So I recently got an e-reader and have started collecting e-books for it, but a lot of books seem to only be available through Amazon/Kindle. I don’t want anything to do with that company. Where do I even start looking? I have my local library apps and have scoured Project Gutenberg and some similar sites. While this is great for classics and older stuff, I want newer books too, specifically science fiction and fantasy. Have looked at author’s websites but they typically link to Amazon or physical copies.
Ebooks.com often sells drm-free ebooks, depending on if the publisher allows it
Thanks for the tip.
https://standardebooks.org/ for public domain works.
and other ebooks i own are most likely from https://www.humblebundle.com/
Ah, yes, HumbleBundle! I forgot about them. Thanks!
As an FYI, Some of the bundles lately have been fulfilled through Kobo, they’re still epubs and kobo’s drm is pretty easy to strip though.
Honorable mention must be made of Anna’s Archive. It’s a little slow, but you can probably download the books faster than you can read them.
When you get tired of trying to pay for it and realise if don’t want to make it easy for you to purchase then you should pirate it then check out myanonamouse :)
Thanks! I’m interested for sure. I can use this and then donate directly to the authors if that’s possible :)
No worries. Whilst it is a private tracker they have open registration most of the time and you just need to log in at a specific time to speak to someone and have a small interview thing to join. Really nice, friendly community. Hope you can find what you are after!
Not what you asked for, but if you’re interested at all in digital audio books, I cannot recommend highly enough Chirp Books. They use a flash sale kind of model, and sometimes the author you’re interested in has their books at 90% off for like 30 days, and it cycles on rotation. You do need their proprietary player app to listen, but you can download the audiobooks to your device for offline listening.
For actual ebooks, you could look into your local library, and what schemes are available for ‘digital lending’. Some platforms exist that let you loan movies, games, stream music and download ebooks using your local library card.
Also a friendly reminder to support your local library. Many libraries offer digital and audio books now that you can download! All for free!
Here in Hertfordshire UK, I use BorrowBox on my phone S23 or an older Samsung tablet I use an an e-reader.
It’s linked to my local library (Ware) but not the best selection. My biggest gripe is that they’ll only have a couple of books from most of the series out there.
You’ll get book 1 or book 3, but hey, I’m not (directly) paying for them so it’s not the worst thing.
BorrowBox is pretty great in what you can borrow for free. My other half gets audio books from it from time to time!
I buy my ebooks from Bookapy. No DRM shit, you just download .epub or .pdf files.
https://www.baen.com/allbooks/ has been letting people download ebooks for a loooong time. Great little site.
They also have a collection of free books: https://www.baen.com/categories/free-library.html
One of the more ethical choices. You get the books in multiple formats and you own it.
I’ve always been impressed with Baen. They took a hard stance against DRM from the beginning.
Baen Ebooks, like its predecessor, does not use DRM (i.e., copy protection), in accordance with Jim Baen’s belief that DRM “just made it hard for people to read books, the worst mistake a publisher could make.” Eric Flint, writing soon after Baen’s death in 2006, noted that “in his fight against DRM, Jim stood alone as a publisher” and argued that Baen Book’s success “demonstrated in practice that all the propaganda [in favor of] DRM is, in addition to everything else, so much hogwash even on the practical level of a publishing house’s profits and losses.”
you can also use: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/webtoepub-for-baka-tsuki/ for many many sites. I like using it on royal road with a delay so that the site does not get DDOSed by me wanting to read a couple of authors (and then I usually buy the physical/ebooks later when they are more polished).
I never conect my kindle/kobo/ebook readers to the internet. Calebre makes it soooo much easier.
I never thought to load royal road chapters onto my eBook!
It works well!
Libby/Overdrive for ‘borrowing’ getting ebooks form your local Library. The Internet Archive is another good free source. When they aren’t being attacked by publishers and hackers anyway.
Yep, I’ve found some books on Libby and BookBites which is what my local library offers, but not everything I’m looking for.
The Internet Archive is great and deserves support!
Libgen is correct answer
Oh wow!
Also get any scientific paper/study basically
Bookshop.org is a great spot. Directs money to small independent book stores from your purchase and you can even choose which book store gets the money.
I love the idea behind that site! Unfortunately they don’t seem to sell ebooks.
I typically buy from Barnes and Noble for ebooks. They sell DRM laden ePub files, but the DRM is easy to strip with some readily available tools. Without the DRM I have a nice universally supported industry standard format.
Barnes & Noble used to be pretty inconvenient to strip the DRM, that was one of many reasons I switched to Kobo. That’s nice that it’s easy again.
Calibre and a plugin.
