. I've read the first three books in the series, and definitely those who enjoy darker, contemporary urban fantasy will probably enjoy these. They are very popular YA books right now and appeal to the same teens that might like Twilight, although a bit darker. I liked these better than Twilight, but honestly, I kind of hated Twilight. (Don't tell any teenagers this or I will probably lose any credibility as a cool librarian.)

For those without e-book readers, both amazon and B&N have Kindle/nook apps you can download onto your computer to let you read their e-books on the computer as well.

E-books

I decided to use part of my tax return this year to buy an e-book reader. After much research, I decided on the Barnes & Noble nook. Aside from the "E ink" technology that comes on most e-book readers these days, I wanted to be able to read PDF files for school (many of the articles we read are PDF) as well as read books for fun. I also like that the nook lets you change the battery and expand the storage with a memory card.

My nook arrived yesterday, but I didn't get a chance to play with it because it had to fully charge before first use. Because I don't have wireless internet at home, I hooked it up to my computer with the USB cable it came with, downloaded the latest software for it, and then used an open source e-book management software called calibre to load a few books onto it. Calibre allows you to convert e-books in various formats to many other file formats, and lets you optimize the output file for your specific e-reader device. I tried converting a few different files; I converted a free html e-book of short stories to EPUB format, a couple PDF files to EPUB format (the nook handles PDF, I just wanted to see if the conversion did anything), and even EPUB to EPUB, just to take out spaces between paragraphs. You can even use it to adjust margins and other formatting things on files to make them look best on whatever e-reader you have. So far, it seems like a pretty useful e-book manager.

I don't know how the wireless purchase of books from Barnes & Noble works, but I have 6 books on here, 5 free (mostly classics from Project Gutenberg and the short stories I mentioned) and one purchased from Book View Cafe. I also downloaded the Alice in Wonderland free screen saver from Barnes & Noble and put it on my nook.

After playing with it for a little while, I decided to make a protective cover for it. I bought a silicone skin for it and have some protective screen covers on the way, but I wanted something to protect it if I put it in my librarian bag or purse.

Here's what the nook likes like; I have the test guide for the Florida Teacher Certification Exam Educational Media Specialist PK-12 loaded on it.



And here's what my cover looks like. It's a different fabric, but sort of matches the fabrics I used to make my librarian bag. I used the thick cardboard from inside an old 3-ring binder to make the front and back cover hard, covered both in fleece for padding, then sewed the outside cover.


I haven't read more than a few pages on it, but I think it's going to work out well once I adjust to how the page turn makes the screen flash.