How to get Kindle ebooks for less.
Kindles can be great ways to read on the move. While you may prefer to hold a proper book, the Kindle can be an essential item for holidays and travelling.
It’s also possible to save a lot of money on the books you buy with hundreds of Kindle titles on sale at just 99p, and many more available for free.
And these aren’t just books you’ve never heard of. — selections change all the time, but you can get bestsellers and Booker and Pulitzer Prize-nominated titles.
Here are the best ways to get free or cheap ebooks for your Kindle.
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Free Kindle books for all
Kindle Unlimited free trials
For £9.49 a month you can get access to Kindle Unlimited – a library of over 1 million Kindle books (as well as magazines and audiobooks). This is a subscription so you’ll keep paying every month unless you cancel it.
However, there’s also a 30-day trial to give it a go. After that, it’s £9.49 a month. You should be able to take a free trial every 13 months (so 12 months after a 30-day trial ends).
Amazon Prime members can sometimes get a longer trial though the offer you’ll get can vary. Click the link below to see what you can get.
Free “Amazon Classics”
It’s possible to pick up free Kindle copies of older books that are no longer under copyright.
For example, a quick look has found titles like Homer’s The Odyssey, Tolstoy’s War and Peace and HG Wells’ The Time Machine all part of a series called Amazon Classics. And the vast majority of the titles in this group are free with only a handful coming in at £1.99.
Free Kindle book lists
You can also see all the free Kindle books via the EReaderIQ website. However, there are so many books listed that it could take you hours to go through them all and find anything decent.
You can filter by rating to help weed out the trash, and you may want to select “also available in paperback” (not that there won’t be some decent self-published books).
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Free Kindle books for Amazon Prime members
You’ll need to be signed up to Amazon Prime to get these freebies.
Prime Reading selection
If you have Amazon Prime then you’ve got access to Prime Reading, a selection of titles you can read for free, including the Harry Potter series. It’s a smaller version of Kindle Unlimited.
There are some decent books in this selection, so it’s worth taking a look if you haven’t already, or if you’ve been disappointed in the offering before.
Free First Reads every month
Another offer for Prime members, First Reads gets you a copy of a new title that hasn’t been released yet. A new selection is released on the 1st of each month.
Cheap Kindle books
You can also pick up very cheap books every day on Amazon. Prices can go up and down all the time, but there are a couple of regular offers to keep an eye on.
99p daily deals
Every day Amazon sells five or six titles for just 99p (or just over). These deals last just 24 hours before new offers replace them. I’ve picked up quite a few titles from this deal and have signed up for a daily email so I get a nudge to check what is on offer.
£1 monthly offers
On the 15th of every month, a new selection of 80 different Kindle books is made available at just £1 each. These titles are usually also available via Kindle Unlimited.
Kindle book price tracker
Prices of Kindle books can jump up and down all the time and it’s easy to miss a book your after at a lower price.
However you can actively track specific books and set up alerts so you’ll know if it drops to a price you are happy to pay. You can also track by author.
It’s back on that EreaderIQ website. You do need to enter your email address to access this feature and though a donation is welcome you don’t have to pay.
Kindle device deals
You don’t actually need a Kindle to read Kindle books – you can download the free Kindle app to your computer, phone or tablet.
However it’s a better reading experience if you do get one, and there are often deals to bring down the cost.
Cheap Kindle device trade-in deal stack
If you’ve an older Kindle you can trade it in for 20% off a new one, but if you time this for when the Kindle is on offer (such as on Prime Day or Black Friday), that 20% should come off the original price (make sure you check!).
So a £94.99 Kindle, reduced to £79.99, would be discounted by £19 to £60.99.
And even better, there could be gift card on top of this, depending on the age and condition of your existing Kindle. For me, I was offered a £30 gift card for my two year old Kindle Paperwhite, and £20 for my wife’s seven-year old version.
Using the £20 voucher brings the total we’d pay down to £40.90 – more than 55% off.
You could supersize this stack and opt for the Kindle Kids edition. This is the ad-free Kindle, comes with a two year warranty, and a case (though the cases are now very kiddy). You’ll need to set it up with a kid’s account, but you can then log out and log in with your own – and it’ll work as normal.
It retails are £114.99, but can be reduced to around £94.99. With the trade-in 20% discount, you’d pay £71.99. A gift card of £20 would bring it down further to £51.99.
Another way of getting ebooks for free is via local libraries and the Libby app. I don’t think there is a limit to the number of libraries you can join and, quite often, I’ve found, if they don’t have a book you can “recommend” it and they buy it in.
Thanks for this! I just bought a kindle and despite having prime membership, I couldn’t figure out the different options between prime reading, kindle unlimited and all the stuff in between!
Great! Hope you get some bargains
Very comprehensive.
I only bought a Kindle in September 2019, after years of resistance, but now I am hooked.
I just wish the deals were less focused on popular fiction and included a few more serious books.
There do seem to be other titles out there but they’re just harder to find! I only recently discovered the tracker tool so I hope that could help get away from the thrillers and romance titles that do seem to dominate.