Hi mamatoad. I'm not an expert, but I have a Fire and I love it.

When you "buy" a free book (I'm assuming you don't mean through Prime - - - those are borrowed), you own it. You have it forever unless or until you delete it. If you want to delete it, it's a 2-part process.

1) on your Fire, hold your finger on the cover of the book for a few seconds until a dialog appears giving you some choices. One is to remove the book from the device. Choose that.

2) then go to Amazon.com on your computer and find "Manage Your Kindle". That'll show everything you've downloaded. Find the book you want to delete and on the right hand side under "Actions", click delete.

Also, I got a free book a couple of weeks ago that is a very basic but excellent "idiot's guide" to Kindles in general, and the Fire is included. I'll find the name of it and come back to post it here.

Suzieque

Mamatoad: the eBook I got (free when I downloaded it, but you should check) is "The Complete 2012 User's Guide to the Amazing Amazon Kindle"....Tips, Tricks, and Links to Unlock Cool Features, Save You Hundreds on Kindle Content, and Help You Get the Most Out of Your Kindle.

As I said above, it's for all Kindles, but has the models separated out within each chapter.

I got a regular Kindle for christmas. I downloaded several free books, then a couple more, including Stephen King's "latest". I manage my Kindle from my PC using my Amazon account. I deleted stuff I didn't want.

Susieque and Jannie, thank you soooo much for your info! I will definitely check out the book and also use the info that you provided!!

there are some very good kindle and kindle fire specific forums you might want to check out lots of info there.

Kindle Fire Forum - Amazon Kindle Fire Forum

Kindle Fire Forum - The #1 Amazon Kindle Fire Community And Fan Site

and if you google Kindle Fire tutorial you will find lots of help and many youtube videos too

The second of two steps that suzieque posted, regarding removing books from your Kindle:

"2) then go to Amazon.com on your computer and find "Manage Your Kindle". That'll show everything you've downloaded. Find the book you want to delete and on the right hand side under "Actions", click delete."

I don't have an issue with suzieque's first step in the process, but I personally disagree with this second step. If your goal is to remove the book from your Kindle device to free up space (or for any other reason), all you need to do is step 1. What's the harm in leaving the book in your Kindle items in your Amazon account??? You have one heck of a huge amount of storage space in the Amazon cloud; and should you ever want to read the book again, or check something in it, etc., you can do that as long as it's in your account. Yes, if it's not in your Amazon account you can still download it again as long as Amazon still has it available; but even if it's available it might not be free at that time.

An example: a book I downloaded for free in January of last year is Unbillable Hours: A True Story. I thought it was great, and told my husband (who is an attorney) that he should download it to his Kindle, too. But, it was $11.99 when he went to download it, so he passed on that and he read it on my Kindle. I just looked up the book on Amazon, and today the Kindle price is $8.99.

So, I never delete any of my downloads from my account on Amazon.

~*~*~*~
When I bought the book:

Here it is today:

I don't delete either but the main reason why you might is if it remains in your account then you sync all it will put those items back on the kindle. Other than that I see no reason to. Also if you have a book that is a freebie you can share it with other kindles. My brother in law had one on his kindle and I was able to transfer it to sd card to my kindle for pc and read it, but if you try it with a purchased book it will not open. Now his wife, who shares the same Amazon account can put his purchased books on her kindle and read them, as long as you use the same account you can share with with several kindle devices, I think they may have put a limit on the number, seems like maybe 5 or 6. I saw that information on Amazon a while back when helping my sister with hers.

I thought the free books you download are yours to keep, but the ones from the Kindle "library" are only borrowed for a month. I still have all the books I downloaded, but the one I borrowed from the library was taken off.

yes that is correct. However I have heard from some people on a few other forums that if their amazon account was suspended by amazon all their books both free and paid for will be locked down and no longer accessible to them from the amazon site so they could not put them back on the kindle, if they are on the kindle they are not affected.

If you get library books through kindle those also will expire just like a real book and no longer be accessible after the expiration day.

Mamatoad asked how to delete a book from her Kindle, so that's what I answered.

For myself, I competely delete books from my Kindle as I described (unless I think I might go back to it for some reason) to keep my Kindle neater. I don't want to see the book in my carousel or cloud. I've got so many to read that I doubt very much that I'll go back to the ones I've already read.

To each their own, of course. But I was answering what Mamatoad asked. Mamatoad, hopefully the book will help you; it did me.

Thanks so much to each of you who answered. I got some very useful information (which I will definitely use) and I'm confident that I'll be a "pro" in a few days! LOL Seriously, it always helps to ask for information at the KT. Thanks again!