Free ebooks from Borders
In the latest salvo in the digital reading wars, Borders is making a push against competitors such as Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's nook, by offering five free ebooks. Anyone who downloads a free Borders application today through Wednesday, July 14, can choose titles that include "Frankenstein: Prodigal Son," by Dean Koontz, "One Shot" by Lee Child, "Julia's Kitchen Wisdom" by Julia Child and "Master your Metabolism" by Jillian Michaels.
The offer follows the launch of the Borders-branded digital store, powered by Kobo, and the release of Borders' BlackBerry, Android, iPad and iPhone ebook apps. The app is also available for desktop comuters.
"We're committed to giving our customers the best possible value in digital books, independent of the device ... " Borders CEO Mike Edwards said in a news release. "To thank our customers for their continued loyalty to the Borders brand, we want to provide them a sample of the great content available on Borders.com."
The competition among ebook retailers is good news for consumers. Just recently, we've seen Amazon drop the Kindle price from $259 to $189, and Barnes & Noble respond with its own deals. At some point, there's likely to be a shakeout, and some competitors will drop out. But for now, the deals are sweet and getting sweeter.
Comments
Just another sign that all of the entertainment industry is taking a hit from the economy, even book stores. Free can jump start sales. I wish them the best of luck - some good titles in there.
Posted by: CherylT | July 9, 2010 11:31 AM
I was kind of wondering how many ebook readers I would need to load on my iPad - currently I have:
1. iBooks
2. eReader (Fictionwise's - low resolution reader)
3. Kindle
4. B&N eReader
5. Stanza (the only app that lets me read my Fictionwise purchashes at iPad resolution)
For 5 free books it's worth loading another app, assuming there are good books to choose from.
Thanks for the tip.
Posted by: a parent | July 9, 2010 2:00 PM
I downloaded the B&N ereader because of this article and was rather disappointed with it. It's sort of confusing to navigate and when you click anything, it sits there for a minute before it loads the page and you can't tell if it's responding at all. And when I tried to download one of the free books, I found that the app requires credit card info (even though there's no charge made to it). Then when I entered the info and clicked to buy the book, no response for a few seconds, and then was told the app 'could not process my request' and to 'please try again later'. I did what everyone does in this type of situation, I clicked the buy button again, got the same thing... like 4 times. Never did get the book. Finally gave up on that one and went to look at another of the free books and even though I'd clicked the box to remember my credit card info, was asked to enter it again. Free is a good thing--when it actually works.
Posted by: jamie | July 11, 2010 12:18 PM
Wow! Frankenstein: Prodigal Son? I can't believe that they have their own Sony eBook version of it. Too bad I missed it. I should have seen this blog a long time ago! Dang!
Posted by: Tony comments on Sony eBooks | August 10, 2010 12:00 PM
Just another sign that all of the entertainment industry is taking a hit from the economy, even book stores.
Posted by: Ebooks For A Diet | December 13, 2010 1:28 AM