Wednesday, May 01, 2013

Obooko launches in UK - free e-books by self-published authors


30.04.13 | Lisa Campbell -The Bookseller

A website giving away free e-books by self-published authors will launch tomorrow (1st May) in the UK.Obooko.com has always been UK-based but has served the US market for the last three years. It will now turn its marketing and promotional attention to its domestic market.
The site offers thousands of e-books from unpublished authors free of charge, along with some published authors such as Stephen Leather and Sylvia Day. Obooko has also recently signed up a range of books from unpublished UK authors.
Obooko founder Tony Stanton said: "Obooko has been steadily adding to its stable of authors for the last three years and is one of the most popular free e-books download sites in the USA, which means it has taken us until now to officially launch in the UK despite being a UK company."

The site is funded by advertising and is free to use, with all e-books in either PDF, ePub and Kindle formats. Users who download an e-book only supply their email address and age and name. The majority of the website's library comprises of new and original titles, as opposed to out-of-copyright and classic books.

Authors receive no money for having their work downloaded from the site, but they can monitor their e-book downloads and are given star ratings from users. The site also converts their files into ePub and Kindle formats free of charge.

Stanton added: "We are stringent about upholding copyright law and only distribute work with the author's written consent. People cannot 'post' books on the site; authors are invited to publish on Obooko so users can be confident that every book they download is a legal copy and that they are not associated with or are supporting digital piracy."


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

NZers can join. However the search process is hard on the eyes and there is no rating system on the books which I would have thought might have been a good idea. You can send feedback to authors. It's a concept that could grow and why should Amazon get the entire market?
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