1. Look for big deals on the big three. You can now buy an Amazon Kindle, a Barnes & Noble Nook or a Sony Reader for $150 or less. Plus, if you were going to buy a tablet computer anyway, the Apple iPad ($500) and Motorola Xoom ($600) make excellent e-readers. 2. Read the small print. Some low-cost smartphones make decent e-readers. But you’ll need e-reading software. Both Amazon and Barnes & Noble offer free apps to download for most major mobile devices.
3. No bargains on best-sellers. Most current titles cost $10 to $15 — less than a hardcover edition and comparable to the cost of a trade paperback. You can find older titles that will set you back $5 or less, but to find free e-books, you’ll have to work a little. Kindle users can browse the Top 100 Free eBooks list on Amazon.com or type “free Kindle books” in the Amazon search window. Barnes & Noble has a similar freebie page for Nook users on its website. Sony also has a free section for Reader fans, plus Sony has teamed up with Google to offer more than 1 million free e-books that are off copyright, which you can read on a PC as well. Project Gutenberg (gutenberg.org), Google Books, Free-eBooks.net and Mediabistro’s free e-books page (mediabistro.com/ebooknewser/category/free-ebooks) are also good resources.
4. Not all readers are created equal. You can’t read a Kindle book on a competing device unless you download a Kindle app. And until recently, Kindle owners could download titles from Google eBooks’ immense library only in PDF form. But a new service, calibre-ebook.com, allows Kindle users to convert Google Books in ePub, an industry-standard format, to work on their devices. Apple, Barnes & Noble and Sony already support ePub.
5. Sharing e-books is tricky. You may lend a Kindle book only once, for 14 days, to another Kindle user, assuming the publisher permits the book to be borrowed. The Nook has a similar, one-time, two-week lending policy. New sites that let you borrow e-books from complete strangers are springing up, such as BookLending.com, eBookFling.com and Lendle (lendle.me). The 14-day restriction still applies to books borrowed through these sites.
6. Go to the virtual library. Many local libraries will let you check out e-books. Sony has a great site called Library Finder (sonysearch.overdrive.com), where you can enter your state, province or ZIP code to find e-book-lending libraries near you. And good news for Kindle owners: Amazon says you’ll be able to borrow books from the library later this year.
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