From the Imagination and Graphic Artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman

Neither had I until recently. Operation E-Book Drop is a program designed to get e-books into the ereaders of American troops stationed abroad.

The story goes that one day on the Amazon Kindle message boards, Smashwords author Ed Patterson met a U.S. soldier stationed in Iraq who wanted to download ebooks for his Kindle, but Whispernet (Amazon’s wireless download service) didn’t work in Iraq. Being an ex-soldier himself, he could empathize. Thus was born the idea that would become Operation E-Book Drop.

There are currently roughly 1,327 authors participating (of which I am now one). The process is fairly low-tech. Patterson maintains a master-list of soldiers requesting books, when an author volunteers to participate he sends the list and the author is then able to email the soldiers a 100% off coupon to download the book for free.

The unofficial staging area for Operation Ebook Drop campaign is over at the Kindleboards message boards. Check it out, help out, and support the young men and women in uniform with some great reads! Operation Ebook Drop also has its own web site, here.