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Saturday, September 29, 2007

Free Art and Graphics Books from wowio

I've recently discovered a resource for free and legal electronic books! These aren't your ordinary watered-down ebooks that we've all encountered. These are licensed electronic versions of really great books that you can find on the shelves of any large retail bookstore! The free service is provided by "wowio" and I highly recommend that you take the time to grab some of these great books.

I had already downloaded many for myself (with many, many more queued for later downloading) and I decided that it would be a shame if I didn't let you all know of the kinds of books they have that are related to art and graphic design. So, to save you some time, I went through and made a note of all of the books that I felt would be of interest to you. This is a complete listing as of this writing but, since they add new books every day, I can't claim that the list will always be complete. I'll update the page every now and then if anything particularly great needs to be added. They also have a ton of other books in a variety of categories.

I'm real excited about all of the new, high-quality learning materials that I've been able to get from them and I hope you find some things of interest as well.

Here is the book listing that I made. Enjoy!


Kernon

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13 comments:

Anonymous said...

All well and good, and they look like some great books, and I'd love to take advantage of a wonderful resource like this, but those of us who do not reside in the US are blocked via IP geolocation.

Kernon Dillon said...

Yeah, I know, that's unfortunate and I hope they can work something out to deal with the legal issues surrounding it. I'm sure they will as it doesn't make sense to exclude the rest of the world from something like this but, I can understand why it's currently limited. It's really an issue with the publishing companies.

I have that mentioned in the sidebar:
For now, WOWIO is only available to people living in the United States. Copyright laws vary by country and currently our licensing restrictions limit distribution to U.S. residents.

Sorry. :|

Kernon Dillon said...

As soon as I'm aware of that restriction being lifted, I'll be sure make mention of it.

Anonymous said...

Couldn't you or someone simply download the books you have listed and offer them?

Kernon Dillon said...

That's what I thought when I first read about the U.S.-only availability in their FAQs.

However, they also point out the following:


Our approach takes the market incentive out of misbehaving, rewards people for doing the right thing, and tries to stay out of the way of honest users. To help keep everyone honest, however, readers must authenticate their identity and agree to a licensing agreement when they set up their account. Then, each ebook is serialized with the reader's authenticated name and a unique serial number, as well as other less visible markers. WOWIO will immediately terminate the account of anyone caught illegally distributing ebooks, and will prosecute serious offenders.


I think the best approach is for those outside of the U.S. to contact them and request the additional availability. That way they can be assured there is enough interest worldwide. I can't imagine this not ultimately becoming available to everyone. They just have to work out the copyright differences between all of the other countries.

Anonymous said...

If you are in the us military stationed overseas just email them and they will hook you up with an account after you respond to some questions in an initial email.

Kernon Dillon said...

That's a great tip! Thanks!

Anonymous said...

Well I am certainly not trying to be dishonest. I didn't realize there were such restrictions on books offered for free.

Anonymous said...

Awwwh, I can't sign up. >.> No non anonymous emails.

Kernon Dillon said...

Just use the email from your ISP. It won't cause you to start getting more junk mail. They just need a way to weed out spam bots and such.

Anonymous said...

On a different subject, It appears things have been very quite on the tutorial from from Kernon since someone tried to sell your tutorials on other sites, frequented this site alot and was almost surprised on almost a weekly dose of top notch tutorials from you, but things have been exceptionally quite, I know you are a busy chap, but lets hope, a few are on the way to us your faithful students, better still is the commercial one ready, have saved some dosh for that as well...

Kernon Dillon said...

I think I missed where someone was trying to sell my tutorials. What site was that? Or, are you talking about the torrents? I hope so.

Yeah, it bugs me that things have had to slow down but, I'm working on some right now so expect something new before the end of the weekend. There's just a lot going on at the moment. I'm also working on a compilation disc(s) containing all of the site's contents! I think this will help those that are interested in the materials but don't have the connection speed to get things in a reasonable amount of time. Plus, it'll be a great way to support the site. More on that later.

Thanks.

Dimentional said...

BIG THANK YOU for pointing that one out! thanks! :)

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