Save money by downloading your next read or listen from Libby, BookBub, Amazon, and more
Published by: AARP
E-reading has exploded in popularity since Amazon came out with its Kindle in 2007, with e-book sales skyrocketing to $1 billion last year, according to the Association of American Publishers.
The average newly released bestseller costs around $15 in e-book form. While that’s cheaper than the print version, the click-and-read habit still can get expensive — unless you take advantage of the thousands of e-books (print and audio!) that are free to borrow or download.
1. Public Libraries
Libraries, as everyone knows, stack their shelves with physical books you can borrow for free, but many aren’t aware that they also fill their e-shelves with e-books (and audiobooks). Patrons can access them through digital databases, including the most popular one, Libby, which celebrated its 1 billionth publication checkout last year. (Others include CloudLibrary and Hoopla.)
2. Project Gutenberg
Gutenberg.org, a nonprofit, longtime keeper of online books, offers direct access to more than 70,000 e-books and a smaller number of audiobooks. They are all older works in the public domain, meaning they were published largely before 1929 and are no longer copyrighted. Gutenberg is a great place to access classics like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or Moby Dick. It’s even better for big, fat books — think Don Quixote, available in Spanish or English — for which your reading time might exceed a library’s borrowing period.
3. Standard Ebooks
Starting with software engineer Alex Cabal in 2014, Standard Ebooks has fewer titles (just over 1,000) than Gutenberg. Still, they are packaged in a prettier format and listed in a sleeker, more informative catalog that includes approximate reading time and difficulty level, for instance.
4. BookBub and other discount e-book sellers
BookBub is a book recommendation and sales hub for discounted e-books (think the Marshalls of e-books). Along with low-cost e-books, it offers “hundreds” of free e-books on its site, according to General Manager Katie Donelan. The free reads, most published within the last five years, lean heavily toward the romance, mystery, fantasy, and thriller categories.
5. LibriVox
The motto of LibriVox is “Acoustical liberation of books in the public domain.” This Gutenberg of audiobooks contains more than 19,000 public domain books, poems, and songs recorded by volunteers from all over the world. Most are in English, with some in a smattering of other languages, such as Maori, Welsh, and Russian.
6. Amazon
The company that popularized e-books and sold the Kindle, the most popular e-reader, also offers a rotating selection of free e-books. A recent search pulled up thousands of titles, including classics (Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables), romances (Finding Cinderella by Colleen Hoover), thrillers, and children’s books.
7. Barnes & Noble
For readers who use Barnes & Noble’s Nook device, bn.com has as many as 10,000 free books available every day. They are mostly books that have been available for at least a year, according to Jason Matos, manager of the Nook division. Popular choices include The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie and the memoir Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northrup.
8. The Palace Project
Partnering with the nonprofit Digital Public Library of America, The Palace Project (its name highlights the idea that libraries are “palaces for the people”) has more than 15,000 titles available for free reading, including banned books.