Part of the fun of a Kindle is that purchased books appear almost instantly on it. There’s no longer any need to travel to the library/bookshop or wait in for a delivery – instant gratification at its finest!
Another key feature in the success of e-readers generally is no doubt that there are so many ebooks available for free. If you don’t have to pay then you are more likely to give a book a chance – even if it’s not what you would normally consider buying.
This may result in a few wasted minutes of your life (and a quick deletion!) but it could also introduce you to a new genre or author that more than makes up for the disappointing ones. If you’re keen to find new free Kindle ebooks, Kogrid can help.
[UPDATED 13th January 2012 - Whilst Kogrid (below) is still a useful site, I have since reviewed a much better alternative called eReaderIQ (see review here) which solves the main problems with Kogrid. eReaderIQ offers a lot more useful features too!]
Kogrid is a website that provides an hourly updated and automated list of free retail Kindle books from Amazon. Kogrid’s website is available for US here and for the UK here.
- Navigation: The list of free ebooks autoscrolls as you move down the page
- Details provided: Title, Author, Genre, date and time added to the site
- Links: clicking a book’s Title takes you to its Amazon Kindle edition page where you can ‘Buy’ and download it
- Subscribe: There is a ‘Subscribe’ button at the top left of the site to subscribe and get a daily email listing all the new free titles added that day
- Price: Typically some ebooks may only be free for a short period – double check the price on Amazon before you place an order
- Front Covers: Ticking the ‘Covers’ box at the top right of the site changes the listing to also display the front cover of each book
Warning: Some book covers and/or titles may be Not Suitable For Work! Free ebooks tend to include plenty from the ‘Erotica’ genre i.e. graphic adult titles and/or front covers…
Conclusion
Adding the ability to click the front cover of a book (instead of just the Title) to link through to its Amazon page would be useful and it would be nice if there was a search facility too (e.g. to narrow the choice down by genre) but I guess the dynamic and fast changing nature of the links prevents it.
However, Kogrid offers a treasure trove of links to free Kindle ebooks and is updated hourly so you can find a really good read at a bargain price.
Of course some free ebooks will be awful pulp fiction or vanity publishing but there are some gems in there. Amazon reviews can be a great guide to a book’s quality but they may be thin on the ground for the newest releases – if the author has written other books, checking out the reviews on those should give a fairly good guideline.
What about eEreaderIQ as an alternative? Offers a search facility…
i already belong to this sighy, but on a different computer