Free eBook Giveaway
By Lauren Barack -- School Library Journal, 7/1/2006
For those looking to boost their eBook libraries—or publishers who want to publicize their online collections, the first annual World eBook Fair launches this month. Any Web surfer will be able to download more than 333,000 eBooks for free from July 4 through August 4, 2006.
“We needed a book fair,” says John Guagliardo, founder and executive director of World eBook Library, and director of Project Gutenberg the event's cosponsors.
Most of the titles in the two collections are comprised of public domain materials, so don't expect a free download of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. Still, users will be able to access timeless favorites such as Alice in Wonderland and Robin Hood.
Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg claims to have put the first permanent text online, the Declaration of Independence, on July 4, 1971. Now the largest site offering eBooks free of charge, his site didn't really hit its stride, says Hart, until about 1989. World eBook Library, described on its site as the largest eBook consortia, charges $8.95 a year, or $1 for full-time students, to access and download from its collection of 250,000 titles. Both sources will offer their catalogs for free during the fair. Nearly all of the eBooks come in formats that can be loaded onto PDAs, iPods, and even cellphones.
Both Hart and Guagliardo plan to sponsor the fair for at least three more years, increasing the number of free eBooks until 2009, when they plan to make one million eBooks available gratis.
