Book Club

MILLION-BOOKS.COM

Paperback FAQs | Download FAQs

How do I download a PDF copy of my paperback?
Simply enter the barcode number from the back cover of the paperback in the Free Book form on our home page.

Why are there so many typos in my paperback?
We created your book using OCR software that includes an automated spell check. Our OCR software is 99 percent accurate if the book is in good condition. However, with up to 3,500 characters per page, even one percent can be an annoying number of typos. We would really like to manually proof read and correct the typos. But many of our books only sell a couple of copies so that would add hundreds of dollars to the cover price. And nobody wants to pay that. If you need to see the original text, you can download a copy for free.

Why is the index and table of contents in my paperback missing (or not working)?
After we re-typeset and designed your book, the page numbers change so the old index and table of contents no longer work. Therefore, we usually remove them. Since many of our books only sell a couple of copies, manually creating a new index and table of contents could add more than a hundred dollars to the cover price. And nobody wants to pay that. If you need to see the original index, you can download a copy for free.

Why are illustrations missing from my paperback?
We created your book using OCR software. Our OCR software can't distinguish between an illustration and a smudge or library stamp so it ignores everything except type. We would really like to manually scan and add the illustrations. But many of our books only sell a couple of copies so that could add more than a hundred dollars to the cover price. And nobody wants to pay that. If you need to see the original illustrations, you can download a copy for free.

Why is text missing from my paperback?
We created your book using a robot who turned and photographed each page. Our robot is 99 percent accurate. But sometimes two pages stick together. And sometimes a page may even be missing from our copy of the book. We would really like to manually scan each page and buy multiple copies of each original. But many of our books only sell a couple of copies so that could add more than a hundred dollars to the cover price. And nobody wants to pay that. If you would like to check the original book for the missing text, you can download a copy for free.

How can I check the quality of a paperback before buying it?
Simply click the details link on our search results page to see a random 2,000 character except from the book.

Can I buy a paperback of the scanned book rather than your retypeset version?
No. We have tried reprinting books without re-typesetting them, but we received too many complaints due to the discolored paper and faded type of the original copy. Sometimes the original book (which usually comes from a library) even has hand written notes, underlined sentences, or paragraphs highlighted in yellow. Reprinting all that as is, looks really bad. If we only expect to sell a couple of copies, retouching hundreds of pages could add hundreds of dollars to the cover price. While most people prefer we re-typeset and design a book (with some exceptions), we continue to develop the technology necessary to restore the original rare book so we can reproduce it as is. Hopefully, we can offer that service in the future, but not yet.

What would it cost to manually retype, proof, typeset and design a book for me so it's perfect?
Proofreading a book alone can cost $13 or more per double spaced page. So a 100 page could cost $1,300 plus typesetting and design and printing. If that's of interest, we can prepare an exact price on request. But it would be less expensive to download a scanned copy from our website and reproduce that instead. Alternatively, you could do the proof reading and just pay us the cover price to print and bind it for you.

How can I help?
Some kind readers have offered to correct the typos in a favorite book. The best place to do that is Wikisource. By typing a correct version of the book there you make it available to everyone in the world. Furthermore, other readers can help you with the job of proof reading. To automate the task, simply download the scanned version of the book from our website. Open the PDF with Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat. Highlight the text by with Select All from the Edit menu. Create a web page for the book. (See Wikisource instructions.) Select Paste from your browser's Edit menu to paste the book into Wikisource. You and other readers can then proof read and correct the book. Distributed Proofreaders provides a similar service but you need to email a scanned copy of the book to them first to get their approval.

How do I buy one of your paperbacks?
Simply click the Paperback link in our search results. Our books are also available from most major booksellers. We don't sell paperbacks directly.

How can book stores and libraries buy your paperbacks?
Could you please be so kind as to order our books from Ingram. We don't sell paperbacks directly. Outside of the U.S. please see our global distributors list.

How do I return my paperback?
You can only return a book to whoever your purchased it from. We can't accept returns directly since so much of your purchase price went to the book seller, the distributor and the wholesaler so only they can refund that money.

Where can I find the bibliographic or other details for a book (e.g. where it was published)?
You can find any of our book by using the Search form on our home page. Simply click the Details link under the title in your search results to see the book's bibliographic details. For example, it will tell you the city of publication is Memphis, TN USA. There's no need to contact our customer service staff since they don't have any more details about a book than what is listed on the book's detail page.

Why is a book not available as a paperback? Can you let me know when it is?
We have tried to make each unique downloadable English title available in paperback. We have made other editions of the same book available for download so you can compare them. We will print non-English language titles as we get distributors in those countries. Unfortunately, we can't automatically let you know when we print a book. You need to check our website from time to time.

I work for a University. Can I get a "desk copy" of a book?
If you would like a digital desk copy you can click the Contact Us link and enter the book's ISBN number. Could you please be so kind as to provide your work email address and include a URL where we can verify your title, if you don't mind? We no longer provide printed desk copies.

I'm with the media. Can I get a review copy of a book?
If you would like a digital review copy please click the Contact Us link and enter the book's ISBN number. Could you please be so kind as to provide your work email address and include a URL where we can verify your title, if you don't mind? We no longer provide printed review copies.

I'm with a non-profit group. Can you donate copies of your books?
I'm very sorry but we had to stop donating books due to the difficulty in verifying requests. Instead we make unsolicited donations to causes our staff are already familiar with.

I'm a publisher. Can we buy foreign rights for one of your books?
We don't sell foreign rights to any of our books.

I'm an author. How do I submit a manuscript?
We don't accept manuscripts from authors. We license large numbers of books from other publishers.

Book Download FAQs

I see a charge from Books LLC. What is it for?
If the charge is for $9.99 it means you purchased a digital book. To see what book you downloaded, simply click the Login link below and enter your Paypal email address. If the charge is for $14.99 it means you purchased a book club membership from General Books or the Million Books Club. To cancel a membership, simply log into your Paypal account as explained below.

How do I cancel a book club subscription?
To cancel a book club subscription:
1. Log in to your PayPal account.
2. Click Profile at the top of the page.
3. Click My Preapproved Payments in the Financial Information column.
4. Click View the Agreement next to the merchant agreement you want to cancel.
5. Click Cancel or Cancel automatic billing and follow the instructions.

When I click the download link I don't get (or can't read) the book? What to do?
Whenever someone tells us that they can't download or read a book, we never seem to have any problem downloading or reading it. Therefore, could you please be so kind as to try these downloading tips first:
* If the download times out, you can download the book again at anytime. Simply click the login link on our home page. Don't worry if you see a book listed more than once in your account. We will only count it as one download.
* Sometimes, if our servers get very busy, downloads can take a long time. Therefore, as long as you don't get an error message, it's best to do something else and check the download's progress later. Try to avoid clicking the refresh button since that puts you back at the end of the download lineup making you wait even longer.
* Try upgrading your browser and Adobe Acrobat. Sometimes corrupt settings can prevent opening a PDF inside your browser.
* Try a different browser like FireFox or Google Chrome. They're free.
* If you get a message that the book is not available and you are a book club member then we suggest you try downloading another edition instead. If you are not a book club member, you can click the Contact Us link and let us know if you would like a refund or to change your order to another book number.
* Sometimes people tell us that after downloading the book the pages are blank. Normally this mean you need to wait a few seconds after turning the page. Or, if it's a memory problem, you may need to close another application to free up RAM.
* Please let us know if after buying a book you get the message: The requested URL was not found on this server. We will track down the book for you. Unfortunately, if you were downloading the book free as a club member you will need to find another book to download.
* If you are getting another error message from our website you can send us the URL where you are having a problem and what the error message is, and we will fix it. But if it's your browser or Adobe software that's giving you the error, our customer service people can't provide support for those software products.

Why join the book club?
If you want to download more than one book you can save money by joining the book club for a month since a membership costs less than the cost of two books. However, please keep in mind that not all books listed in the search results are available in all countries at all times to club members.

How are the books marked "PDF/scan"?
The PDF/scan books are older books originally published by other companies and then scanned. The condition of the books reflects their years of use in libraries (e.g. notations, faded type, yellowed paper, etc.) The scan may have missing or skewed pages. We also have hundreds of thousands of books listed as "PDF" that are mostly modern, original books only published by us. We have typeset and designed those books and then converted them to PDFs. Therefore, you can search those books by keyword and copy and paste text into your word processor.

Can I download books without a Paypal account?
You can pay without having a Paypal account. After clicking the download or join book club link, simply click where it says "Use your credit card or bank account."

I bought the wrong book by mistake. Can I get a refund?
If you bought the wrong book by mistake, you can fill in a request form. We may change your order to the replacement book so you can download it instead. However, we don't provide this service to book club members since they can simply download the other book without any charge.

I just downloaded a book. Can I switch that order to a book club membership instead?
Paypal will not let us convert your order for a single book to a book club membership. We also can't refund book purchases. Sorry.

I paid to download a book. Now how do I get it?
If you paid by credit card the book should automatically download unless you close the Paypal window. If you paid from your bank account you will need to wait up to four days until Paypal notifies us that if has receive the funds from your bank. In either case, simply click login and enter your Paypal email. You don't need a password. After logging in you will see the books you have downloaded or purchased. Simply click the download link to download a book without charge.

How do I download a book again later. How do I login?
If you bought the book or a book club membership on our website, simply click login and enter your Paypal email. You don't need a password. After logging in you will see the books you have downloaded or purchased. Simply click the download link to download a book without charge. If you bought a paperback, you can download the book again at any time by entering the barcode number from the back of the book.

I can't find the book I'm searching for. Do you have it?
Since we have millions of books, we recommend you enter both the title and the author into our search box. If that doesn't work, you may want to copy and paste the title and author from a source like Amazon to avoid any errors. If that still doesn't work then, unfortunately, we can't help you. Our customer service people have no additional searching tools.

Can I find books by subject?
Entering the suject in the title search field will usually work. While we have assigned BISAC subjects to most books for library use, we haven't made them searchable since usually only librarians know them.

Can I read your books on my Kindle, iPhone, Blackberry, etc?
Yes, you can upload or email our PDF formatted books to your mobile device and then read them with free software like eReader or Mobipocket.

I'm a book club member. But when I try to download a book it asks me to pay $9.99.
Please click the Login link on our home page and enter your email address. Then click the Download link beside the book you want. If you forget, at the top of the book payment page you will see a reminder that says "Book club member? If so, please login to download the book for free."

I'm a book club member. How do I download more than four books a month?
At the moment there is no way to increase the downloads per month on an account. If you have another Paypal account, you could use that to subscribe to a second membership under another email address. Otherwise, you can download as many additional books as you like for $9.99 each. Don't worry if you see a book listed more than once in your account. We will only count it as one download.

I'm a book club member. It's a new month but the site is saying I have already downloaded my four book maximum
You can download up to four books every 30 days. If, for example, you download all four books on the first day you will need to wait 30 days to download more. If you download books over the course of several days you can log into your account to see the download dates. Count to four starting from the bottom of the book list and then add 31 days to that download date. That's the day you can resume downloading. The start of a new month doesn't change that.

I'm a book club member but I didn't download any books last month. Can I download twice as many books this month?
Unfortunately, our software will only let you download four books each month. Allowing for credits of books not downloaded in prior months would require a complete rewrite of our software.

If I download the same book twice do you count that as two downloads?
If you are a book club member you can log into your account anytime and download a book again by clicking the download link on your list of books previously downloaded and we won't count that. However, if you download a book using our book search form and it is a different version of a book previously downloaded then we will count that as an additional download.

Paypal rejected my credit card. How do I pay?
You may want to contact Paypal (e.g. service@paypal.com) to see if they can offer you an alternate way to pay. Unfortuantely, we can't force them to take your credit card and we don't offer an alternative payment method.

I can't print the PDF I downloaded.
If you are having troubling printing a PDF Adobe offers the following suggestions. If you can't find the PDF you can search your computer opening Windows Explorer and enter *.pdf in search box at the top or just download it again.

What is the resolution of your PDFs?
Most PDFs are scanned at 600 dpi to improve OCR accuracy. However, we may reduce the resolution to 300 dpi or lower to reduce download time and the time it takes you to view the next page.

After downloading a book, can I copy all or part of it?
This article explains which of our books are in the public domain in the U.S. If the book is in the public domain you don't need to ask our permission to use a downloaded book. Our paperback edition, however, may contain new elements protected by copyright. Outside of the U.S. please consult your local copyright laws; we can't advise you. If the book is published after 1923 the fair use provisions of U.S. law lets you quote a few sentences from the book without the permission of the publisher. We can only provide signed letters of permission to companies paying a licensing fee since we need legal counsel to review agreements at a cost of hundreds of dollars an hour.