Looking for a site to make my book's PDF freely downloadable

I wrote a fairly light-hearted book in late 2004 and self-published it through CafePress. Now I'd like to find a place where I can make the PDF of it freely available for download to anyone who wants to read it. With Kindles and other e-readers proliferating, this seems like an easy way to just collect a few more readers who might enjoy the thing.

I don't really want to pay for this service, because I am cheap enough to eat skinned rats and save the skins for later. All the free server space I've located so far has been designed for personal use, not for free public access and unrestricted public downloads. The PDF file itself is just a hair over 4MB, so it's not like I need much space.

Suggestions?

Now that I've bothered you all, I think I have a solution. The following link should allow you to download the file (it's actually 5.3MB - I misremembered).

http://www.4shared.com/office/l9nfi4pY/Escape_On_Foot.html

Downloading it now. Have you tried Issuu or www.scribd.com ?

I clicked on that link and it thanked me for downloading Escape On Foot and there were a lot of crepey buttons so I closed the window and then it turned it I hadn't actually downloaded yet. Will try again tomorrow but really need to sleep right now.

Shhh. You'll scare off the young and impressionable ones.

See above in re: cheapness and skinned rats. The problem with using a free site is, of course, they extract their pennyworth of flesh in some other way. I think this one makes you wait a certain number of seconds (20?) after initiating the download (hah!), so that you'll be certain to absorb the fascinating content of their screenfull of ads and self-promotion.

When the wait period is over, they don't make it plain you must THEN re-initiate the download. At least, that's how I recall the painful, protracted minute-or-so I was exposed to this site's download process.

(whispers) The horror!

Downloaded. Prelude and beginning read with enjoyment and what is perhaps more important, lack of irritation.

I ought not say it myself, but I think my book could justly be called the Plumtree's Potted Meat of twenty-first century Oregon hiking books. (bursts buttons)

You can publish for free in Kindle format on the Amazon site - not PDF, but downloadable by anyone with the Kindle app on an electronic entertainment device.

The review I did back in 2005 is still up: http://www.theilliterate.com/2005/09/29/escape-on-foot/ And, more importantly, the people I've gifted it to have all told me later how much they enjoyed reading it.

Thanks again for that review and for your purchases, Jaq.

It's hard to know how to connect the book with its natural audience. You'd think the audience would be subject matter based, making it a book for wilderness hikers. My experience has been that the readers who appreciate it most are keen readers with a taste for literature. But because that group has a never-ending wealth of titles to choose among, it is hard to acquire their attention, especially for a book they suspect is merely for hikers.

Perhaps the best way I've found to present the book is to invoke Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat, To Say Nothing of the Dog, which is, in fact, the model I used for inspiration. For anyone who's read that, it gives them their bearings.