Two Christmases ago I got an awesome present - a Nook Color. This was a real game changer for me. Finally there was an effecient way for me to carry multiple books without weighing myself down. Plus I could read in all types of light settings (except sunlight unfortunately.) The only thing that really held me back was the cost of ebooks. When I buy paper books, I almost always buy them used and save a lot of money, you have to when you read as much as I do. Two books a day at full price is well outside of my budget range.
To start with I didn't use my Nook as much as I would have liked, I would buy a book here and there and would read as many of the Nook free books as I could find. Sadly, the free books aren't always the best written.
Free ebooks fall in to three categories. One, free public domain books - classic books where the copy write has expired. Two, prequels, novellas, and samples of author's works that are usually tied to a series in some way. And three, authors who are self publishing for the first time.
The last category is what I read a lot of. Usually new authors publishing for the first time and just trying to get their works out there to the public. An unfortunate downside to this is that the ebooks tend to not be very well edited and there are some real stinkers out there. But there are also some hidden gems, just wait to be discovered. I devoured these books, taking the bad with the good and really seeing what all was available.
Eventually though, I got bored with reading the free ebooks because there was really no way to judge the quality of the ebook before I started reading. My Nook was put away and not used much and I went back to reading more paper books.
But then I found the gloriousness that is Overdrive. Overdrive is an application for many devices that many libraries use to host their ebook library. I fell in love with this app. You can check out up to ten books at a time and there is a large selection available. I got the app for my cell phone and that is what I use for most of my reading these days. I love being able to check out new books any time I want (with the exception of that time I got blocked from the site for a few days because I checked out and returned too many books in a seven day period.) My local library has a great selection for this app and it is totally free.
Supposedly you can buy a one year membership to certain libraries even if you don't live there but I am still researching that one. Fortunately I have yet to run out of books hosted by the Salt Lake County Libraries.
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