A brief introduction to e-books, places to find them, key software to read and edit them, and more links to explore.

1. E-books
Mark S. Zinzow
February 12, 2014
http://slideshare.net/msz

2. E-book
Defined
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-book
“An electronic book (variously: e-book,
eBook, e-Book, ebook, digital book, or
even e-edition) is a book-length
publication in digital form, consisting of
text, images, or both, readable on
computers or other electronic devices.”

3. Topics
1) Why E-books?
2) Sources to Obtain
or Read E-books
3) E-book Software/Apps
4) Legal Terms & Issues
5) Safety & Piracy
6) Project Gutenberg –
History & How you can help promote E-books

4. Why E-books?
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Paper books are bulky, heavy,
expensive, and not as ubiquitous as the Internet.
You can carry many more e-books when traveling.
You can search e-books for quotes, or analyze them
with software.
Free ebooks can be reproduced and shared at
negligable cost and effort, providing knowledge or
entertainment to potentially millions of people.
Eco-friendly – Save a Tree!
Democratic – free e-books are available to anyone with
Internet Access.
E-books can be more accessible via braile or text to
speech.

5. Sources to Obtain E-books
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Collections
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Search Engines
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Publishers
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Libraries
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Universities
Open Education

6. Collections
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Internet Archive
Project Gutenberg
Librivox free audiobooks
WikiBooks
The World Public Library Association
Amazon's
list of Free eBook Collections
Calibre Free Library

7. Search Engines
Books.google.com
● http://www.bookbub.com/ebook-deals/
● Smashwords - Crowd Sourced DRM-free
E-books
● http://rapidlibrary.biz/ (Unsafe?)
● http://inkmesh.com/free-ebooks/ (stale)
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8. BookBub Email Example

9. ●
Search operators: e.g. Filetype:ppt|pdf (not epub)
Scholar.Google.Com
● Books.Google.Com
● Google Custom Search
● Google Ebooks Search Engine
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10. DRM Free
Publishers
®
O'REILLY
(Note: These are both FREE E-books!)
● Baen Books
● https://www.google.com/search?q=drm+fre
● http://blog.threepress.org/2009/11/10/l
ist-of-drm-free-publishers/
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11. Libraries
Monroe County (NY) Library System (local)
● Open Library - Over 1 million free titles! Many scanned
books unavailable elsewhere
● EBook Lending Libraries
● List of Libraries that offer non-resident cards
● BiblioTech - first U.S. public digital library
● Most libraries use either the OverDrive Media Console or
Adobe® Digital Editions software for DRM.
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12. Universites/Open Education
Open.edu
● openstaxcollege.org
● TextbookRevolution.org
● BookBoon.com
● MIT OpenCourseWare
● U. of M. Open Textbook Library
● Many more... (search for Free Textbooks)
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13. E-book Software/Apps
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FBReader - free multiplatform e-book reader
supporting popular e-book
formats like ePub, fb2,
mobi, html, plain text, and a
lot more.
Calibre - free multi-platform
e-book reader,
organizer/database, format
converter, editor
http://lifehacker.com/55099
65/how-can-i-convert-pdfsand-other-ebooks-to-theepub-format

14. ® Legal Terms & Issues ©
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DRM – Digital Rights Management = Copy Protection
DMCA – Digital Millennium Copyright Act – Robots
generating take down requests with about 37%
unjustified.
Price Fixing / Antitrust - Attorneys General and Class
E-book Settlements https://ebooksagsettlements.com/
http://www.techurls.com/news/136849
Commercial e-books are licensed, not sold!
http://toc.oreilly.com/2012/12/ebook-lending-vsownership.html

15. Piracy & Safety
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You can steal commercial e-books
with torrents, from Usenet, TOR
archives, or file sharing sites, but ...
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You may get Malware such as a Virus or Trojan
Horse.
Your ISP (Internet Provider, e.g. TWC, AT&T,
Verizon, Comcast, etc.) will impose penalties
under the Copyright Alert System (CAS)
a.k.a. “Six Strikes”.
You could be subject to
lawsuits and criminal penalties.

16. Project Gutenberg
How you can help
create E-books
Distributed Proofreaders
Self-Publishing Portal
www.petascale.org/presentations/g
Many sites redistribute PG
material in different ways like:
http://manybooks.net/