10 ways to get free or nearly free books for your Kindle

I love to read. In fact I have joked that my house might collapse if all of the books were suddenly removed as all of the overloaded bookshelves stacked to the ceiling might be what is supporting my home.free Kinle books

A few years ago I discovered the wonders of Amazon and e-books. While I don’t have an actual Kindle device, the great thing about Amazon is they provide apps for Apple and Android devices. You can also read them on your PC and if that doesn’t provide enough options they also have a cloud reader you can use to read books from your web browser.

Personally, I use the Android app on my phone and it works wonderfully. The great thing is I almost always have my phone with me so if I am waiting for an appointment, standing in a long line, or have a few spare minutes elsewhere, I always have a book nearby.

The good news is there are several ways to find free (or nearly free) books for your Kindle. Most of these sources also provide options for a Barnes and Noble Nook or other e-readers.

E-mail lists

There are several e-mail based services that provide lists of free or cheap books. Most of the books available from these services range in price between free and $2.99.

Simply go to the site and register for a free account. There are a large variety of categories and you select the categories that interest you. Each day they send you an e-mail with selections from those categories.


One of the first one that I stumbled across was BookBub. This is still one of my best sources for books.  They have one of the widest selections of categories and often have selections from well-known authors.


My second favorite service is eReaderIQ. One additional option they provide is the ability to import your wishlist from Amazon so that they will notify you if one of the books on your list goes on sale. They also have an extension for the Chrome browser that you can use to check prices against Amazon to make sure you are getting the best price.


eBookSoda provides fewer categories than BookBub but they still provide a nice selection of inexpensive books to your e-mail each day.


Book Lemur just changed their service slightly. They still send a daily e-mail but instead of including the list of books on sale, the e-mail provides a link back to the Book Lemur site where you can view your daily list.


FreeBooksy is a bit unique in that all of their selections are free each day, but otherwise it works similar to the other services. I’ve noticed though that they seem to have fewer well-known authors.


The last e-mail service I use is Early Bird Books. They generally have a smaller selection of books each day. If you like classics though they frequently have at least one classic book available in the daily list.

Kindle Daily Deals

Amazon also provides many daily deal subscription services. Among those is the Kindle Daily Deals. The highlighted daily books are usually not free but are generally fairly inexpensive.

3 more sources for free books

The library

Each state’s library system may be different but in Ohio where I live, in addition to being able to check out physical books, you also have access to the Ohio Digital Library. Books can be signed out for 3 weeks at a time. There are limited copies so you might still be on a waiting list for popular titles, but you will be notified when your turn comes up. The checkout process works in tandem with Amazon so the sign out process is very similar to buying a new book. They also provide epub versions that are compatible with other readers.

Amazon Prime

If you are an Amazon Prime subscriber, then you have access to the Kindle Lending Library. Using this service, you can checkout and read many Kindle titles for free.

Classic books on Amazon

Lastly, if you enjoy reading classic authors there is a large selection of classic literature available for free. These are books for which the copyrights have expired. But if you enjoy reading books by authors like Charles Dickens, Jules Verne, Victor Hugo, Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, Jane Austen, and hundreds of others, you can easily find great choices for free in the Kindle store.

Two cautions

Be aware that authors often will discount or offer for free the first book in a series. This is good in that it allows you the opportunity to get a taste of the series for little if any cost. The downside though is if you really love the first book, then you may have to pay the full retail price for subsequent books in the series. Or if you are fortunate you might be able to get them through the library.

Second, if you are a real book lover you may wake up one day and realize you have a lifetime worth of books that you have accumulated. As a book lover you may be saying, “So what’s the problem?”. Personally, I am hopeful that God will allow me to live long enough to make it through all of the books I have to read. I believe that if He grants my request I stand a good chance of living to be at least 120. Seriously, though it is easy to accumulate a large number of books for little cost. Personally, I have gotten much more choosy about the books I purchase. I simply have more books than I’ll likely ever get to.

The bottom line is if you love reading, e-books provide a great alternative and you can build a sizable library of wonderful books for almost no cost.

What sources do you use to get free or cheap books?
