I’ve had a Kindle for a few months now, and have discovered a few ways to purchase books at reduced prices or find books for free — and not just older works. Even brand new e-books are regularly “sold” on Amazon for free. Here is how you can find some of those free books. [This works for all categories of books, but I am particularly interested in finding free Christian books.] Note: If you have difficulty seeing any of the images below, just single-click on them and you will be able to see the full-size image.
First, go to the main Amazon page and select “Kindle eBooks:”
After selecting “Kindle e-Books,” you will be taken to the page below. Notice the listing of best-selling paid and free books on the right-hand column:
Scroll to the bottom of that list and select “See all bestsellers:”
That will take you to a page where you can either sort according to topic (and then sub-topic) or where you can search for particular titles, authors, or publishers:
I like to search according to publisher. While you may have some hits that are not the publisher (e.g., “Thomas Nelson Publishers” will yield some hits with authors of that name), it is the quickest way to find books by particular publishers that are either reduced in price or even free. Some Christian publishers to check are:
- Crossway Books
- Reformation Trust Publishing
- P & R Books (or Puritan and Reformed)
- Zondervan Publishing
- Multnomah Books
- Moody Press
- Thomas Nelson Books
- Word Publishing
Once you have searched for a publisher, then sort the list according to price (low to high):
This will yield a list of lowest to highest priced books (and free is always at the top of the list!):
If you don’t find what you want, you can do another search, or browse through Amazon’s own lists of free books:
I do this about once a week or so (it takes maybe five minutes) because publishers are regularly making books available for free and then removing them.
Happy searching, and even better, happy reading.
Thank you for the instructions on how to search for Christian books by publisher! So many Kindle book “ads” don’t include the publisher – or lists Kindle as the publisher! Or the Kindle date as the date of publication!!! I owned a Christian bookstore for 23 years and can tell a lot about a title by who the publisher is. THANK YOU!!! You have made my day! Jen!
Glad to help. I had enough questions from folks in our church about it that I thought it would be worth posting a blog about it. I’m delighted your found it useful.
Got my birthday kindle today. . . thanks for these guidelines. I used them several months ago when setting up my MIL’s kindle.
eReaderIQ (http://www.ereaderiq.com/pricewatch/)is also a great tool for getting kindle books cheap. You tell it the kindle books you are interested in and it will email you if they are ever on sale
I also recently came across Gospel eBooks, which has proven to be very helpful in keeping up with free and low-priced Christian books. For example, yesterday, John Piper’s Think was listed for $2.99.
That isn’t a bad method, but more work than you really need. If you go to a couple bloggers (BooksOnTheKnob.org is one) they focus on free books. You can get a daily email, an immediate rss or twitter or facebook notice or you can just check the web page. That will give you every free book (so lots you won’t want). Also there are blogs that will give you an edited list based on what they think is good.
Amazon actually has an advanced search page which makes the whole process a LOT easier…
http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Search-Books/b?ie=UTF8&node=241582011
That’s helpful. Amazon is continuing to make improvements to their Kindle page, and this is one that showed up (at least to my knowledge) after I initially wrote this post. I appreciate the tip.
Also, Monergism gives free Reformed ebooks away often, I get about one per week. To get them you can like Monergism Books on facebook, the free ebook offers will show up in your newsfeed. Or, you can go to their website and join the email list, they were sending the free offers via email but lately I’ve seen them on facebook and not in the emails.
Thanks for the directions! Using Amazon’s advanced search, you can reduce this process to two links:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_adv_b/?search-alias=stripbooks&unfiltered=1&field-keywords=&field-author=&field-title=&field-isbn=&field-publisher=%22Crossway+Books%22+%7C+%22Moody+Press%22+%7C+%22Multnomah+Books%22+%7C+%22P+%26+R+Books%22&node=&field-p_n_condition-type=&field-feature_browse-bin=618073011&field-binding_browse-bin=&field-subject=&field-language=&field-dateop=&field-datemod=&field-dateyear=&sort=price&Adv-Srch-Books-Submit.x=36&Adv-Srch-Books-Submit.y=10
http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_adv_b/?search-alias=stripbooks&unfiltered=1&field-keywords=&field-author=&field-title=&field-isbn=&field-publisher=%22Reformation+Trust+Publishing%22+%7C+%22Thomas+Nelson+Books%22+%7C+%22Zondervan+Publishing%22+%7C+%22Word+Publishing%22&node=&field-p_n_condition-type=&field-feature_browse-bin=618073011&field-binding_browse-bin=&field-subject=&field-language=&field-dateop=&field-datemod=&field-dateyear=&sort=price&Adv-Srch-Books-Submit.x=36&Adv-Srch-Books-Submit.y=4
Oh… this is how we find the kindle books… Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for a great time saving and money saving tip.
Wow, thanks for great tips.
Check this site for free christian kindle book too.
http://tinyurl.com/4ymcdxv
Terry,
I just found your post and thought I’d let you know that I post links to Kindle freebies from Christian publishers several times a week on my blog so that people don’t have to weed through all the junky stuff in search of good clean books. You’ll find my links at http://www.faithcreativitylife.com.
Michelle
David, I “joined” the kindlebooksonline.org but only see the first page – can you tell me how to find the other (“loads”) of Christian titles on that web site? Thanks!
Jen, It looks like I let a spam site through — didn’t check the links before I approved it. I’m sorry about that. I’ve now removed the link.
How can I be sure my computer isn’t damaged by that? Any suggestions would be appreciated. It looked good to me, just only had the one page of suggestions.
Shouldn’t be any damage to your computer — as far as I can tell, it was a spam site that was just trying to point you to other sites to purchase things through his site. I took a look at the site and didn’t detect any problems afterwards. You might try checking with a friend that is computer savvy if you think there might be a problem (e.g., if you downloaded a file and then started having problems).
Thanks…I tend to panic at the thought of spam. ..I deleted the cookies from that sight and am hoping for the best! Thanks for your quick answer…and your web site!
By the way, do you know if Kindle 3 has a concordance like the kind found in the back of most study Bibles (words alphabetically listed then references in bibical order with a brief part of the verse listed?) I can’t seem to find one. The ones I’ve looked at or bought tend to just list the word then all the references but you have to look up each reference and see if it’s the one you want…or go through 300+ pages reading each one! Yuck! I don’t need Hebrew/Greek just English! Thanks!
I’m not sure. I have very extensive Bible software and don’t have a need for a concordance on my Kindle, so I haven’t looked. I’m sorry I can’t help you with that.
This site does a pretty good job keeping up to date with currently available free and low-priced Kindle books. Sometimes it lists a couple books that are not free in with the free ones (read the FAQ for why). http://rocknawesome.com/christian-kindle-books/free-for-kindle-today/
You may also want to check out http://www.gospelebooks.net for free & discount Christian Kindle e-books. They post daily deals.
May I add my site to the list?
http://www.heidoc.net/amazon/subscribe.php?department=RELSPI&covers=on
Free books are auto discovered twice a day, for all Kindle marketplaces (USA, Canada, UK, Brazil etc.)
You can also sign up for the facebook group that shares Free Christian books for the Kindle. https://www.facebook.com/ChristianBooksforFree