There are two major advantages to buying e-books online:
1) Overall, they’re considerably cheaper than print versions
2) Downloading = no shipping charges
However, wouldn’t reading your e-book be all the more sweeter an experience if said experience was, wait for it, FREE?!
There are plenty of ways to accomplish this so read on, fellow e-reader, read on!
First of all, there are a number of websites that are run by non-profit organizations such as Global Christians or Jesus.org. They offer a list of free e-books on their site that can be downloaded in a number of different formats. For the most part, many of these books are of the non-fiction variety and quite a bit older in terms of their publication date. On the Global Christians website, they also promise a free e-book in your inbox every two weeks for two years if you fill out the form on the top of the screen. That’s a lot of reading!
There are also publishers that offer freebies through their websites. These books might be a little more recent and include fiction as well as non-fiction. Plough has a great list of free e-books that are searchable and include a short description under each title. Bethany House also has monthly specials where they offer free e-books of various titles. Some publishers also have a blog where they are able to highlight new products and promote free materials, such as Tyndale’s blog. The freebies are usually a limited time offer though so you have to check often!
Thirdly, there are the book distributors, the big one being, of course, Amazon. These websites will also offer free e-books of various titles from time to time but you have to know how to look for these deals! The process is actually very simple. Simply visit Amazon.com and search for Books on the left menu. (If you’re searching on Amazon, you should note that you need to have a Kindle in order to read the e-books they offer). From that point, I usually type “Christian” in the search bar on the top of the page. But one could type in any number of keyword combinations including ‘romance,’ ‘mystery’ or ‘Amish’. Amazon will then list all the materials that these keywords describe. Click on ‘Kindle Format’ in order to list all the e-books. Once this is done, just choose to sort by ‘price: low to high’ to have the free e-books listed first! If the list is still too long, there are a number of limiters in the left menu to make the list a little shorter. Christianbook.com also provides a collection of free e-books – although these materials are much easier to find!
Finally, there's the, you guessed it, Library!! Libraries have been offering free reading material for thousands of years and a little bit of new technology won't stand in their way! Many public libraries give their patrons access to e-books through Overdrive. A consortia of church libraries have also managed to put together a deal with Overdrive to offer e-books to their patrons! It's an amazing accomplishment - read more about it here!
There are plenty of free e-books out there for you to find and enjoy! Happy reading!
