The battery on my Kindle Fire lasts a good eight hours with Wi-Fi turned on, more with the Wi-Fi off. But I pretty much always leave the Wi-Fi on because we have a wireless network here at home, and there's wireless at work, too. Tami, once you've downloaded a book to your Fire, you should be able to read the entire book with the wireless turned off. Go to the home screen on the Fire. You should see the Carousel, the Favorites shelf, and near the top, from left to right you should see the words "Newstand," "Books," "Music," "Video," "Docs," "Apps," and "Web." Touch on the word "Books." Centered near the top, just under where the time is displayed, you will see the words "Cloud," and "Device." Directly below them, also centered, you will see the words, "By Author," "By Recent," and "By Title." Whichever words are shown in orange are active. So, if the words "Cloud" and "By Author" are orange, it means that you are looking at all of your books that are in the Amazon cloud, and they are arranged by the authors' names. Also, if you're looking at the "cloud view," any books that have a small dark grey circle with a white downward-pointing arrow in the lower right-hand corner are only in the cloud. Any books that don't have that circle/arrow showing have been downloaded to your device. So, in the Books view, touch on "Device." Doesn't matter how they're sorted -- you just want at this point to see which books are on your device. If no books are showing in the Device view, it means you haven't really downloaded any books to the Fire itself. If you DO see books in the Device view, then turn off the wireless. You should still see those same books in the Device view. And you should be able to touch any one of them to open it and begin reading. You wrote, above, "I can not read with out wi-fi. I am supposed to be able to, but can not make it do it. I have not contacted amazon yet as I want to be home with no distractions when I do so. I have done everything that's been suggested otherwise, ans still can't read with out it, unless I just let it go to sleep instead of shutting it down." It's that last phrase that has me puzzled. You say you can't read without the wireless being on unless you let it go to sleep. When the device is in sleep mode, it's sort of the same as being powered off, except that you can bring it back more quickly. When the device is in sleep mode, it's not using the battery, but you can't do anything with/on it because it's asleep. So... if you look at the books on your Device, and it shows books, but you cannot read them without wireless, it means there is something wrong with your particular Kindle Fire, and you need to contact Amazon.

All he's told me so far is that he's going to self-publish, but I'll have to ask if he's thinking of trying with Amazon. I think he doesn't want to say too much until he gets it done. I admire anyone who can get it from their head to.... well, I would say paper, but that doesn't exactly apply any more, lol.

Just wanted to add that they changed the 'read inside' section, so now there are three stories available for free. Hope you'll read them! Also, my next book of short stories is going to be about my mom's great-grandparents. They were both deaf and homesteaded a farm in the Dakota territory. Amazing what people did back then! They actually had families with money, but wanted to prove they could succeed on their own.

I mostly use the library (which is a county wide library system and I believe may pull across the state). Occasionally though, a kindle book is not available from the library. I know sometimes amazon has promotions but I was super happy to be able to use the lending library for prime members. LOVE my paper white, and LOVE not having to wait for the library to be open to borrow from the library and or amazon. As an aside, there is another site, gutenberg.org which has all free ebooks, most of which are older and no longer subject to copyright$$. I have found some wonderful classics there (such as Three Men in a Boat)