The Amazon Kindle ebook reader family has made an enormous impact on the book scene in an extremely short space of time. The original Kindle started shipping in November 2007. The Kindle 2 was launched in February of 2009 and the bigger Kindle DX, aimed at readers of newspapers, magazines and textbooks followed hard on it’s heels in June of 2009.

Even although both the Kindle 2 and the DX were released during a recession, they still sold well. Of course, there has been some criticism regarding the fairly high ticket price for both the Kindle 2 and the DX, but it seems as if Amazon’s target market are quite happy to pay $359 and $489 for the Kindle 2 and the DX respectively.

One of the advantages of the Kindle series is the fact that there is no monthly fee required for the ability to download books. Amazon use a 3G connection – named Whispernet – which means Kindle owners can download books from the Amazon store in less than sixty seconds – without requiring the use of a notebook or a WiFi connection.

Another perceived benefit is the availability of cheaper books. As there are no printing, paper or distribution charges associated with the electronic version of any given book, it can be offered at a lower price when compared to the hardback equivalent.

Not only that, it’s even possible to get free Kindle books directly from the Amazon store. All you need to do is log onto Amazon, open up their Kindle store and do a search for books for the Kindle. If you then choose the option “order by price – lowest to highest” you’ll be presented with a list of books with prices starting at $0.

There is a good choice of classics available – Treasure Island, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, Sherlock Holmes etc. – but there are also quite a few more modern books available. Some of these are from publishers wanting to showcase authors and the list changes quite often, so it’s worth checking back from time to time.

In addition to books which are one hundred percent free, there are a good number of volumes which are on offer for purely nominal fees, $0.01 for example.

So, if you like classics – or any book which was printed long enough ago to have entered the public domain – you could pretty quickly recoup the price of your Amazon Kindle.