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Try smashwords for eBooks (disclaimer: I've got books published there). I'd be grateful if people reply to this thread with other sites like smashwords.

It's bad because Liberty is an unalienable right, and the government has no business deciding what you should study.

We are tool-builders, and we created money as a tool to help us. Instead we find economists treating money as a God to which we must sacrifice humans (not them, but other, poorer, humans).

Unemployment is a good thing, a sign of economic progress, the result of higher productivity. What we should do is provide a basic income to everyone who wants one, and hold challenges to stimulate innovation and the advance of knowledge. Because it is knowledge that confers the greatest survival benefit by enabling us to better predict and adapt to sudden catastrophic change.

Shameless plug (somewhat on topic)

How about authors refuse to publish their books until they have raised enough money? A well known author could publish a suspenseful preview or a first chapter, and then request $5 from each reader until some amount is raised, at which point the book will be published. There is no need for a publishing industry to even exist under such a system, the authors could just use the Internet and encourage, rather than attack, the copying of their books.

It's already been tried... and failed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Plant

I think a better model is charging a reasonable price for ebooks and giving authors a bigger cut to reflect the nearly non-existent printing and distribution costs:

http://www.smashwords.com/

(shameless plug coming up: if we're plugging stories feel free to go to my smashwords or amazon profile and get hold of some stuff. there's two free stories on smashwords and the others are a dollar apiece because that seemed to be the cheapest amazon would let me sell things for (i wanted 40c or so). for some reason the amazon profile is currently missing The Train will Never Stop, though it will be added in a day or so. the genre is basically fantasy of one form or another, though as far from sword and sorcery as i can get. i like to pretend there's more of a neil gaiman feel to things, but then i am very self-deluded.)

Which authors have been forced into exclusive contracts with Amazon?

None, the parent's jumping to some understandable, but (to me, at least) unwarranted assumptions: namely that Amazon will become so dominant that they try and lock out any competition. Many company's have certainly gone that route; but Amazon hasn't yet and there are good reasons to doubt they will.

Currently, Amazon doesn't give a whit whether you publish with anyone else - in fact, Smashwords' whole business model's predicated on that fact. As things currently stands, Amazon's primary ambition seems to become a universal marketplace that shaves a few percentage points off from every transaction and beats it's competition by providing the most flexibility for content providers and third party retailers to sell the way they prefer.

While it's true that ebooks present the possibility of digital restrictions management, Smashwords, a ebooks distributor site, doesn't use DRM, AFAIK.

With ebooks, you are at the whim of the ebook publisher, DRM, the ebook reader manufacturer and of course electricity.

Depends where you buy them - just like back when most commercial music was locked down with DRM restrictions, many books (mostly from small independent authors) are available without DRM. I've bought a lot of books through http://www.smashwords.com/ . They have books in various formats for various devices and they have no DRM restrictions. No DRM means that the books will be readable as long as there are computers (and, as you said, electricity, but if there's no electricity, my book collection (aside from my old Army survival guide which I have in paper) will be the least of my worries)

Prices are great (most seem to be in the $1 to $3 range) and most authors let you download a generous sample of the book before buying.

Out of over 3 dozen books I've read on my Kindle, only 2 of them were purchased through Amazon, the rest were from Smashwords or Project Gutenberg.

Just buy DRM free ebooks. There are plenty to choose from. I especially like Baen Books. They specialize in Sci-Fi/Fantasy and have a free library where you can get selected full books from authors for free so you can find out which ones you like the best. Smashwords is also good. Their focus is self publishing authors and they sell every genre.

Ok - so the US gov has a budget again, and is betting heavily on "Commercial Space" picking up the debris of NASA's epic failure to develop a new crew launcher. But does this hope have any basis in reality or is NewSpace just a bunch of scifi boys playing with toys? Neal Stephenson works at Blue Origin, Gary Hudson of Roton Rocket fame recently channeled Star Wars' Admiral Ackbar, and SpaceX seems to have picked up a scifi scribe of their own in Ralph Ewig. Are these really the nation's best last hope, or are they a bunch of dreamers who can't separate the "science" from the "fiction"?

There are many places to download e books for free: Free e Books,

Scribd , Feedbooks , Smashword and many more if you just Google free e books. I've got more thn 400 books in my Kindle, about 25% of which I've had to pay for. Quitchabitchen.

Because editors cost money, even when you're friends with a few. ( And I'd never ask a friend to edit my work for free as anything other than a mutual crit. )

I self-published an E-book. Admittedly, it could be better edited and I really wish I had the cash to do it. However because I couldn't afford an external editor, I went through 10 editing passes myself ( it's not easy spotting your own mistakes ) and through more than a dozen critics who tore every sentence to pieces.

The result? It's presently ranking 4.5 stars on Barnes and Noble and has a sales ranking up with the professional. The biggest criticism I get ? Making it free ( Voluntary shareware actually ).

So while I'd still say a GOOD editor is a valuable thing in the publishing process, I'd also say that you don't need to have a paid editor to do everything you need to make a great story.

Anyway, you're welcome to judge it for yourself if you like - And feel free to criticize me. I always welcome genuine criticism.

Title: Turing Evolved ( Science Fiction ) - Currently distributed for free.
Smashwords Link: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/34627

GrpA

For an unknown author like me, I can attest that a combination of free and sales is a great strategy. Making 9k isn't bad for a book. I've been doing something similar with my novel, Betrayal. I am releasing the whole book, a chapter at a time, with a link to Smashwords.com, where I have it for sale ($.99). Before I started giving the book away, I had less than 10 sales. On Smashwords, the first 20% was available for free, but I still didn't see the sales. However, once I started posting more free chapters, I've had 50 sales a week! Not sure how sales will hold up once I finish releasing the whole thing, but I am hoping for a result similar to this guys experience. With a .99 sale price, I have been getting enough reviews and sales to make it onto the sales charts at Smashwords. The main point is that without giving it away for free, no one would have ever heard of me. I would have made fewer sales by only giving away a small portion, than I am by giving away the whole book. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/37846

Hey, it looks like someone read that Net Assets novel by one Carl Bussjaeger but decided that the trick could be done without using the libertarian sauce Bussjaeger pours over it. Bussjaeger ended up deciding that a rail gun or other tracked thing would not work so he went with a supersonic ground effect launcher.

And to answer your question:

http://www.beam-ebooks.de/lesesoftware/
http://www.libri.de/shop/action/maga...ub_format.html
http://www.bol.de/shop/neuheiten-epubs/show/
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3249
http://www.fictionwise.com/help/eBook-formats-FAQ.htm
http://www.waterstones.com/waterston...e.do?ctx=10030
http://ebooks.whsmith.co.uk/

No one forces you to use DRM documents on any eBook reader. All eBook reader will display DRM free eBooks as well.

If at all DRM need to be dumped by the shops and the publishers. And some did already:

http://www.beam-ebooks.de/
https://www.smashwords.com/