Ereaders are a god send for those of us that love to read, but keeping one filled up with books to keep our reading obsession happy is difficult, time consuming, and expensive. For that reason, we’ve put together this article on how to find and download cheap and free ebooks for your e-reader!
Book promo sites
This one might seem obvious since this is what we do here at bookspry, but hear us out…using promo sites gives you access to cheap books you wouldn’t find otherwise for a couple of reasons.
One, some daily deal sites (like bookspry) are scouring the internet for great book deals all the time and then report the cream of the crop back to you. This lets you take advantage of someone else’s work and all you have to do is check the site, or even better, sign up to the newsletter and check your email whenever you’re in the mood for more deals.
The other benefit of following book deal of the day sites, is that authors will often reach out to these sites and alert them when they have a release coming up. This relationship means you’ll often see new releases listed on promo sites before they make bestseller lists or review sites.
Get our Free Romance Books here, and our free and cheap sci-fi/fantasy books here!
Public Domain Collections
Sites like the Gutenberg Project and Standard ebooks have hundreds of volunteers who have spent thousands of hours building and cleaning books that are in the public domain, in order to make them available for free. Classics like Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre are all available for free and are available in various formats. You won’t find any recent bestsellers here, but it’s an amazing resource for older classics you haven’t had a chance to read yet.
Amazon Daily Deal lists
One of the beautiful things about ebooks (especially self published ebooks) is that the prices can change constantly and quickly (this is also one of the most frustrating parts of reading ebooks). That means that checking the Amazon Daily Deals page can often result in finding cheap and free books for your Kindle that will only be on sale for a limited time. Bookmark it and check it often!
Author mailing lists
A lot of authors give out free books, epilogues, short stories and bonus chapters to people who are signed up to their mailing lists. All you need to do is go to your favourite author’s website and sign up to their mailing list. The good part of this is that the stories you receive are hyper-specific to you. They’ll all be written by an author that you know you like, so the chances are you’ll enjoy them. The downside is that not every author has a mailing list and some that do, don’t send out freebies. Still, it’s worth checking out your favourite author’s websites to see if they do.
Ebook giveaways
A lot of authors will join together to giveaway free or cheap books en masse in order to gain new readers or draw attention to a new release. There are websites like Instafreebie that offer these giveaways to readers. Simply find a giveaway that matches your interests and look through the books. Note that a lot of these giveaways will require you to give them your email address. That’s a small price to pay for free books, but if that makes you uncomfortable, this one may not be for you.
Updating this because there’s a new giveaway in town! Stuff Your Kindle Day from Romance Book Worms is a quarterly free romance book giveaway that features hundreds of free books! Check it out to find out when the next giveaway starts.
Libraries
Saved the best for last. I know we’re an online daily ebook deal site, but we’ll always have a soft spot for our public library. A lot of people don’t know that most libraries have extensive online ebook and audiobook collections that are completely free. Sites like Overdrive can help you find libraries that have online ebooks, but their list isn’t complete, so make sure to search for libraries in your area or, better yet, go and talk to your librarian to understand everything they have to offer!
What to avoid…
Hopefully this list of places to get free ebooks is more than enough, but we thought it would be a good idea to include what to avoid.
Beware of websites that claim you can download new or bestselling books for free. It’s very rare you can get free bestsellers from anywhere but the source (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, etc) and that’s only when they’re having a promotion. Remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Also avoid torrenting books! Someone might tell you it’s a free way to get books, but lots of torrents are filled with malware and if you are downloading a book that isn’t free elsewhere, you’re stealing it. Downloading your cheap and free ebooks from legitimate sources makes sure that the authors and promoters will continue to offer these books!
That’s it. Happy reading!
The bookspry team