From the press release:
The nonprofit organization First Book is partnering with one of the world’s largest online eBook distributors, Free-eBooks.net, to challenge illiteracy. Paradise Publishers, owners of Free-eBooks.net, will donate a portion of all the site’s V.I.P. membership subscriptions to further the battle against poor reading skills. The funds raised online go toward distributing books off-line to children from low-income families across North America.
“An estimated 771 million adults, one-fifth of the world’s population, do not have the ability to read and write, with understanding, a short, simple sentence about one’s own life” (UNESCO, 2006). With the development and availability of digital books, called eBooks, it’s hoped that more reading material will eventually be made more affordable and easily available, without the expense of paper-based books and the expensive distribution of these works. However, today, in low-income communities with less handy computer access, real books remain the foundation for education and literacy. …
“With our Free-eBooks members downloading an average of nearly 19,000 ebooks, every single day, we know they love reading! Plus, the power of reading skills is critical for a better society for all of us,” says Martin Wales, President of Paradise Publishers. “Therefore, we’re proud and happy to donate 10% of all our sales for V.I.P. Memberships to First Book to support their wonderful and continued efforts to stimulate literacy in schools today.”
Received the following from Google+.
Dear Paul,
After reading your Teleread post about Free-ebooks.net donating part of their membership fees to First Books, I decided to give both services a look-see. I liked what I saw on the First Books site, so I webbed on over to Free-ebooks. After giving a cursory look to the site, I decided to sign on for a discounted VIP account, figuring that the price was so low that even if it was just so-so, it would be worth it to have access for a year to a paid subscription service.
How wrong I was! After about an hour looking over their sparse catalog of books (many of which are pamphlet-length), I was appalled by the poor quality of the collection, which has been bulked up with “books” that seem to have been written as sales promotions by the authors.
Normally, I would never cancel a subscription so quickly. But, in the case of Free-ebooks.net the collection that they offer is of such poor quality or offered copyright free on other sites, that I decided to cancel immediately and used their support contact form to do so. Here’s hoping that they hold to their cancellation policy, which is stated on their web site:
_”How do I cancel my account?
For Standard Members: Simply email us with your USERNAME and we’ll close your account.
For VIP Members: We offer a 5 day money back guarantee. If you are not happy with your VIP Membership, please email us within 5 days of your payment and will refund 100% of that payment.”_
Here’s what I wrote to the folks at Free-ebooks.net as my reason for canceling my subscription:
_”Dear Free-ebooks.net,
As your web site says that a VIP member may cancel an account within five days and receive a refund, I am writing to cancel my account. I have been a member for less than a day but during that time have been able to look over your ebook collection and find it severely wanting in quality. I’m a librarian and joined in order to try out an ebook subscription model. If these often outdated and promotional books are the type of books offered in commercial subscription models, then public libraries have nothing to fear.
Please refund my Paypal payment and cancel my VIP account today.
Nancy Picchi, MSLIS”_
I’m sending this on to you because I thought you might want to spend a little time on the Free-ebooks.net site so as to alert others that this is not at all what it seems to be.
Best,
Nancy Picchi, MSLIS, and devoted Teleread reader and subscriber (via Kindle)
I found a similar website which can also submit ebooks:
http://aspdf.com
Hopefully useful for who would promote their ebook