Follow Friday: Girlebooks

If anyone hadn’t noticed, I love books! I work in a bookstore, I blog about books, a lot, and I have a household full of them. As a book reviewer, publishers and authors send me books weekly. I also buy *gasp* books, more than I would like to admit in this public forum. I have my special collection beautifully displayed in my ONE bookcase, stashes of them stuffed about the house, and boxes of them in storage. I am now maxed out on buying more physical books. Making me stop acquiring more books was not an option that I cared to even to contemplate. My solution was to buy a NOOK, Barnes & Noble’s nifty digital eReader. It has solved my space issues and also opened up even more possibilities of acquiring new books. Squee.

One great online source of digital books that I enjoy is Girlebooks, so I am selecting them as my Follow Friday this week. The “gals” Laura McDonald and Joyce McDonald  are experts at digital geeky stuff and offer many classics and some new authors too in a variety of digital formats. So who are Girlebooks and why are they so great? Here’s the low down from their website:

What is Girlebooks?
Much more than a simple ebook resource, Girlebooks aims to make classic and contemporary works by female writers available to a large audience through the ebook medium. The site was founded by Laura McDonald and her mom  Joyce McDonald with lots of help by volunteers and contributing bloggers.

Why books by women?
We love books by both men and women. However, if we may generalize, women’s most loved and re-read books are generally books by other women. The same is probably true for men. Also, as women authors were not always as celebrated and promoted as they are today, we are digging up many forgotten books that that we believe deserve a wider audience than they have.

What is different about your ebooks?
You can get ebooks in lots of places on the internet, but our ebooks are hand-crafted and professionally formatted. Each ebook has a linked table of contents and text reflow for small reading devices. We create covers, correct errors introduced by digital conversion, and offer the ebooks in multiple formats to accommodate most ebook reading devices. All of our ebooks, even the ones in the ebook store, are DRM free (no digital rights management). This means that once you download the ebook, it is yours forever.

• Here is a partial and prejudice list of ebooks that I have from Girlebooks that Janeites and historical fiction lovers might consider owning yourself:

• Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
• There Must Be Murder, by Margaret C. Sullivan (read my review)
• The Sylph, by Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire
• Margaret’s Rematch, by Farida Mestek
• The Life of Charlotte Bronte, by Elizabeth Gaskell
• Nachtstürm Castle: A Gothic Austen Novel, by Emily C.A. Snyder
• The Complete Works of Jane Austen, by Jane Austen

There dozens of other classics that I could snap up without hesitation if I had the time to read them all, but I must stay focused on the tasks at hand and be patient.

All ebooks available for digital download out there from other sources are not created equal. It is all about the formatting, proof reading and editing – and the gals at Girebooks do a beautiful job.

♥ Great news! Girlebooks is now offering their entire inventory for just .99 cents. I know! You can purchase and download right from their website, or like me go, to Barnes & Noble or your other favorite online retailer and purchase directly. I just added Nachtstürm Castle: A Gothic Austen Novel, by Emily C.A. Snyder today, and can’t wait to read it (in my nonexistent free time mind you).

If you do not have a digit eReader, don’t despair. Did you know that Kindle and NOOK offer free app’s to download and read of your computer, Blackberry, iPad and many other digital devices? Here is the info at B&N and Amazon.

Enjoy Girlebooks everyone. They are a fabulous resource.

Cheers,

Laurel Ann

© 2007 – 2001 Laurel Ann Nattress, Austenprose