wOw! There's a ton of audio books out there and all sorts of ways to get them. While I am pleased with all the contemporary material available on Netlibrary and Overdrive, it's hard not to be amazed and overwhelmed by all the old books on Project Gutenberg. A huge number of 19th century novels by H. Rider Haggard can be found as ebooks, way beyond what you can find these days without trawling the old book stores--and two are in audio format. The download instructions there are not as complete as those at Netlibrary or Overdrive, but I think I could muddle through.
I found the World eBook Fair to be a little more obscure. The very small annual fee seemed okay, although puzzling since they get a large portion of materials, including eBooks from Project Gutenberg, it seems. I did get excited by all the science fiction titles from Baen until I saw the small print that explained that they were sample chapters. Booooo! Hisssssss!
It would have been great to have a look inside the scanned children's books, because they would be more like the real books than the text only Project Gutenberg versions, but I wasn't about to plop down eight-bucks-something just out of curiosity. I did enjoy looking at the covers, though. I was surprised to see some scans of Beatrix Potter books published by Warne (now owned by Penguin). I assume they got permission.There are many collections on the World eBook Fair that think I would never use--but you never know when you might need The Victorian Prose Archive or The Swami Center Collection. It's nice to know they exist. The various collections can provide tips of where else to go on the Internet to find eBooks.
