As an avid reader myself, I thought I would share some of my favorite places to get ebooks at either a discount or completely free. I must warn you, I am a Kindle owner, so several of these are Amazon-related. However, in some cases comparable offerings may exist on other platforms.

#7 – Oldies but goodies

Project Gutenberg

Since these were the guys that pioneered the ebook revolution, it’s fitting to start with them. If you’re looking for public domain books, Project Gutenberg is the most comprehensive list of free titles – over 50,000. For the fan of classic literature, you could live two lifetimes and not finish half the books here. Perfect for the bored Highlander.

Archives.org

Archives.org  is more for non-fiction, with over 10 million titles from around the world.

#6 Kindle Unlimited

This falls under the deeply discounted category. What is Kindle Unlimited? It’s Amazon’s all-you-can-read offering on ebooks. For $10/month, you get unlimited downloads, with a cap of 10 books out simultaneously. If you factor that the average ebook costs anywhere from $3-10, and most bibliophiles like myself can devour a book in a day or two tops, that’s an amazing deal. Like a traditional library, you’re borrowing the books as opposed to owning them.

What’s the Catch?

Not all books are available via Kindle Unlimited. If you’re looking for the latest bestseller, you may not find it there. Kindle Unlimited requires the author to exclusivity for three months, so it just doesn’t make sense for a best-selling author to lose out on other revenue streams, at least not right away. However, if you’re into indie fiction like I am, you will get a lot of use out of your subscription. I’m amazed at how often I can find a title I’m dying to read there. It’s also a great source for non-fiction books – I’ve read some great titles on marketing/selling books here.

#5 Search for free books on Amazon/Barnes & Noble

Seems too easy, right? I did two searches for the same category on both sites: “Free YA Paranormal Romance.” It returned only a little over 300 titles on Amazon, but over 5000 on Barnes & Noble. I was a little surprised at this; I thought it would be the opposite. Sometimes it seems as if searching on Amazon is difficult, at best. With Amazon, you can also look at daily deals from the Kindle store screen, which features books priced $3 or less.

Afraid Free Books will be Craptastic?

Don’t be. Many times authors make the first book in their awesome series permafree, which is a cool new term cleverly combining the words “permanent” and “free.” So it’s like a first taste free deal, to get you hooked on the series and buy the later installments.

Of course I’d be lying if I said all free books were worth the time it takes to read them. I do two things when I’m evaluating whether or not to “purchase” a free book. First, I look at the ratings. If I’m on a smaller site, I’ll hop over to Amazon to look at the reviews there. Or better yet, Goodreads, as they have more candid reviews there. Reviews aren’t the end all, only a good place to get a general feel for what others thought of it. But really it comes down to the second thing: Reading a few pages from the “Look Inside” feature on Amazon. I’ve loved books the public hated, and vice versa. If I can sample a few pages, I’ll know immediately if it’s written in a style I enjoy reading, if the plot is engaging, or if it was *gasp* published prematurely.

#4 Goodreads

I mentioned Goodreads earlier because it is the be-all, end-all for book geeks. There are so many cool things you can do on this site, from finding other book geeks to chat about reading or joining a book review group, to entering awesome book giveaways. I could write an entire article on why Goodreads is one of the neatest hangouts. But for this post, I’ll just talk about the couple of spots you can find free books: Listopia & freekindleebooks.com.

What is Listopia?

Listopia is the place to find lists on Goodreads. What kind of lists? Lists of books, of course! Any kind of book genre is bound to have a list here. I’m sure there are several, but one good one I’ve found is Best Free Ebooks. It’s got nearly 600 books on it. Some of them are public domain classics, some of them appear to be Kindle Unlimited free, but there are still some good totally free titles there.

Free Kindle Ebooks

Don’t be discouraged by the basic template look of this website – it has a great listing of free books available on Amazon. The search capability leaves a bit to be desired, but this is a good place to browse by category.

#3 Kindle Borrowing

Kindle Lending Library

The Kindle Lending Library falls under the category of discounted books, as it’s more of a perk you get when you’re an Amazon Prime member. Please don’t get me wrong – if you’re not a Prime member already, the Kindle Lending Library is not the reason to sign on. Living in the sticks, Amazon is essential in my life, so it just makes sense to get free two-day shipping. And every once in awhile, I’ll check out one of the First Read books from the email they send me every month. As it’s not exactly straightforward to find these titles, I’ve included a link to a lifehacker.com article that describes the steps: how to see all the books you can borrow for free on your kindle from your browser

Borrow from a friend

Did you know you could borrow Kindle titles from a friend? How cool is that? My co-worker at my regular job turned me on to this neat feature of Amazon. You get 14 days to read a borrowed title. Again, the process of borrowing is not exactly intuitive, so here’s a link that describes it: Amazon Kindle Lending Article

#2 Your Public Library

Depending on where you live, your public library may be using one of several companies to provide ebooks to the general public. Overdrive is one of the big ones, but from what I understand, it doesn’t carry all titles, and you may have to put in a request with the library to get the book you’d like. My book, Connected, is offered via Overdrive, because my publisher, Wild Child Publishing, has access. Ebsconet, Axis360, and Hoopla are some other services that provide ebook access to libraries.

Self-e for Indies

My local library recently signed up with Self-e, which is particularly amazing for indie authors. It’s free to add your book, and they also hold a contest. They have a map of where they offer this service, and it’s in the majority of the states in the US. This service makes me hopeful that readers will finally get to connect with awesome indie authors! 🙂

#1 Bookbub & others like it

If you haven’t heard of it, Bookbub provides daily emails of heavily discounted or free books to readers who’ve signed up with their service. It’s free for readers, and you can specify exactly which genres you’re interested in, as well as specific authors. I open their emails regularly, and tweet about some of the more phenomenal deals they send me.

Not the only game in town

Though BookBub is the largest and most popular, there are several others like it that offer the same kind of service. This SPR article provides a comprehensive list of other choices. Though this article is geared more towards authors (as it’s grown increasingly difficult to have your book accepted by BookBub), readers can also use the links to sign up for book deal emails.

What do you think, did you find this post helpful? Are there any other sites I’ve missed for awesome free ebooks?