That title alone is probably polarizing to people. There are those who’ve embraced e-books, and those who prefer holding a physical book when they read. I used to be one of the later. The living room of my first apartment had four bookcases filed top to bottom, some shelves two books deep and when I moved into my house, I had room for more bookcases.

Then, one day, I bought some books at a book fair that was set up in Marché de l’Ouest and one of those books was The Honor of the Queen by David Weber. It’s the second book in his Honor Harrington series, and I loved it. I hadn’t realized when I made the purchase that it was a sequel and I hadn’t read the first in the series, but that didn’t turn out to be a problem because at the back of the book was a CD that contained On Basilisk Station, the first in the series.

Not just that, it also contained the third book in the series, and the fourth, the fifth, books from several of David Weber’s other series, books from other authors, the CD was filled with books that the publisher had just given away. Their philosophy being that giving away older books in a series would entice people to buy the newer ones. I can’t speak for anyone else, but in my case it worked. Big time. I bought all the books in the Honorverse, as well as David Weber’s War God series, his Belisarius series, Eric Flint’s Ring of Fire novels, John Ringo’s Legacy of the Aldenata, books by Mercedes Lackey, David Drake, Dave Freer (a lot of Dave’s seem to publish with Baen) so many books and it all started with just that one purchase that included a CD with free e-books.

There are a lot of advantages that e-books have over paper novels, but listing them would make this article longer than it really needs to be and I’m not here to convert people, my main goal was to share where you can get

Free and cheap e-Books!

I’ll begin with the one that started it for me. The Baen Free Library. Not all of the books I received on that first CD are still there, but new ones have been added since and there are about twelve pages of free books available, and a quick Google search (or Duck Duck Go if you are more privacy minded) will show you places where people have hosted the original CDs.

They aren’t the only publisher that has deals. Not quite as good as free, Simon and Shuster has a mailing list you can subscribe to that will regularly update you on deals to be had. The one I got this week has Stephen King’s Fairy Tale for $4.99 and two Kathy Reichs novels, Bare Bones and Break no Bones for $1.99 each. If you have a favorite author, I’d suggest checking to see if their publisher has a newsletter or mailing list you can sub to. I know that both Tor and Penguin do.

Another mailing list that is publisher agnostic is BookBub. They regularly send out deals on discounted, and sometimes free, e-books. I don’t think they sell the books themselves, it’s more that they monitor the e-book vendors and compile the deals together in a huge list. Regardless, it saves me money, so I don’t care that they get a referral fee, they deserve it.

I mentioned Humble Bundle in my article about Murderbot. They are a charity driven organization. The way it works is, they have bundles (it’s right in the name) of books, games and software that they organize with publishers for a limited time. You pay what you want for them and the cost is split between the author, a charity that changes every month and the humble organization. If you pay MORE than a specific amount, you get MORE books, games, software or whatever is in the bundle. The price is usually worth it. I paid $32.09 Canadian for the Martha Wells bundle and got 14 books. I checked the “jungle” website just now and the Kindle editions of JUST the Murderbot Diaries collection is $84.99. That’s a pretty good savings and I can be happy knowing the author got a portion of the fee, which brings me to a warning

Beware of Facebook scams

Facebook probably isn’t the only place this happens, but it’s where I’ve seen it. First time was one day I was scrolling on my phone and a post came by with an offer for a Robin Hobb bundle. I’ve read her Farseer trilogy and really enjoyed it, so thinking I could get more of her novels for a good price, I clicked the link. The website was very professional and authentic looking, but something about it triggered my Spidey-sense. I think it was the fact that there was no link to information about the company itself anywhere. No links to present or past deals for other authors, no biographic information about the author herself, the entire site was all just one self contained page who’s only purpose was to sell this single bundle. I did a web search on the domain name and quickly found out it was a scam. It wasn’t me they were trying to scam though, it was the author. If I had followed through, I would have gotten the books, but Robin Hobb wouldn’t have seen any of the profits. These people were selling pirated copies of the books, so instead of buying, I went back to Facebook, made a comment on the post to warn others and then reported it. I don’t know if it did any good, but at least I tried. How can you tell in the future if a deal is too good to be true?

Ask the author

Authors freaking LOVE social media. I think it’s because it distracts them when they need a break from work and also… well, they just like to talk, it’s why they became writers in the first place. Follow them on the social media platform of your choice (they’re probably on most of them) and ask. If someone is offering a deal on their work and it is not legit, I guarantee they, or one of the other people following, will let you know. Also, when there’s a real deal to be had, the author will often announce it themselves. Diane Duane, one of my all time favorite writers, sells her books directly to the public DRM free. Not the franchise books like her Star Trek or Spider-Man novels, she doesn’t own the copyright, but at least once a year she will announce a sale of her Young Wizards series that you can purchase on her website Ebooks Direct.

There’s always the library

I don’t mean this facetiously, I’m being quite literal. Not everyone is aware that many public libraries lend out e-books in addition to physical ones, and not just books, graphic novels, music, movies, TV shows, all available to borrow for the low, low price of having a library card. The public library in my area uses a service called Hoopla and it works the same way as borrowing anything. There is a limited quantity of each item and they get checked out by the borrower. If something you want is currently in the “possession” of another library member, you put yourself on the wait list for it. The biggest advantage this has over paper books is that you don’t need to wait for the person to remember to return the book, the system automatically pulls it back when their rental period has expired. I found out about the service when the TV show Outcast got cancelled. The story was unresolved, but I knew it was based on a comic book series. While looking to see how much a trade paperback was, I stumbled upon a Reddit thread that talked about borrowing comics from the library and someone then mentioned the digital e-book platforms that libraries use. I suggest you check if yours offers this service. In addition to Hoopla, there are others like Libby, OverDrive, Kanopy and PressReader.

If you don’t like sharing, but still want free, there is Project Gutenberg a donation driven site that hosts over 75,000 public domain works available in DRM free epub and Kindle formats. Yes the works are older, they have to be for the copyright to have expired, but Mary Shelley, Lewis Carol, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, Dickens, Dostoyevsky… these authors will never go out of style. Loved seeing Wicked recently and always wondered what the original OZ books are like? It’s there. Can’t wait for Wake up Deadman to come out and want a mystery NOW? How about Sherlock Holmes?

This is all just the ones I use most often, I’m sure there are plenty of others, you can share your favorites in the comments, I just ask that people keep them legal. I may be incredibly cheap, but I also believe that writers should be compensated for their work. It’s selfish, but I want them to be able to afford to live, so they can keep writing stories for me to read.