How to find free Kindle books (and save on others)
Today, I will eliminate all your excuses for not reading e-books in the Amazon Kindle app—the technical and financial excuses, anyway.
If your main obstacle to reading is lack of time, well, you’ll just have to get your own DeLorean. I can’t help you there.
Everything listed here works with an Amazon Kindle account, which you can use to read e-books with a dedicated Kindle reading device, the Kindle app for your iOS device, Android device, or on your computer.
The Libby App
Libby lets you download Kindle books for free from your library, and it’s great. Just set up the app—it works on iOS, Android, and Windows—using your library card and your Kindle account, and have at it.
You borrow books, magazines, and audiobooks for a given time period just as if they were physical items at the library.
You can join a wait list for items that are currently checked out, and set up a favorites list of what you’d like to borrow in the future.
Also, even after you return the books, your Kindle notes and highlights stay in your Kindle account so you can refer back to them later.
Library Chrome Extension
Chrome is Google’s web browser, and there are plenty of small programs called extensions you can add to Chrome to enhance your browsing with extra information.
The Library Chrome Extension shows you which e-books and audiobooks are available in your local library as you browse Amazon and a handful of other sites, like Goodreads.
Just look up a book on Amazon—Robert Iger’s “Ride of a Lifetime,” for example—and the Library Chrome Extension shows the book’s (in electronic audiobook format) local library availability on the right side of your screen:
Random House vintage shorts
Penguin Random House has a series of Kindle books ranging from 50 to 70-ish pages on a wide variety of topics, available for $.99 each:
The Vintage Shorts series presents timely reading from enduring classics as well as exciting original works from contemporary voices—exclusively available as eBooks. In a world where different types of media incessantly vie for our attention, Vintage Shorts provide a selection of great reading that you can enjoy anywhere—in any amount of time.
Lots of good stuff here. I’m planning on:
The Art of Noticing for Writers, by Rob Walker
The Writer Before the Page, by Toni Morrison
Hemingway’s Student, Paul Hedrickson
How War Begins, John Keegan
Last Days of the Civil War, by Bruce Catton
Amazon First Reads
First Reads is a program that allows Amazon Prime members to choose a free Kindle book from a pre-selected list every month. Just sign up for the monthly email, review the list of choices (usually around five options) and download your selection.
Kindle Owners Lending Library
If you are an Amazon Prime member and own a dedicated Kindle device, Amazon has over 800,000 books you can borrow for free through its Kindle Owners Lending Library.
Kindles range in price from $89.99 to $249.99, and less if you buy a used model. Using the Lending Library, a Kindle device can pay for itself once you’ve read a handful of books through the free program.
Kindle Unlimited
Kindle Unlimited is a Netflix for books. You pay a monthly fee and gain access to a huge library of books, audiobooks, and magazines.
Amazon has a signup offer which includes three months for $.99 (or two months for free), and then the program renews at $9.99 per month thereafter.
Prime Reading
As an Amazon Prime member, you have free access to a substantial number of Kindle books, graphic novels, and magazines through Amazon’s Prime Reading program.
This is another nice value-add for Prime members—and one I often forget about.
Daily Amazon Kindle Sales
Finally, Amazon kicks out a daily email highlighting Kindle book sales.
There are tons of options to read free and low-priced books without even having to leave the house. Hopefully you can find some options here that work for you.