As Print Book Sales Fall, Publishers And Others Offer Free Ebook Deals

Bookstores and libraries have been closing down as well-justified cautionary measures in response to the growing COVID-19 pandemic. The impact on physical copies sold has been swift: Print unit sales dropped 10% within just a week, according to stats released yesterday from NPD BookScan.

But a wide variety of library programs, online ebook services, and publishing houses large and small have debuted special coronavirus-spurred deals to compensate. Here’s a quick non-comprehensive overview of the ebooks and audiobooks that you can now read online or download — totally for free.

Reading subscription service Scribd has opened its entire library of ebooks and audiobooks up to anyone for 30 days when they sign up through scribd.com/readfree. You won’t need to enter your credit card information, either, though Scribd is likely hoping you’ll get hooked during your quarantine-powered ebook binge.

The independent small press Valancourt Books has a deal attracted to any vintage and retro horror fans: They’re offering free audiobooks for 50 titles from their catalogue, including some from their popular Paperbacks From Hell line of 1970s and 1980s horror classics. Just visit their announcement post to browse through the list of free audiobooks. The download codes are US and UK specific, and they would otherwise retail for between $19.95 and $24.95. Don’t worry: the books’ authors will still get the royalties.

Dartfrog Publishing, another independent publisher, has an entire Coronavirus Quarantine landing page, listing 20 free ebooks from authors who have all agreed to make their works available.

Macmillan also made their own pandemic-related announcement: They’ll be walking back a controversial decision to restrict ebook sales in libraries.

In the online learning world, Collins Connect, a division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, has opened up its resources for parents who have suddenly found themselves homeschooling their kids.

Also worth noting: Academic resource JSTOR currently offers over 6,000 ebooks and over 150 journals for free to all, though its entire database is not available, and the materials that are free weren’t made available in response to the pandemic.