Show HN: DRM-Free Books

(frequal.com)

111 points | by TeaVMFan 1 day ago

19 comments

  • kreyenborgi 23 hours ago
    Bookshop.org lets you filter by drm when you search.

    https://www.bloomsbury.com has drm free stuff, and after https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42811332 i respect them even more.

    Also might be worth scanning old mentions of such https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

    • tren 14 hours ago
      We also do the same at ebooks.com, there's a DRM free section too - https://www.ebooks.com/drm-free
    • TeaVMFan 22 hours ago
      The bookshop.org filter works nicely. After searching for a keyword, pick "Formats/Ebook/DRM-free". I'll add a link and a note.
    • Abishek_Muthian 15 hours ago
      libro.fm for DRM free audio books, buying from there supports local book shops.
  • technothrasher 1 day ago
    > DRM-free classics that are out of copyright.

    I started down this road with a few books about two years ago, and I have so many now on my list to read that I hardly ever get to reading a modern book.

    I read a lot from Standard Ebooks. But one thing to keep in mind with them- they do edit the books to make changes for readability. Not necessarily a big deal, but something to know.

  • Groxx 20 hours ago
  • philips 23 hours ago
    All of Cory Doctorow books are DRM free.

    https://shop.craphound.com/

    • TeaVMFan 23 hours ago
      I added a link, thanks! Mr. Doctorow seems to include 3 formats in every purchase (PDF, MOBI, and EPUB), which should cover just about any device.
    • AtheistOfFail 22 hours ago
      Do you know if you can buy as a gift for someone else?
      • itsdesmond 6 hours ago
        By the very definition you can buy them and send them to whoever you want. Just, you know, don’t read it yourself and you’ve done it.
  • themadturk 21 hours ago
    My own novel, The Immortal Remains, is DRM-free on Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Google, and other platforms (maybe Apple as well, I'm not sure). Other authors, such as Cory Doctorow, sell their books DRM-free as well.
    • akkartik 16 hours ago
      The uncertainty is part of the problem. Funny that even authors are not sure :)

      I can't tell on https://www.amazon.com/Immortal-Remains-Lee-Hauser-ebook/dp/... that it's DRM-free. Amazon loses money in the small this way, but probably considers it more important to train people to not care.

    • itsdesmond 6 hours ago
      DRM-less on Apple is fairly useless in that the file isn’t exportable or readily found in your filesystem.
  • teo_zero 13 hours ago
    > More Authors with DRM-Free Books

    > On Amazon, look for books that offer EPUB and PDF downloads.

    Isn't this like saying "to find a needle in a haystack, just look for anything that's metallic"? Technically correct, but not really helping...

  • rickcarlino 22 hours ago
    I wish someone would build something like hiring.cafe but for DRM free digital content. One search query => uniform search results with direct link to purchase page on relevant marketplace. Basically just scrape and index every DRM free content marketplace and put it behind a single search interface.
  • dest 21 hours ago
    Remove DRM from ebooks you bought with https://github.com/esn/knock
  • Lio 22 hours ago
    The Pragmatic Programmers have always sold DRM free commercial book (to my knowledge).

    https://pragprog.com/

    Having commercial publishers that will sell you high quality books without DRM is brilliant and I'll always support that.

  • babblingfish 1 day ago
    I don't see any mention here of books sold by Tor. All their books are DRM-free.
    • kreyenborgi 23 hours ago
      Can one buy Tor books without going through Amazon? I had trouble doing that last I tried.
      • bentley 22 hours ago
        I’ve bought Tor books from Google Play and gotten DRM‐free EPUB files from it.
      • chocochunks 20 hours ago
        Yes, Kobo, Google Play Books both carry them.
      • themadturk 21 hours ago
        At least some Tor.com ebooks are available DRM-free through Amazon. Honor Of The Queen, 2nd in the Honor Harrington Series, specifically says it's sold without DRM on Amazon.
        • mrec 19 hours ago
          Huh? The Honor Harrington books are published by Baen (who are all DRM-free).
      • babblingfish 21 hours ago
        You can buy them from bookshop.org
    • archargelod 18 hours ago
      Love their browser. Very convenient for downloading no DRM e-books you bought.
    • TeaVMFan 1 day ago
      I added it to the list of DRM-free sources at the end, thanks!
  • murats 1 day ago
    Useful list. I wish more book stores made DRM status obvious before checkout.
    • Nzen 19 hours ago
      It feels like this list, if it focuses on individual authors is - if successful - overwhelming in scope. There are, what, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of authors ? If 1%, for argument's sake, this list would have thousands of links.

      Nonetheless, I'll promote an author of both non- and fiction ebooks I've bought from, Michael W Lucas [0].

      [0] https://www.tiltedwindmillpress.com/

  • boznz 17 hours ago
    Add both my Sci-Fi/Techno-Thriller ePub books to this list DRM Free, and Free as in Beer if you download them off my website. https://rodyne.com/
  • utopiah 14 hours ago
  • Leptonmaniac 1 day ago
    So this is a similar idea to Project Gutenberg?
  • ChuckMcM 19 hours ago
    No Starch Press sells all of its books with DRM as well.
  • Imustaskforhelp 1 day ago
    So after seeing this project on the front page of hackernews. I decided to add my EPUB reader on a submission as well[0]: https://epub.mirror.forum

    and although I already previously had the idea of showing books from gutenberg but your idea made me find more importance in it and I ended up doing so in two different implementations: https://guten.mirror.forum and https://gutencf.mirror.forum, so I thank you for that!

    [Offtopic: I am/was also surprised to see that there is a lack of API or platforms if suppose I created this app and I wanted to give users genuine ways to pay. Aside from the walled gardens of Kindle or specific apps, I am unable to give my users a way to just search books, pay for them and download it (atleast to my understanding at the moment) which is a sad thing :-( ]

    I hope people are able to give love to my submission at [0] / the link down below. Cheers and take care and have a nice day if a real human is being out there reading this :-D

    Hope you like or enjoy it and find it useful!

    [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48710584

  • teravor 21 hours ago
    all books are DRM-free if you download them from the right place ;)
    • themadturk 21 hours ago
      Yes, but from some of those places the authors receive no compensation.
      • jMyles 20 hours ago
        If their wallet address is available on the internet, that's an easily solved problem.
      • qurren 13 hours ago
        They chose the DRM path, so they brought this fate upon themselves.
  • shmerl 1 day ago
    Nice. Good to know that Tor books are DRM-free.
  • microgpt 19 hours ago
    [dead]