You can find many sources of free content for your Kindle Paperwhite. The quickest and easiest way to find free e-books, games, and other offers that are available at Amazon is to search the Top 100 Free category. Not all the free e-books are restricted to classics; various publishers run special promotions to entice readers to try new authors — often on the eve of a new e-book release.
You need to be quick, though — many times the freebie is available only for a few days before it goes back to the regular price.
Another option is to visit KindleBoards. Members there maintain a monthly thread that lists free e-books from a variety of sites. The list is updated regularly to show when the e-book is no longer free.
When you order an e-book from Amazon, even if it is free, it appears as a purchase with a purchase price of $0.00. You receive a confirmation e-mail, too, so don’t be surprised. Yes, you have “bought” the e-book, even if you didn’t have to pay anything for it. Free books from Amazon re stored in the Cloud and available to you, even if the free promotion ends.
Read the fine print carefully. Many free offers are restricted to certain countries or territories. Make sure the price is listed as $0.00 before you opt to buy.
In addition to Amazon, here are a number of sites where you can find free e-books, all available to you legally:
Project Gutenberg: One of the original free e-book sites, Project Gutenberg includes 40,000 books that have been digitized with the help of thousands of dedicated volunteers. All e-books were originally published by bona fide publishers; the copyrights have since expired. You can search by author or title, or browse by category, by most recently updated, or by Top 100. Project Gutenberg includes e-books in languages other than English.
Internet Archive: This site features millions of rare, out-of-print works in multiple languages and formats. It’s especially useful for academic work.
Open Library: This site includes 20 million user-contributed items and over 1 million e-books in multiple editions and formats. Their goal is “One web page for every book ever published.”
FreeTechBooks.com: This site lists free online computer science, engineering, and programming e-books, e-textbooks, and lecture notes, which are all legally and freely available over the Internet.
manybooks.net: You can find classic texts that are copyright-free, ranging from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (CreateSpace) to Zambesi Expedition by David Livingstone (Kessinger Publishing). You can also find new fiction by emerging authors. All the texts offered on the site are free to U.S. users. Most titles are offered in a variety of formats, including AZW, which works on the Kindle Paperwhite.
Feedbooks: This site is another source of free, public domain e-books.
The Feedbooks website includes a section with paid content. These e-books are not compatible with the Kindle Paperwhite, so don’t purchase one in error! Only the free public domain e-books at Feedbooks work on your Kindle Paperwhite.
