Help me find a good ebook in a forest of mediocrity!

May 10, 2007 7:36 AM

I love to read ebooks (especially science fiction or fantasy) but I need some help finding good ones. The existing ebook sites like Fictionwise are terribly organized, and tend to have more obscure titles, rather than standard favorites. So, hive-mind, any good ebook sites you would suggest? Any good ebook finds in the science fiction and fantasy genre you would recommend?

A few more details: Authors who have works in ebook format that I have read and enjoyed: Dan Simmons (Ilium), Peter Hamilton (Night's Dawn, etc.), Naomi Novik (His Majesty's Dragon), Charlie Stross (Glass House), and Dave Duncan (Handful of Men). I am flexible on format, but since I read on my phone, PDF and Sony format are out, but Mobipocket, Palm Reader, and Microsoft Reader are all fine.

posted by blahblahblah to society & culture (17 comments total)

Manybooks is the king - it's basically a front-end for Project Gutenberg, and it formats any text there on-the-fly into your desired format.
posted by jbickers at 7:49 AM on May 10, 2007 [2 favorites]

Definitely check out "The Gutenburg Project", it's an amazing source of GREAT Literature - free.

Also has audio books, also free.
posted by ok at 7:54 AM on May 10, 2007

Sorry, should have made it clearer. I am looking for recent science fiction and fantasy, not Guttenberg-style classics.
posted by blahblahblah at 7:56 AM on May 10, 2007

infinity plus
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:57 AM on May 10, 2007

Cory Doctorow (of boingboing fame) offers free ebook versions of his (sci-fi) stories on craphound.
posted by stungeye at 8:06 AM on May 10, 2007

Baen sells its books through webscription (www.webscription.net). If you like MilSciFi, this is a good place to go. Its books are cheap and unencrypted.
posted by Comrade_robot at 8:19 AM on May 10, 2007

Baen Books have a number of their SF titles freely available at the Baen Free Library
posted by Jakey at 8:22 AM on May 10, 2007

Try John Ringo's stuff on Baen Free Library. Have you read Accelerando by Stross? IIRC that's free as well.
posted by adamwolf at 8:23 AM on May 10, 2007

Unfortunately, I don't have an archive to offer you, but I can tell you that Peter Watts has just about every book he's published recently available for download. And he rocks.
posted by flibbertigibbet at 8:34 AM on May 10, 2007

This blog post has lots of suggestions. A search for ebook on boinboing.net will bring up more.

I quite liked Peter Watts' Blindsight.

I generally find its much easier to get popular ebooks through torrents or peer-to-peer than from commercial sites.
posted by Zetetics at 8:39 AM on May 10, 2007

I'm currently hitting the Jules Verne, of which the The Gutenburg Project has lots.
posted by -harlequin- at 9:13 AM on May 10, 2007

After the vice president of SFWA said that free ebooks were "converting the noble calling of Writer into the life of Pixel-stained Technopeasant Wretch," a bunch of science fiction writers celebrated International Pixel-stained Technopeasant Day by giving away free ebooks.

Here's a list of Technopeasant Day creations you can download.
posted by mbrubeck at 11:14 AM on May 10, 2007 [1 favorite]

HorrorMasters
eFanzines
InfinityPlus
Gateway
posted by mattbucher at 11:39 AM on May 10, 2007

Science Fiction (Bookshelf) at Project Gutenberg
'SF' at Project Gutenberg of Australia
posted by fings at 12:04 PM on May 10, 2007

Mobipocket is now owned by Amazon, and their retail site is fairly professional and well organized. There's also what used to be the Palm Digital Media site at eReader.com.
posted by libraryhead at 5:30 PM on May 10, 2007

Anyone have any suggestions of particularly good books at InfinityPlus?
posted by blahblahblah at 8:56 PM on May 10, 2007

I just want to point out that some newer (modern enough) books are out of copyright and therefore on Project Gutenberg due to not having had the copyright renewed. You won't find a lot that way, but if you dig through the bookshelf previously linked you can find some Andre Norton as well as almost all of H. Beam Piper's stuff. So you shouldn't dismiss it out of hand.
posted by anaelith at 9:20 PM on May 10, 2007