How to Read Books for Free
This post will provide a step-by-step tutorial on how to download books for free (not the crappy books, but the good staff). This means that the money stays in your pocket and does not go to the publisher and hence does not go to the author and that is bad! Authors put a lot of hours, a lot of work in the final product and it is unfair to leave them without any financial reward for their work.
On the other hand, how many times did it happen to you that you have purchased a book and it turned out to be a total waste of time and money. Note: Don’t know about you, but it happened a lot to me.
So, what I propose, is that you use my guide to download a book for free and once you read it decide whether the author has provided any value to you and I mean any. Even if the book has provided you with 1-2 good thoughts while you read, consider it great value! If you decide that value has been provided and the book was good, buy the book! Please, buy the book! Or at least donate some money to the author, he/she deserved it.
Apology to Authors
**Thank you so much for your thoughts, your research, your work and your wisdom, we really appreciate it! **
Instructions
If you are more or less sufficient with computer use, here is just a list of super-duper-mega cool resources that you can use to download books for free. You don’t need to read the rest of this guide.
- Libgen
- Gen Lib
- B-Ok
- Sci-Hub Note: Great for reading scientific publications for free
- Bookfi
- ScanLibs
If you run into a problem while on one of this sites please read the steps below.
Libgen.io is my favourite website! I can find almost any book here. I prefer to read books in epub format (convert to azw3 and import to my Kindle), but you can download them in any format you prefer (PDF, mobi, etc.)
- Go to libgen.is
- In the search bar, type in the book you are looking for. Note: I suggest first finding the book on amazon, to copy the exact title (or the first couple of words from the title).
- Press Search. Note: after I’ve got my results (assuming that I did) I like to sort by year (by pressing on the year button), so that I can see the latest edition available.
- Now you just need to find the file with the extension that you need. (Extension column). Note: There you can see PDFs, EPUBs, MOBI, AZW3. You will most likely need a PDF or an EPUB. Even if you are looking to import your book to a KINDLE, you can easily convert EPUB to AZW3, which KINDLE uses.
- Once you found the book you’ve been looking for you can just press on on of the numbers in the square brackets [ ] (mirrors - fancy word for links). Or you can press the link of the book (the name itself), which will lead you to a page where you can choose the mirror in more detail.
- Usually the only thing left to do is to press “Get” or “Download”. Sometimes, certain mirrors will require some additional step (nothing serious).
That’s it. Now you a have a book file on your computer (or phone) and you can read it. For free! Just don’t forget to buy the book if you liked it. Chances are you’ll want to read it again.
If there is something you don’t understand, just shoot me an email and I’ll try to give you some more information.