Mr. Neighborly’s Humble Little Ruby Book

by Jeremy McAnally

There is a little bit of introductory stuff we need to talk about before we set you loose on Ruby. You wouldn’t want to get psyched about a new gadget, get it home, and then figure out you need batteries, a grapefruit, and the ability to speak three languages to even open the box would you? You would? Well then answer me this: How would Ruby react to large, elastic monsters taking over an estuary? You don’t know the answer!? Well, plainly we need to take a good, hard look at a few things before we turn you loose.

Ruby is an open-source, multi-paradigm, interpreted programming language (a bit of a mouthful I know! I’m going to explain it, I promise!). Ruby was created by Yukihiro ‘Matz’ Matsumoto, a very fine Japanese gentleman who currently resides in Shimane Prefecture, Japan; Matz’s work on the language was started on February 24, 1993 (commonly considered the birthday of the language; I hear that over in Japan they roll out a two-story cake and sing) and released to the public in 1995. Ruby is often hailed as one the most expressive and concise languages available to developers today. In that spirit of expressiveness, let’s look at exactly what it all means. Let us now eviscerate these verbal furbelows with conviction!

Click on the link below to start downloading this free ebook:-
Mr. Neighborly’s Humble Little Ruby Book – 147 pages (PDF), 6 Chapters (HTML)

Items posted here are free at the time of posting. If you find they are no longer free, kindly notify us immediately through our contact form.

Tools of Extinction

by Kristine

The day Alex Marcase learned he was the new owner of a Sha’erah named Evan, his life turned upside down. Dealing with each other took time, and a great deal of effort on both their parts. In the years they’ve been together, they’ve been to hell and back on more than one occasion. Each time growing stronger in their trust and conviction.

This time, hell is looking for them.

Click on the link below to start downloading this free ebook:-
Tools of Extinction – 18 Chapters (eSerial / Webnovel – HTML)

Items posted here are free at the time of posting. If you find they are no longer free, kindly notify us immediately through our contact form.

An Old Salt’s Guide to Free Maritime Websites

by Donald Brands/Capt. Don Brands

More years ago than I care to admit, I was a junior quartermaster on a Coast Guard Cutter. I had the job of maintaining and looking up all sorts of nautical information and Federal laws. In the age of paper this could sometimes be a daunting task. It could take hours if you didn’t fully know your way through the labyrinth of paper produced by our government. (I didn’t) Today you can find this information on the Internet very quickly.

Another source of difficulty and expense in the age of paper was to acquire, pay for and store all of the necessary charts and publications necessary to properly operate a vessel. Today you can search government records and download charts, publications and other nautical information directly from the Internet. Furthermore, what a lot of people don’t realize is that the US government gives away all of this information for free. It’s free as long as you access and download it yourself in electronic form over the Internet.

You can still buy paper versions, but even these are no longer provided by the government. They are reprints from government information. Some are authorized reprints under government sanction and others have no legal/official value as they lack that sanction.

All vessels can download these electronic publications for free. Commercial vessels can still be in full compliance with the laws for carriage of this information as long as they can show a correction procedure for them and redundancy. It is required to have a backup computer system for this data. Nautical charts can be carried in electronic form as well, but most commercial interests are still required to carry paper charts anyway. They can use the electronic variety, but paper charts need to be available. That will probably change in the near future. Pleasure vessels do not have these restrictions.

I have actually taken a two week trip from Louisiana to New York using only my laptop computer for reference and navigation. Be sure to have a backup in the form of paper or another computer (I did) anything can happen.

This ebook is a list of the various websites that I have found to be of use to the mariner. Some is real time information, like weather and sea conditions; other sites are for the charts and pubs that I have been discussing. Besides being extremely useful and convenient, these sites could save you anywhere from $100 to $1000 or more depending on your cruising area or voyage intentions. All web locations are hyperlinked for easy reference.

Click on the link below to start downloading this free ebook:-
An Old Salt’s Guide to Free Maritime Websites – 8 pages, 92 (HTML, JavaScript, Kindle, EPUB, PDF, RTF, LRF, PDB, TXT)

Items posted here are free at the time of posting. If you find they are no longer free, kindly notify us immediately through our contact form.

Two Shaky Towers : A Fable

by Joe Blow

A tribe who live on the beach between a forest and a lake are so terrified by the discovery of a spider two feet across living beneath the sand that they seek refuge in a pair of towers. Those who like to eat fish build a tower overlooking the lake. Those who like eating fruit build one near the forest. The strategy will lead to conflict and madness in this drily witty fable.

Click on the link below to start downloading this free ebook:-
Two Shaky Towers : A Fable – 14 pages, 426 KB (Kindle, EPUB, PDF, TXT, LRF, PDB, TXT, HTML)

Items posted here are free at the time of posting. If you find they are no longer free, kindly notify us immediately through our contact form.

Smallworld

by Dominic Green

Mount Ararat isn’t your average extrasolar arable farming colony.

Smallworld is like nothing you’ve ever read before… truly innovative speculative fiction from Hugo-nominated Brit SF writer Dominic Green.

Mount Ararat, a world the size of an asteroid yet with Earth-standard gravity, plays host to a strangely confident family whose children are protected by the Devil, a mechanical killing machine, from such passers-by as Mr von Trapp (an escapee from a penal colony), the Made (manufactured humans being hunted by the State), and the super-rich clients of a gravitational health spa established at Mount Ararat’s South Pole.

But as more and more visitors to the tiny rock are dispatched with cold efficiency by the faster-than-sight robot, the children (and their secretive parents) start to wonder who put the robot there, and who – or what – is really in need of protection.

Smallworld is stellar story-telling, brilliant and quirky, in a very British sort of way.

Click on the link below to start downloading this free ebook:-
Smallworld – 329 pages (HTML, Javascript, Kindle, EPUB, PDF, RTF, LRF, PDB, TXT) – Free download link at the bottom of the page.

Items posted here are free at the time of posting. If you find they are no longer free, kindly notify us immediately through our contact form.

by Lorna Adams

This book is channeled from Spirit – here is the channeled description of the book from Spirit:

The Spirit Guides’ Take On The Book

It is with great reverence that we stand along side this writer of writers, Lorna Adams as you call her. This effort that we have put forth via her is a kind of stand alone tale. That is, the book itself allows the reader to be guided if he or she will allow it. We do comprehend that these times you are now living in are sometimes chaotic, overwhelming and sometimes confusing as well. We mean for this book to be an entrance of sorts to a quieter time for your minds. That is, a time to quell the mindless chatter of that world. The incessant moving and going.

This book we have passed on with her help is to offer but a mere glimpse into what can be for your life. Not happy? Feel lost? Passed by? This book also speaks to these claims or these emotions you have perhaps made your own. Emotions or having emotions is much like flying a flag of a different color – in this case the color of the emotion or flag is gloom and doom. That is NOT what this book of assistance is about. There is no blame that we lay on you or anyone else. This book is to be read with an open mind not a fearful soul. This book is intended to uplift – to allow and to free you and your soul from a path that perhaps does not fit you any longer.

Change is a constant on that planet and if you are feeling left behind, perhaps you have not changed or even have refused to do so. That sort of ‘feet in the cement’ will only prolong your questioning, your angst and anxiety. We are here to show you a different path. With this book we intend to also inspire you and yours and those that you surround yourself with in that life. Our hope is big and wide that we can open a window and show you how a life can be lived.

We offer a different view, a different way of seeing your life – everyone’s life for that matter. You can and will benefit from it. Some parts of the book you may not agree with. To that we say, put it down and just allow the words to sink in – do they resonate with a certain part of you? A part of you and your dreams? Perhaps – either way just give it time, give these words a chance. The risk is minimal and the gain great. We wish the best in all that you do and how you choose to live this life you yourself have planned and been blessed with.

Click on the link below to start downloading this free ebook:-
They Are With Us: Advice From Spirit On Changing Your Life – 105 pages, 200 KB (PRC, EPUB, TXT)

Items posted here are free at the time of posting. If you find they are no longer free, kindly notify us immediately through our contact form.

Economic austerity has coincided with the revolution in eReading.

This is a guest post by Tim C. Taylor of TimCTaylor.com

Irrational exuberance is dead; we're all living in the Age of Austerity now. We've learned that private, corporate, and sovereign debt can't be ignored forever, and we're shrinking our expenditure accordingly.

Okay, okay! I know you've heard that plenty of times, but there's another side to this change. Many of us are working longer hours for less money or spending a lot of time looking for work, which means that we are not only poorer, but we have less leisure time too.

I'm intimately familiar with this. After working for a large corporation for twenty years, they made me redundant in February 2011. My co-workers gave me a Kindle as a farewell present. That set me thinking… and now I am a full-time writer and publisher.

There's a reason why I told you my story. Look again, because it shows another worldwide trend in microcosm: economic austerity has coincided with the revolution in eReading. Here in the UK, eBooks were for many years the trend that continued not to take off… until Amazon launched the Kindle in August 2010, six months before I was made redundant. As a consequence, in the following twelve months, UK per-capita spending on eBooks grew to be one of the highest in the world; half of all eBooks in Western Europe were bought in the UK during that period (source: Futuresource).

So what does eReading mean in the Age of Austerity?

I've three predictions for you. Make a note in your calendar now to re-read this post in five years time. Bet you I'm right!

Books will be cheaper, but most books you seek out will cost more than 99c

We're living in the age of Austerity Leisure…

Free books are great. In fact, I've heard of this great site called GetFreeEbooks.com… But as the Age of Austerity grinds on over the coming years, free and 99c books will become the home of samples (full books, but nonetheless samples that encourage you to try out an author) and authors who want to be read but harbor no illusions about being paid to do so.

Why? Look at the economics because they are inescapable. Authors don't make any money selling free books, and have to sell a helluva large number to make money selling at 99c. The median family income here in the UK is equivalent to selling approximately a quarter of a million 99c eBooks every year. And writing full-sized books to a professional standard takes a lot of time, so authors had better pray each one will sell well. More likely, full-time but 'mid-list' authors will need to price the majority of their books higher than 99c.

And we're living in the age of Austerity Leisure, don't forget. Leisure time is suffering deflation: it's in shorter supply so its value is rising. We might have less money to spend on leisure, but we have to invest just as much of our free time to read a novel as we did in the years of (relative) plenty. And those of us working longer hours have less free time to invest.

That's important because even though I have less money, most independently published eBooks are already seriously cheap. I'm writing this over a large cappuccino in my local Costa Coffee. It costs £2.65. An eBook that costs 99c on amazon.com costs £0.86 on amazon.co.uk. So for the price of my coffee, I can buy three 99c novels and any number of downloads from GetFreeEbooks.com. Don't get me wrong, I love downloading free or 99c books to try out new writers and new genres that I would never have come across in the days of print-only books. However, once I've found a new author, I'd much rather pay $4.99 for their next novel because that's still a cheap price, and I want them to be able to pay their mortgage from their royalties so they write more great books.

So, prediction#1

You will be reading many free and 99c books to try out new authors and genres, but most of the novels you read from your favorite authors will be priced at a few dollars.

You will be reading a wider variety of styles and book lengths than you are now

There's even a saga told in a series of poems…

In the past month, my Kindle has acquired newspapers, magazines novels, novellas, how-to guides, a coding manual, short stories in an anthology, and short stories that stand alone. There's even a saga told in a series of poems. It isn't just that my Kindle carries the equivalent of an entire bookcase, but it is eliminating the distinction between different types of print media. The origins of many of those distinctions come down to print and distribution costs, not the worth or popularity.

Go to your print bookshop. Outside of the children's section, how many fiction books do you see at 150 pages or under? How many short fiction periodicals do you see? Probably, you'll see neither. You might see magazines and newspapers there, but they will be treated very separately. Print and distribution costs meant that adult novellas (a story length that would be perhaps 70-150 pages in paperback) almost died out after the Second World War, yet they were once extremely popular. Novellas in eBook form can now be distributed and sold for a significantly cheaper price than print novels, while still being commercially viable.

So, prediction#2

Some of the distinctions between different types of 'content' no longer make sense and will die away. When niche content types become available to you on the same platforms as mainstream content, you will probably try them out.

Novellas and short novels will be much more popular than in the print world, and you will have at least tried them.

Does that mean novellas will make a comeback?

Novellas again! If you wind back a century, you will find that novellas and serialized short stories (such as the Sherlock Holmes adventures and a lot of Dickens' classics) were not merely more commonplace than they are today, they were more popular than novels. It was the increase of print and distribution costs that led to the dominance of the novel that we are so familiar with in the print world. Does that mean novellas will make a comeback?

They are already starting to. Self-published eBook novellas are still a lot less common than novels, but there are far more of them than in the print world. Even the majors are beginning publish more of them. Self-published novels tend to be shorter too. Occasionally I like a wallow in a big book, but mostly I don't have the time. It's Austerity Leisure again. We have more leisure time than our great-grandparents, but less than we did when our economies gorged on debt. So I predict novellas will become much more popular, but less so than a century ago.

So, prediction#3

Short stories, novellas, and novels are all different reading experiences, but in a time of Austerity Leisure, a shorter read is sometimes more practical as we work longer hours. The reason most people only read novels is because that's what the publishers wanted you to read. Now it's up to you!

Conclusion

Well, there you have it. The rise of eBooks will quickly become an integral part of our leisure time in the Age of Austerity. We will enjoy cheaper books, though most of the books we enjoy most will cost more than 99c. We will have a wider variety of story lengths and styles to chose from, and – best of all – when we have half an hour to kill over a coffee, we will always have our library to hand.

After twenty years working in the software industry, Tim C. Taylor is now an author, publisher, and book formatter. He blogs at www.timctaylor.com and he publishes at www.greyhartpress.com Tweet him on @TimCTaylor

Interested to be a guest blogger at GetFreeEbooks? Click here to know more.