If you’re an Amazon Prime member, sign up for a monthly e-mail listing four e-books, and you can choose one for free.
I’m wondering what other promotions Amazon has going on. I signed up for the one where you get a text alert about special deals available only through Kindle Fire.
There’s the Kindle Lending Library (for Prime members) where you can borrow a book a month.
What else?
No, but I do now! Thanks for the tip. 
Nope, thanks!
Thanks for the heads-up, I ordered The Barkeep.
My library has access to OverDrive which has lots of Kindle books I can check out for free.
Holy crap, I didn’t. Both my husband and I have memberships.
Ditto.
Thanks for the heads up! I had never heard of it before.
They send me notices about every damn thing else- but not this.
There’s also Kindle Matchbook. Some publishers are allowing people who bought paper books to purchase the Kindle version at a low price, or free.
Also, when you buy a book at Amazon, check the page to see if the book is eligible for lending. If it is, just enter the e-mail of the person you want to loan the book to. They only allow one loan per book and it’s only good for 14 days.
And if you’re in Prime but change the shipping option to 5-7 days, sometimes you’ll get a $1 credit toward an MP3.
Last but not least, a book I bought a couple days ago made me eligible to get another Kindle book for .99. I haven’t quite figured that one out yet. I didn’t know at the time that I was gonna get another good deal.
While I think I might get these emails, do you have to personally subscribe to Prime, or can you just piggyback on someone else (legally)? I do the latter, which means I get the free shipping, but not the video or anything else.
$1 MP3 credit is also received if you buy a physical CD (pouts: I still do sometimes). Kindle loaning has been disappointing to me. Along with the 1-use/14 day limitation, while the lendee has access the the book, the lender does not.
I don’t know if you can piggyback or not. You could probably get an answer on the Amazon Prime forum.
The 14-day loan doesn’t need to be a problem – just read the book before loaning it.
I’ve taken advantage of the Kindle First program twice since joining Amazon Prime - haven’t read the books yet, but figured it was a decent deal.
I’ve personally gotten more mileage of the Amazon Prime Lending Library - tho I wish you could borrow more than one book per month - so far I’ve read Prophets of the Ghost Ants (odd premise, but I really got into it) and The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl (heartbreaking, yet inspiring). I’ve started compiling a list of qualifying books for my own reference, but would love to hear about other Lending Library recommendations. Here’s what I’ve identified so far:
All 3 Hunger Games novels: The Hunger Games, Catching Fire & Mockingjay
If This Isn’t Nice, What Is?: Advice for the Young a collection of Kurt Vonnegut’s commencement speeches
I didn’t know about changing the shipping option and getting credits. I just got a Fire and found out I had $4 in mP3 credits. Have no idea how that happened. I know we order a LOT (at least once weekly) and sometimes things that can’t be flown so take longer.
I love the KLL. My favorites so far are the Meredith & Hodge series by M K Turner.
I haven’t read any of my Kindle First books yet. This months choices look interesting. I’m trying to decide if I want the SciFi or the thriller.
I love Amazon Prime.
I chose the one by William Lashner. I’ve read two of his and thought they were pretty good, for thrillers.
In the Lending Library, I can recommend Christine McKenna – The Misremembered Man and The Widow’s Adventures. Set in the UK, general fiction about relationships, just quirky enough to be interesting.
It’s really hard to find stuff in the KLL. Even if you choose a category, like Literary Classics, there’ll be hundreds of self-published romance novels.
If anybody has experience with it, are the four selections actually good? My experience with the cheap/free books for Kindle are that they tend to be really crappy self-published stuff. I’m sure there are diamonds in the rough but I’ll admit after a fair amount of crap chasing deals in the early days of Kindle now if I see a book that is $1.99 or less, unless I have a personal recommendation from someone (or it is a cheap public domain edition of something) I’m not going near it.
obfusciatrist, the books probably won’t be worth signing up for Prime, but if you’re already in Prime, there’s nothing to lose except the few seconds it takes to read an e-mail describing the four choices.
January has a thriller – Barkeep by William Lashner, who is an established author, not self-published. He’s at least as good as Grisham. I know that’s damning with faint praise, but he has a following.
Also The Line - fantasy about witches in Savannah (a debut from J.B. Horn), Mint Juleps & Justice (a romance), and Descending Son, a horror novel by Scott Shepherd.
Well, nothing except the time wasted reading enough of a book to learn it is crap that is overpriced at free (as is my general experience with free or really cheap books at Amazon).
But if they’re at least established authors, I may keep an eye on it.
I’ve wasted more time trying to find something to like in a book that I paid $20 for than I’ve wasted in reading the first few pages – or even paragraphs – of a free book.
I gave up searching for KLL books on the Kindle itself. I search on my iPad or PC on the Amazon site through my browser so I can sort by top rated or most popular, and it’s much faster than the kindle. It’ can be time consuming to find a good book, but no more so than heading to the physical library with no particular book in mind.
I think the enjoyment of kindle freebies, which are generally indie authors or Christian fiction, is largely dependent upon one’s literature preference. I load up on the freebies for my mom and sister (they share my acct) and they absolutely love everything I throw at them. Which is great, because they hate the books I read. Apparently there’s a lot of sinning and immoral thinking going on in my books.