I just noticed that Amazon’s slashed the price on more than 500 ebooks, in a special sale that they’re calling “The Big Deal”. Some of the ebooks have been priced as low as 99 cents, with others at $1.99 or $2.99. And every one of the 500 ebooks are selling for less than $3.99. (For a shortcut to the sale, just point your browser to tinyurl.com/EbookBigDeal .)
“But hurry…” Amazon warns on the sale’s web site. “These deals expire on August 23, 2012.” (That’s Thursday!) And it’s really a big event. The last time Amazon ran a “big deal” sale, it was for just 200 ebooks. But this time, there’s 500 different ebooks that have all been reduced in price.
So what kind of books are on sale? Amazon lists seven categories on the book’s main page: Nonfiction, Fiction and Literature, Romance, Memoirs and Biographies, Health, Children’s Books, and books for teenagers. I enjoyed browsing through all the different categories, and discovered a wide variety of books (many from publishers I’ve never heard of). Here’s some of the titles that looked intriguing…
The Toaster Project: Or A Heroic Attempt to Build a Simple Electric Appliance from Scratch
It turns out that there’s 404 separate parts in an electric toaster, and British author Thomas Thwaites tried to build each one on his own. He had to construct his own home-made foundry in his mother’s back yard, and then used it to smelt the metal he’d try to mold into his toaster’s components. Along the way Thwaites learned many unexpected lessons, according to the book’s description on Amazon, including the fact that “plastic is almost impossible to make from scratch.” One reviewer described the book as both thoughtful and funny — and I have to admit that it’s a very intriguing premise.
Doctor Who: Series Two – Vol. 1
Geeks love the long-running (and low-budget) science fiction series, Doctor Who. It’s characters are now continuing their adventures in a series of comic books, and the first four issues have now been bound together into a classy color graphic novel by IDW Publishing. (It’ll look great on your Kindle Fire!) It’s written by science fiction author Tony Lee, and the book’s page at Amazon announces that “The Eleventh Doctor era begins here! Join the eleventh incarnation of the Doctor and his latest companions, Amy Pond and her husband Rory Williams, as they travel to the far reaches of space – a planet populated by holograms – and the distant past – where they become embroiled in the Jack the Ripper murders in Victorian London!”
Mitt Romney: A Politician’s Journey and Barack Obama: A Politician’s Journey
Who are these men who would be president? With the U.S. election just 11 weeks away, it’s nice to get a little context. Both these books are less than 40 pages long (and both were published over a year ago), and there’s currently only one review, so it’s hard to get a sense of how comprehensive they are. But I was intrigued because their publisher is Vook, and they’ve published some other ebooks which had contained audio and video clips. It looks like these books just include photographs — but I admit that there’s things I don’t know about both candidates, and it’s always interesting to see how their different careers led them both to the ultimate contest.
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dreadfully Ever After
Author Steve Hockensmith has already sold more than 1.3 million copies of his original novel, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and its prequel, Dawn of the Dreadfuls, both of which became New York Times best-sellers. “Now the PPZ trilogy comes to a thrilling conclusion,” crows the book’s description at Amazon, promising yet another romp through the author’s alternate universe where characters from classical literature have to confront ravaging hoardes of the “unmentionables”. He’s long since exhuasted the plotlines from Jane Austen’s original novel, but he still retains hints of their romantic 19th-century themes, and includes love, redemption, and sensibility in the new adventures he’s imagining for her characters. In this novel, Elizabeth Darcy “learns of a miracle antidote under development in London,” according to the book’s description, and “realizes there may be one last chance to save her true love – and for everyone to live happily ever after.”
And if you’re looking for children’s books, there also a lot of familiar names among Amazon’s discounted ebooks, including SpongeBob Squarepants, Dora the Explorer, and the Berenstain Bears.
If you’re interested in browsing Amazon’s discounted ebooks, just point your browser to tinyurl.com/EbookBigDeal