I am kind of new to the Kindle. I got it as a birthday present and have been using it for about 3 weeks now. At first I downloaded lots of free books to see how it works. No matter what eReader you are using lots of free books are available.

Barnes and Noble has free books for the Nook. Amazon has free books for the Kindle. There are multiple sources for free books in a variety of formats. Most tend to be older books which are out of copyright. But sometimes a book just a few years old is released as a free book. Gives those of us who hesitate to buy a book by an unknown author a chance to try for free. I imagine the publisher hopes we will like the author and buy a more current book. This way I found both Chinatown Beat by Henry Chang and Outlander by Diana Gabaldon for free.

And have downloaded and read a couple books I paid for. Right now reading the new John-Abigail Adams book by Joseph Ellis.

I have the least expensive version with Wi-Fi. There are fancier, bigger, and more expensive versions with various options. I have shopped the Amazon Kindle Store from my computer and my sections are downloaded wirelessly to my Kindle using my home wireless router. It is very easy to do. This low-cost option works well if you have wireless at home or access to wireless. If not you can pay a bit more and have 3G connectivity.

If you get a free book via Project Gutenberg or something similar, you can just download it to your computer and copy the file to your Kindle. So far everything seems pretty easy.

I am still thinking about physical books vs Kindle version. It is a very different experience and I see advantages and disadvantages to each. I imagine I’ll have a bit more to say when I’ve used the Kindle a bit more.