Kindle Paperwhite for Dummies (20 page)

Browse the options and read the descriptions. If you find a book that intrigues you, simply tap the Borrow for Free icon to download the book immediately to your Kindle Paperwhite. When you borrow a book, you’ll see a screen similar to the one shown in Figure 5-2.

Figure 5-2:
Borrowing a book from the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.

You can borrow one book per month. You can’t borrow a new book until the previously borrowed book has been returned. If you aren’t eligible to borrow a book (that is, you’ve reached your monthly quota), the option to Borrow for Free appears dimmed at the Kindle Store.

If you have a borrowed book on your Kindle Paperwhite, you’ll be asked to return the book before you can borrow another. Although you can borrow only one book per month, you can keep a book on your device for as long as you want — but you won’t be able to borrow a second book until you return the first one.

Although you can see books that are available for borrowing while browsing the Kindle store using your computer, you have to use your Kindle Paperwhite to borrow a book. You can’t send a borrowed book to your Kindle Paperwhite from your computer.

Gifting Books

You can give anyone an e-book from the book’s product page on Amazon. A Give as a Gift button is available for most e-books in the Kindle Store.

You can e-mail the gift directly to someone or specify when the e-mail should be sent. Recipients receive a link in the e-mail that enables them to access the e-book.

Alternatively, you can have the e-mail sent to you. Perhaps you’d like to forward the e-mail later to the giftee or you want to print the e-mail and present the gift that way.

Many online e-booksellers also let you give an e-book as a gift. Details on how to do so are available at the seller’s website. We list some popular e-booksellers in Chapter 9.

Chapter 6

Finding Content

In This Chapter

Searching in the Kindle Store

Exploring other online stores

Finding free content resources

Y
ou’re holding your Kindle Paperwhite in your hand — it’s registered, charged, and ready to go. What do you want to do? Read, of course! But to make that happen, you need to have content on your Kindle Paperwhite, whether that’s a book, newspaper, magazine, blog, or something else. Although the way the wireless service downloads content to your Kindle Paperwhite seems almost magical, you need to initiate the process. This chapter discusses finding content — from books to blogs and everything in between — and how to get the treasures you find onto your Kindle Paperwhite in the easiest way possible.

Starting Your Search in the Kindle Store

The fastest, easiest, and most convenient place to find Kindle Paperwhite content is at the Amazon Kindle Store, which makes sense because Amazon invented the device.

One common misconception is that you have to buy
all
Kindle content from Amazon. This isn’t true. Although Amazon makes shopping for Kindle Paperwhite content simple, you can find plenty of other online stores that sell Kindle-compatible e-books, as we discuss later in this chapter in the “Checking Out Other Online Stores” section.

Searching and browsing on your computer

Amazon has a specific Kindle Store that makes it easy to search for Kindle Paperwhite content. Using your computer, go to
www.amazon.com
; from the Search drop-down list, choose Kindle Store to restrict your search to Kindle-specific content, as shown in Figure 6-1.

In the Search field, type the words for your search. Do you have a specific book in mind? Type a few words of the title. Are you looking for books by a particular author? Type the author’s name. Are you interested in deep-sea diving — or any other subject that tickles your fancy? Type a few words, click the Go button to the right of the Search field, and voilà! If anything on the topic is in the store, it appears in the search results. With millions of Kindle-compatible e-books in the store and 180,000 exclusive Kindle titles (as of this writing), something will probably appear!

Just for fun, we entered
archery
and received an interesting assortment of results (336 in all): a variety of non-fiction e-books including a history of bows and arrows; how to make a crossbow; how to
fletch
(or put feathers on) arrows; the Zen of archery; Kyudo, the Japanese art of archery; a business plan for an archery store; and novels such as
Robin Hood and the Bells of London (Clayton Emery’s Tales of Robin Hood)
by Clayton Emery. Several other books were also available for loan through the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. (See Chapter 4 for more about borrowing books through this program.)

If you’re more of a browser and less of a searcher, Amazon makes that easy, too. After you choose the Kindle Store, a bar appears below the search bar, listing the departments in the Kindle Store:

Buy a Kindle

Free Reading Apps

Kindle eBooks

Kindle Singles

Newsstand

Popular Games

Accessories

Discussions

Manage Your Kindle