Here’s a sweet deal from the University of Chicago Press: You Were Never in Chicago, a writerly portrait of the Windy City by Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg, is free for the first five days in May. Roger Ebert called the book, published in October of last year, “a poetic mosaic of his [Steinberg's] life and the life of Chicago–past, present, real, imagined.”
Sadly, the free promotion is not available for reading on an E Ink Kindle, and you can only read it on a Kindle Fire if you have a free Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) account and have downloaded an Android app named Bluefire. And in order to download Bluefire, you have to first download a third-party app named GetJar. If you’re with me so far, here are the steps that will get you to reading this fine book for free on your Kindle Fire, if you do it by May 5, 2013:
1. From the dropdown settings menu of your Kindle Fire, tap on More, then Device. Make sure “Allow Installation of Applications from unknown sources” is On.
2. Point your Fire’s browser to http://m.getjar.com .
3. Enter “GetJar” in the search field. Tap on the yellow “Free” button next to “GetJar Apps.” Then tap on “Download” and follow the steps for installing and opening the GetJar application on your Kindle Fire.
4. Open the GetJar app and search for “Bluefire.” Tap on the yellow “Free” button next to “Bluefire Reader.” Then tap on “Download” and follow the steps to install and open the app.
5. Authorize your Bluefire reader with Adobe Digital Editions, as indicated within the Bluefire app. If you do not have an ADE account, you will be prompted to set one up, I believe, but it’s been a long time since I created my own ADE account, so I’m not exactly sure how that process works.
5. With your Fire’s browser, navigate to http://www.press.uchicago.edu/books/freeEbook.html
6. Enter your email address, then click on the “Get E-Book” button.
7. On your Fire, open the email that you will receive from The University of Chicago Press. In the email, lick on the link to download your eBook.
8. On the page where you will land, scroll down to “Note for Kindle Fire users” and click on the link.
9. Since you already have Bluefire Reader on your Kindle Fire, simply tap on the link labeled “download this file.”
10. Complete action using “Download to Bluefire Reader.”
Start reading! Here is a sample from the first essay, titled “Manus manum lavat:”
There is a tendency to denigrate the present, whatever it is, because we know so much about it, while romanticizing the past, whatever it was, because its less pleasant details grow fuzzier with each passing year, accentuating the cherished highlights even more. This impulse can be particularly acute for newcomers, who missed the great era of the day before yesterday, arriving, as they must, in the confusing, compromised swirl of today, and so can be left with a permanent sense that the party is always ending just as they show up. The party is never now.
It’s good to see a university press making a popular book available in a free promotion like this, even if the process is far from optimal for the eReader platform with by far the biggest share of the market. If you have any questions about this procedure, please feel free to leave them here in comments, or you can send me an email at PodChronicles AT Gmail dot Com.
If you are interested in the book enough to purchase it for your Kindle, without going through all these steps, it’s available at the Kindle Store for $8.10.
5/2/13 UPDATE: Via Twitter follower @chexrex, I was reminded this morning that you can read this book on an iOS device using the free Bluefire app on an iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch. I just tried it, and apparently I had enough extra seats in Adobe Digital Editions to authorize my iPad mini for Bluefire and download the book. Sweet.
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