Readers Respond To Barnes & Noble’s Free eBooks

Today, we posted that Barnes & Noble is giving away free eBooks. While we all love free eBooks and the news is great for Nook owners, our readers and Twitter followers pointed out that all of B&N’s free downloads this week are public domain titles. These readers didn’t appreciate a corporation using free content to promote itself.

Nic Boshart commented: “Wait, aren’t those all public domain and free anyway? And come preloaded on the Kobo?”

@ jane_l tweeted: “Giving away books in the public domain? that’s promo?”

@The Hanley wrote: “Public domain books shouldn’t be PR fodder IMO.”

@jen_b tweeted: “Sorry B&N. This is pretty cheesy.”

All of the titles in question, which include Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Grimm’s Fairy Tales, can be downloaded for free on Project Gutenberg. And most of the titles are free from Amazon and Kobo already. Maybe Barnes & Noble should have just said, “We’ve finally got free eBooks.”

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