Monday, July 14, 2008

A Trend?


So there haven't been a ton of free ebooks for teens, but now in the last few months there have been two that have come to my (admittedly, sparse) attention. First it was Doctorow's Little Brother, which continues to be free, and now, the well-reviewed (and well-buzzed) Savvy by Ingrid Law. I first heard about Savvy from a librarian friend over dinner who was shocked at my ignorance (they set the bar high for me, I'm telling you.) The difference between this one and Doctorow's is that Savvy is only available free online until July 20th.

I still haven't read it, but I'll probably take a gander at the first 20-odd pages. If it hooks me, I'll probably get the book from the library, as I'm not one who likes to curl up in bed with my computer for the nightly bedtime read. Are you? What do you think about ebooks in general, and free ones at that? Who's got the better deal? Doctorow's all free all the time, or Law's all free for a short period? Personally, I'm more of a some free all of the time. I think, marketing-wise, give 'em enough to hook em. But maybe that doesn't have a great track record. Let me know what you think.

Read Savvy here.


PS-- Um, is it just me, or do you guys have Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow flash before your eyes every time you come across the word savvy?

5 comments:

Simon Haynes said...

Just dropping by after the CMIS blog mentioned your post, and I thought I'd bring another freebie ebook to your attention:

http://www.spacejock.com.au/Hal1Download.html

(It's not specifically for teens, but they do enjoy the series.)

Sara said...

I'm liking this trend -- I can read on the reference desk and look like I'm "working" (I read all of Little Brother this way).

But, what's up with the name Savvy? There's some other YA novel called Boost about a basketball player named Savvy. Maybe people have been watching Pirates too much!

Erin said...

Don't like e-books. I've tried. Didn't work out for me.

Alan Gratz said...

I like all free, all the time. I think Doctorow's a genius for this, and he has a great discussion of why he does it over on his web site, www.craphound.com. Even though the book is free online, I've bought my own copy. All of his books are free online--yet I've bought them all. I'm trying to get Penguin to release the eBook of Something Rotten for free so people can get hooked on the series, but getting any big company to give anything away for free is trying to teach an old dog new tricks . . .

Little Willow said...

Read the book. It's good.