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Adventures in Reading: Where to find Free Books!

velarisPosted for Everyone to comment on, 5 years ago10 min read

Hey Adventurers.

Today is another booky adventure - this time at the special request of @yomikibagami, following a discussion we had about Kindles and where we could get free e-books. So I thought I'd dust off an old post I did back on Steem and give it an update (things have changed in the free book world since then).


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This year I've been busy reading away as I am endeavouring to read 110 books. . to top last years effort by 10 books. And considering I scraped that in on New Year's Eve I'll be pushing it. I am currently sitting at 93 with about 6 weeks to go!

Now, years ago when the first generation Kindle came out I got mega excited and had to have one. Because you know, I'm a geek girl at heart and I love toys and technology.

It was okay... but I did miss the whole having a real book in my hand. Then I stopped reading for a while. Then we were going travelling for months on end so I donated the kindle to my sister...which meant, of course, an excuse for a new e-reader and this time I went Kobo.

Then I stopped reading for a while. Then I joined a book club as it seemed a very grown-up thing to do - got obsessed with Good reads and promptly had to get hold of some second-hand bookcases as I grew my collection again.

And then this year for Valentines Day hubby (which means I bought it and told him) got me a new Kindle Oasis and I've gone back e-reading again. And in all honesty, it's probably turned out much cheaper than another couple of bookcases. Not to mention space efficient!

Especially seeing that I am getting a LOT of my books for free.

Oh yeah - so that brings me to the topic of today's post. How to get your books for free.

Let's start with where.

Well this depends if you want e-books or physical books. And I'll start by saying e-books are a lot easier, not to mention quicker, to get your hands on.

Good Reads


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Good Reads is always a good place to being. If you are an avid reader this is a great place to be. Goodreads is a "social cataloging" website that allows members to freely search its database of books, annotations, and reviews. Users can sign up and register books to create reading lists. They can also create their own groups of book suggestions, surveys, polls, blogs, and discussions. It turns out the company is owned by Amazon.

GoodReads runs daily giveaways and depending on where you are- these can be Kindle ebook give-aways or physical books. Until about six months ago Australians could enter for physical books and I managed to snag around 36 books - not a bad effort. Some of these giveaways are actually by some really well-known authors as well so you can pick up some great books. It also introduces you to some new writers. And there is the occasional bit of rubbish - but mostly they are pretty good. Still, plenty of giveaways there if you live in the US

While it's not compulsory - authors or publishers giving away the books do like a review in return - legally they can't make you though. Winners are picked randomly but I've noticed over the last few months it's dropped off a bit. It seems newer people to the platform seemed to get randomly picked more often according to feedback I've seen in forums.

There are also notice boards for authors to post links to advanced copies they might be giving away in return for you hopefully doing a review and you are guaranteed to snag a few books if you check there regularly.

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/group_folder/30821
https://www.goodreads.com

NetGalley


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NetGalley is a site where book reviewers and other professional readers can read books before they are published, in e-galley or digital galley form. Members register for free and can request review copies or be invited to review by the publisher. This is a little harder to get books from as it requires a fair amount of work. If you are prepared to review everything and have a consistent history of reviewing on your own blog, Amazon and Good-reads you have a much better chance of being approved for books. But if you are a pretty avid reader and review than this is worth looking at as you can get hold of a lot of advanced copies of some pretty well known authors.

LibraryThing


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This site is a similar concept to Good Reads though not as well known and in my view a lot "clunkier" to use. However, they do have a large catalogue of authors requesting people to read and hopefully review their books - mostly in e-book format. In the beginning I did not really seem to do well here, I gave it a break for six months and tried again and picked up about 100 ebooks in about 3 months. You are expected to review (though they can't force it). I had to stop entering as I have not caught up yet! You do have to sort through to find gems though.

https://www.librarything.com/home

Instafreebie


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Instafreebie is a site that gives e-books away free to anyone who wants them. That sounds nice for readers, but not great for authors, except that the giveaway comes with one little catch.

Because, in order to collect their free ebook, readers have to give the author their email address. So be prepared for spam - or set up a separate email address through Gmail for your book freebies. Mind you it's sometimes worth being on the mailing list as you get access to more freebies. Also, there's no competition or random draw involved - you get the books you select and there is a big range all the time. (You need to sort through for quality though and so far these are all unknown authors and a lot of books that are really painful to read!)

https://instafreebie.com/

Book Funnel


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This one is a little harder to find as the Book Funnel sight is designed more as an app aimed at authors to be able to promote their books. There's no visible way to search a catalogue. However, if you do a search on Good Reads for Book Funnel in the Genres section you'll get a list where people have added Book Funnel books and these often have the direct link in them to grab the book for free.

https://bookfunnel.com/

Project Gutenberg


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Project Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". It was started in 1971 by Michael S. Hart and it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books. The project tries to make these as free as possible, in long-lasting, open formats that can be used on almost any computer. This is a massive collection (over 50, 000 books) and a great place to find all your classics - anything from Great Expectations to Anne of Green Gables.

https://www.gutenberg.org/

Amazon


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Okay, this is the mother of all places to get books in general - but there are a ton of free books that can be delivered to your Kindle or Kindle App at zero cost and it's as easy as searching Free Kindle Books. Also if you have the right Prime membership you can borrow Kindle books as part of that - this will include Latest releases and bestsellers

https://www.amazon.com

So these are my favourite sites for collecting freebies and depending on the sight you may need to be a bit more of a serious reader than others. Net Galley, for instance, is really for professional readers who keep a book blog up-to-date and review regularly. On giveaway sites, it is not compulsory to review and they can't make it a condition but authors hope you do, and you do need to call out in your reviews that you received the book for free.

The drawback of the sites other than Project Gutenberg, Net Galley and to a lesser degree, Amazon, is that the quality of the books can vary widely. I'm not normally one to DNF (did not finish) a book but some of the freebies can be a real trial. Often the stories are good but as many are self-published or independent they could do with a really good editor.

Sometimes though you discover a new author who is a pleasant and enjoyable surprise!

Most books are downloadable from these sites in a multiple of formats including .epub, pdf and .mobi so will work on most readers.

If you are an avid reader I hope this helps you find some more reading material to devour without you having to break the bank.

Til the next adventure

Wishing you so much Love & Light,

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