eBooks through Publishers

The other day, a colleague recommended the book The Grid: A Journey through the Heart of Our Electrified Land, by Phillip F. Schewe, so I decided to check it out. Not finding it on eReader or Mobipocket, I looked on Amazon to see if it was available as a Kindle book. (I don't have a Kindle, but availability for Kindle often indicates that an ebook is available somewhere.) But, no luck there, either.



Just out of curiosity, I decided I'd take a quick look at the publisher's website. Paydirt! Turns out Joseph Henry Press is an imprint of the National Academy of Sciences, which makes PDF etexts of its stock available online. They even offer "bundled" prices, where you can get an ebook and the hardback at a discount rate.


Congratulation, Joseph Henry, you're now my official favorite publisher!


(I wish they hadn't put website headers and other identifying footers on the texts -- makes them a big PITA to read. I ended up pulling the PDF into Omnipage and deleting all that (although with page numbers), so I could have a clean text to read in eReader or Mobi.)


This is the third time recently that I've found ebooks through their original publishers, rather than through the usual channels.I commend the publishers on their vision for this -- it's a good way to avoid going the way of music publishers.