128 PCWorld AUGUST 2019HERE’S HOW HOW TO GET FREE BOOKS ON KINDLE
SMASHWORDS
If your reading tastes trend left of the best-
sellers list, Smashwords (go.pcworld.com/
smh) may be for you. Ostensibly a free
ebook publishing and distribution platform
for indie authors, it also provides readers
with storefront access to more than 500,000
titles, about 80,300 of which are available
free of charge.
Books are organized by category—fiction,
non-fiction, essay, plays, screenplays, and
poetry. To get to the gratis offerings, select
Free from the filter bars at the top of the page,
then select a genre to start discovering new
voices. Books can be read online or down-
loaded in a range of Kindle-compatible
formats. It’s also noteworthy that Smashwords
publishes books in languages and dialects
besides American English, and this info is
included in each book’s description.GOODREADS
Given that Amazon owns Goodreads (go.
pcworld.com/gdr), it’s hardly shocking the
retailer provides a direct link to its store for every
title on its site. But you may not know it also
offers direct downloads of ebooks. There are
about 2,500 of these available, many of which
are free. There aren’t a lot of popular titles here,
but there are several interesting ones including a
few books in the James Potter series, a fan-fiction
sequel set in the Harry Potter universe.
Available freebies are identifiable by a button
under the Get a Copy section of the book record
(the verbiage varies, but “Download eBook” and
“Kindle $0.00” are dead giveaways). However
finding them among the many thousands of titles
on Goodreads is a needle-in-a-haystack proposi-
tion. Fortunately, you can find all available ebooks
aggregated here (go.pcworld.com/aea).
Once you find a book that interests you,Goodreads
offers free di-
rect downloads
of some inter-
esting titles.