Our new Kindle version of the Malleus Maleficarum is now available in the Amazon.com Kindle store for $1.99. This e-book features a fully interactive Table of Contents, but its most useful feature is the detailed Notes substructure embedded within the work itself. Every note in every chapter is linked to its corresponding notes, making our Kindle version of the Malleus Maleficarum perhaps the most useful version out there (far more useful than the existing Kindle versions, which are almost universally nothing more than converted versions of our old PDF files). This new Kindle edition will provide an invaluable tool to students, and indeed anyone, who are studying the Inquisition, Medieval history and the witch hunts.
Our standard PDF version of the Malleus Maleficarum will still be available for free via our links on Scribd for those who don’t want to pay the $1.99 for the Kindle version (or don’t have an e-book reader). If you prefer, use the PDF version with our compliments. We just thought that the electronic version of the Malleus Maleficarum was long overdue for an upgrade.
So, why not give this Kindle version away for free? Well, we were sort of hoping that sales of the Kindle edition will not only help keep the MalleusMaleficarum.org web site online and these resources available, but that that it might also help us fund the publication of iPad and Nook versions (which both have pricey ISBN number requirements). Obviously, at $1.99 no one here is looking to get rich off of this. We actually wanted to sell this new Kindle version for 99¢, but the arcane intricacies of Amazon.com necessitated charging a little more for it. All we’re hoping for is to defray some of the costs of our server, as well as some of the other Malleus related resources we’re hoping to add to the web site soon.
We also hope that by making this new version available via Kindle, our files will be harder to pilfer. Most of the e-book versions of the Malleus Maleficarum available online are little more than repackaged versions of the PDF files we’ve had available online all these years. We’ve never had a problem with our users sharing our PDF files. After all, spreading awareness of the work was our intention from the beginning. But we definitely take exception to anyone trying to sell them for a profit. Hopefully a $1.99 version of the Malleus Maleficarum, hand-coded and optimized by the people who brought the Malleus to the Internet in the first place, is cheap enough to dissuade our users from patronizing people who are essentially ripping all of us off.
In the end, the choice is yours. Feel free to continue using the English and Spanish versions of our PDF files with our blessings at no charge whatsoever. Or buy the new, fully interactive Kindle version for just $1.99. Either way is fine with us. We’re just proud to have finally upgraded the options for our users, and we will continue to look for ways to make the Malleus Maleficarum more accessible for a modern audience. As we have said all along, and continue to believe, “some things should not be forgotten”.
Walk in light and peace.
~ Wicasta Lovelace
