Recently, I made the choice to buy a Kindle Paperwhite, but not register it to my Amazon account. Doing so is as simple as avoiding connecting to a wifi network during setup. The Kindle itself will still run just fine; it just won't connect to the internet or link itself to your Amazon account. I made this choice on purpose, because I am tired of being locked into Amazon's ecosystem to purchase books. Luckily, whether you register your Kindle or not, there are alternatives.

Usually, the ebooks you buy for your Kindle have DRM (Digital Rights Management) included, which forbids you from legally copying the book to other devices. Big ebook publishers and retailers often use DRM to ensure that you can't make backups of ebooks you've already paid for. When you have a DRM-free ebook, though, you can save a copy of the book to any of your devices and send it to any other ebook readers, too. Big companies might argue that this makes it easy to pirate ebooks, but fortunately, there are still many ways to legally purchase DRM-free ebooks, which are yours to save and transfer as you like.

When you use your Kindle without an Amazon account, you can't use the device to buy books, but you can easily transfer DRM-free books from all other stores to it. Just plug in the Kindle into a computer and it's as easy as a drag-and-drop. For many people, the idea of using a Kindle without Amazon's ebook store is unthinkable, but I think there are enough DRM-free books out there for me to make it work. This choice has forced me to consider how to buy DRM-free ebooks, and I'll cover all the best options in this guide. And again, even if you're not as committed to an Amazon-free device as me, you can still buy and transfer DRM-free ebooks even if you use your Kindle with an Amazon account. 

How to send DRM-free ebooks to a Kindle

First, how do you actually get DRM-free ebooks onto your device? Your best bet is a helpfully named feature called Send to Kindle. This lets you attach your ebooks in an email to your personal Kindle address, which converts them to a Kindle-compatible format and wirelessly transfers them to your Kindle device. To use Send to Kindle, follow these steps:

1. First, find your Send to Kindle email address. Log in to your Amazon account in a browser and open the Manage Your Content & Devices page.

2. Navigate to Preferences > Personal Document Settings. You'll find your Kindle email address here.

3. Under Approved Personal Document E-mail List, make sure that you add your Gmail, Outlook, or other personal email addresses. This will ensure that your books get delivered to your Kindle, as long as you attach them to emails sent from approved email addresses.

4. Now, go ahead and attach your books to an email and send it from an approved address to your Kindle email. Supported file types include epub, pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf, htm, html, png, gif, jpg, jpeg, and bmp. Epub is by far the most popular ebook format for DRM-free books, and almost every ebook you purchase will be available as an Epub.

5. If emailing books isn't convenient for you, Amazon does have alternate methods to send books to your Kindle. To find one that works for you, visit the Send to Kindle website, choose your device, and find an easier way to send books to your ebook reader.

Since I've chosen not to register my Kindle with Amazon, I can't use Send to Kindle. Fortunately, there are great alternatives to this method. My favorite is a free app called Calibre. To use it, I just connect my Kindle to my computer and open the app. Calibre is a great app for ebook management, too. By connecting it to the folder where all my DRM-free ebooks are stored, I got it to automatically list them all in the app as I add them. In two clicks, I can send all these books to my ebook reader.

How to buy DRM-free ebooks

As for where to actually get DRM-free ebooks, there are lots of choices. Unfortunately, some ebooks are exclusive to Kindle, and there's no way to find them elsewhere. If that's not an issue with the books you're looking for, here are all the best DRM-free ebook stores for your reading needs.

Download free ebooks that are in the public domain

Once a book's copyright has expired, it enters the public domain, which means that you're free to download ebooks of it without paying anything. If you love reading classics, you're going to be able to find them all for free across many bookstores. Some digital storefronts make it a lot easier to save a copy of these ebooks to any device, though. Here are some reliable bets.

1. Project Gutenberg: A great site for all kinds of public domain ebooks. It has over 75,000 ebooks for you to enjoy.

2. Standard Ebooks: Another useful site for free ebooks.

3. The Internet Archive: Possibly the biggest collection of free ebooks on the internet. You'll find works in lots of different languages here, as the library isn't as English-focused as most other sites.

DRM-free ebooks from bundle sites

Not everyone can afford to pay full-price for every ebook. You can find excellent deals on ebooks by using sites that sell them as a bundle. This way, you can get lots of books for a lot less than buying them individually. Most of these bundles are also DRM-free, which means that you're free to keep backups of them on any of your devices or hard drives, and you can easily send them to your ebook reader whenever you wish.

1. Humble Bundle: Yes, the site known for gaming bundles also sells ebooks. You can get great deals here, but do remember to check a specific bundle's details to see if the included books are really DRM-free. They usually are, but sometimes books have video guides included in the purchase, and these may be locked behind DRM.

2. StoryBundle: This site has been around for over a decade and exclusively sells ebook bundles. There's no DRM on any of the ebooks you purchase from here. 

3. Fanatical: Yet another bundle site, with plenty of options for ebooks. Be sure to check the description of each bundle, because not all book bundles here are DRM-free.

Buy DRM-free books from ebook stores

If you want to buy individual books and not bundles, there are a large number of stores to choose from. Note, though, that some publishers, such as Tor Books, exclusively sell DRM-free books no matter which store you buy them from. However, that's not true for a majority of publishers, so be sure to use filters to only see DRM-free books.

1. Bookshop.org: This is one of the best non-Amazon ebook stores out there. It has a vast collection, but not all books are DRM-free. When you search for a book on this site, you can add a filter to reveal the DRM-free options.

2. Kobo: Kobo makes ebook readers, but it also sells books. There's a helpful section for DRM-free ebooks, which makes it very easy to find the books you're looking for. 

3. Itch.io: Although it's primarily known for video games, Itch also sells ebooks, and has a useful tag to help you spot the DRM-free books.

4. Ebooks.com: This site has a vast collection of ebooks, and there's an entire section for DRM-free ebooks.

5. Smashwords: The site specializes in self-published ebooks. All the books it sells are DRM-free.

6. Baen: This sci-fi and fantasy publisher has its own storefront for ebooks, and it too only sells DRM-free ebooks.

Buy DRM-free books from crowdfunding websites

Crowdfunding sites are an underrated avenue for buying promising ebooks. Sure, there's always a risk that you won't get the rewards listed in the project, but if you trust the creator, you're in with a good chance to snag a DRM-free copy of their works at an early bird price. Most of the book projects I've come across on these have had a fairly low price for the ebook copy. It's the printed editions that are usually quite expensive. Here are a couple crowdfunding sites that you can browse to find good DRM-free ebooks.

1. Kickstarter: Kickstarter has a dedicated page for publishing, which makes it easy to find DRM-free ebooks, but not every project offers an ebook to go with a printed copy. 

2. Indiegogo: Although Indiegogo doesn't have an easy way to identify all book-related crowdfunding projects, you can use its search tools to locate what you need.

from Lifehacker https://ift.tt/VLfDyPe