The Complete 2012 User's Guide to the Amazing Amazon Kindle: Covers All Current Kindles Including the Kindle Fire, Kindle Touch, Kindle Keyboard, and Kindle (19 page)

When you press Menu, the Kindle describes the selected menu choice. Moving the selection underline with the five-way controller causes the Kindle to read the current selection. When you select a menu item, the Kindle speaks that selection aloud.

For example, if you select "Go to..." from the menu, the Kindle speaks "go to" when the “Go to” pop-up appears. As you move the selection to the "Go to" selections, the Kindle speaks the selection.

To turn Voice Guide off, press Home followed by Menu. Then select "Settings" from the pop-up menu. Move to page 2 and select Voice Guide "turn off."

There are thousands of free books in the Kindle Store, including thousands of classics and other public-domain titles. Readers of Kindle Nation Daily and our previous Kindle users' guides have asked us repeatedly to come up with a tool with all the search-and-sort features that are needed to help them find free books--books that they actually want to read. And it took some work, but we've done it.

Our Kindle Nation Daily Free Book and Quality 99-Cent Book Search Tools allow you to go online any time of the day or night to find the newest, bestselling, or highest rated free and lost-cost listings in just about any category or genre that might interest you:

All Free Kindle Books
(http://bit.ly/uNlFiO)

Quality 99-cent Books
(http://bit.ly/rInMfP)

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Classics

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Erotica

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Fantasy

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Gay & lesbian

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General

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Horror

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Literary

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Mystery & thriller

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Romance

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Science fiction

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Advice & how-to

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Arts & entertainment

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Biography & memoir

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Business & leadership

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Computers & internet

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Cooking, food, & wine

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General

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History

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Lifestyle & home

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Parenting & families

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Politics & current events

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Reference

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Religion & spirituality

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Travel

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Humor

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Sports

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YA & Kids

Note that even free books “bought” from Amazon are archived at Amazon for you, so that if you delete them you can always get them back on your Kindle from the last page of the Home pages.

In addition, Amazon provides Kindle owners with direct access to millions of free classics, documents, and public-domain titles at
http://amzn.to/sdoYEj
.

That site will provide step-by-step instructions for you to search, identify, and send to your Kindle any of the millions of books listed. In addition, you'll find great free-book resources at the specific websites listed below:

The first free public-domain book site, Project Gutenberg (
http://www.gutenberg.org/
) currently offers more than 36,000 free books. They are available in a number of formats, including MOBI format, which can be read on the Kindle and MP3 audiobook files. (For instructions on how to listen to an MP3 audiobook, see
Listening to Music
.)

To read a Project Gutenberg book on your Kindle, download it in Kindle format. Then transfer the downloaded EPUB file to your Kindle "documents" folder. The book will appear in your Home pages.

You can search for and download books directly from Project Gutenberg to your Kindle using the Magic Catalog of Gutenberg Books
(http://bit.ly/rWAh4x).
Download the MOBI version from your Kindle and it will appear in Home. Or you can download it to your computer and copy it to your Kindle using the USB cable.

Next, open the catalog and browse for books. Click on a book to send it wirelessly to your Kindle.

You can search the catalog using Kindle search by just typing in a search term. (Please note that it may take a while for the search capability to be usable as the Magic Catalog is extensive and some time is required for the Kindle to index it.)

Google Books (
http://books.google.com
/) has more than a million free titles, which are mostly books that are in the public domain because their copyrights have expired. This is a huge resource including nearly all of the world's great literature.

Although Google Books does not directly support the Kindle, their free books are available in EPUB format, which you can convert to Kindle format using Calibre (
http://calibre-ebook.com/

Google Books now has two main sections, the original free Google Books and the new Google eBookstore. The eBookstore mainly offers paid titles and doesn't directly support the Kindle. You don't need them anyway -- you can shop at the Amazon Kindle Store, which has a wider selection.

For free books, you want the original Google Books. If you navigate to Google Books via the Google menus, you'll have a choice of "Researching a Topic" on the left, and "Shop at the Google eBookstore" on the right. You want the left selection. To search for a free book, type the title in the search box at left. When the search results appear, click "Free Google eBooks" on the left to view only the titles that are free.

To browse for free books, click "Browse books and magazines," just below the search box.

Once you've found the free book you want, here's how to get it onto your Kindle:

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First, click on it to open the detail page

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On the left side of the screen, click on "Read on your device"

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Scroll down and click on "Download EPUB"

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When the download is finished, start Calibre

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Click on "Add books." Navigate to the downloaded EPUB book, and click on it to add it to Calibre

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In the list of books, click on the new book to select it

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Click on "Convert E-books"

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In the upper right corner, make sure the output format is "MOBI"

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Click OK

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Plug in your Kindle with the USB cable and wait until Calibre detects it

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Click the down arrow just to the right of the "Send to device" icon.

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Select "Set default send to device action"

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Then select "Send specific format to Main memory (this avoids cluttering your Kindle with EPUB and other formats the Kindle can't open)

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You only have to set the "Send to device" action the first time. After that, you can just click the "Send to device" button and select "MOBI" format

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Alternatively, copy the "MOBI" file from your Calibre book folder to the Kindle using the USB cable.

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Eject the Kindle from your computer

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The new book appears in Home

Your Calibre book folder was set during the first time you ran Calibre. To find it, click "Preferences" and select “General." The book folder is listed at the top of the dialog box.

Don't download the PDF version of free Google Books. Google PDF books are usually images from scans of the printed book's pages, and are very difficult to read on the Kindle.

There are many other sites for free books, some of which are run by book publishers. The list of sites changes frequently- the easiest way to find them is to use Google or another search engine to search for "free kindle books."

An example is the Baen Free Library (
http://www.baen.com/library
/), offered by Baen Books, a major publisher of science fiction. You can have the site e-mail the Kindle version directly to your Kindle by adding their e-mail address to your authorized list at Amazon under "Your Account," "Manage Your Kindle," "Personal Document Settings." Be sure to use your @kindle.com address and connect the Kindle via Wi-Fi as the transfer will not happen with a 3G connection. Amazon also e-mails the book to your computer, so if Wi-Fi isn't available, you can copy the book to your Kindle via USB.