Best Subreddits To Download Ebooks Reddit Without Viruses?

Question

Looking for subreddits with real users who share safe ebook downloads. Hate worrying about malware from dodgy sites for fantasy and romance novels.

Alberto Aujero Pastolero · Answer

You can find book-focused subreddits like r/FreeEBOOKS and r/KindleFreebies. These are generally well-moderated, and they offer direct links to free books available on stores like Amazon. The risk of viruses and such is almost zero because you're downloading from the same source where you'd buy the book. As an example, I got 'DIRTY, ROTTEN SEXCAPADES (Er0tica Collection)' for free and it's a great bunch of standalone humorous stories (extreme and awkward on occasion) about horrible dates and failed one night stands. Just check that any links you follow will actually take you to the relevant retailer's page for the relevant book.

Delaney · Answer

Two subreddits where you can get books without any hassle for easy download are r/FreeEBOOKS and r/ebooks. They have strict rules against uploading malware so the links to Project Gutenberg which are 100% safe are often shared here. I steer clear of lesser known subs as they are rarely vetted for anything and generally are best to avoid. Just stick with the big names.

Piper · Answer

There are a few ways I have found ebooks through Reddit, but some of my favorite are r/FreeEBOOKS (safe and curated), r/OpenDirectories (occasionally has ebook collections that one must search through), and others. Be VERY wary of any subreddit offering ‘unlimited’ downloads for any reason. Always scan to open any file you download even from ‘safe’ subreddits.

Piper · Answer

This is how I get to read free ebooks without ruining my laptop. I have subscribed to the very active and legal (virus-free) community r/FreeEBOOKS. I also occasionally browse r/ebookdeals, which also sometimes offers freebies and is mostly cheaper than the regular prices. For Amazon’s Kindle, there’s r/KindleFreebies, which provides temporary free e-book links. Just make sure you check if a post has been upvoted a lot and has positive comments, because that’s usually safe. I wouldn’t bother joining a community without any form of moderation, because there’s just too much of a risk of downloading viruses and the like.

Chloe · Answer

r/FreeEBOOKS and r/ebooks are typically good places to find virus free e-books (as they are all legal freebies). r/bookdownloads is a smaller sub, so it's kind of a hit or miss but I use it when I'm really in a bind. Stick to the bigger subs with active mods in them. The subs without any active mods can be pretty crappy.

Ryder · Answer

I've learned the hard way which subreddits are infected with malware and which not. The best one I’ve found so far for legal free ebooks is r/FreeEBOOKS. The subreddit is very well moderated and even offers direct links to free ebooks from publishers and authors.

Another option for very specific titles is r/libgen (note: operates in somewhat of a legal gray area), and often there will be comments of users verifying whether or not a specific title is legitimate to download. r/bookdownloads is another option but this community isn’t as active, stick with Moderated communities and avoid direct download links to resources.

Eme Ate · Answer

Naive question answered for you: instead of begging for download spots on a public forum like Reddit (a platform where good sources get instantly ripped off and taken down), good communities are stealthy. They rarely announce their existence online. Sometimes they are public subreddits, and other times a private Discord server for members that you get added to by virtue of actively participating in public subreddits for said genre on Reddit. Building said communities takes time to build, hence slow to a crawl so as to avoid spam-bots and real-life spies.

Of course, there is likely no single ‘best’ public subreddit for seeking out download spots for any given title, but there is a best practice for engaging within public subreddits of any genre: positively contribute to a community over time, offering insightful advice in answers to questions posed, putting users wise to quality free to download media of the type you yourself enjoy, joining in on dialogue wherein one feels worthy to participate, etc. Eventually, it seems, individuals who have contributed good and smart to a public forum will find that others are inclined to share with them private resources for a title in question provided that the individual in question is recognized as being part of said community — as opposed to a hit-and-run type of leecher, looking to have downloaded something for free in a split second.

Vincent Gignac · Answer

The golden age of easy discovery on Reddit is ending. Many of the large subreddits that were once hub for links to relevant posts have been banned or heavily sanitized. The space has largely shifted to forums where people can discuss topics in depth. The r/Piracy wiki is one of the few safe directories for finding links to ebooks on the web. It does require leaving Reddit, though. The sites that are listed in the wiki are old and thus have withstood the test of time, so they likely do not have much malware on them, since abandoned sites are typically filled with malware.

Another method of finding safe and trusted sources on Reddit is to use the site search. Look for posts tagged with “ebooks safe” or “trusted sources” and, hopefully, you will stumble upon a very informative post from a year or so ago with a lot of knowledge from someone who is sharing their expertise with others. Even though the info is old, the core principles do not change that quickly, so it’s good to remember the sites that are considered to be trustworthy and what kinds of file extensions are considered to be safe. Just make sure to search for the website on the normal web to see if it’s still up and running and if it hasn’t been hacked yet.

gregory · Answer

I think this overcomplicates things. The big names (LibGen, Z-Library via mirrors, Anna’s Archive) get talked about so much that their safety profile is basically a known quantity. Yes, ads on sites can be a problem, and fake copycats for popular sites exist, but these issues are already being addressed by good subreddits.

Therefore, you should look for subreddits and threads discussing the same issue (e.g. “What is the current working domain for Z-Library?”). Most of the answers would be a variety of suggestions, with the correct one getting a seal of approval from multiple users in the thread. What you’re really looking for is the current public address for the well-known secret that is Z-Library. The community’s best guess in that moment is your best bet. (Note: It’s a moving target, but it’s the best solution for now.)

Thabiso Mphatse · Answer

I’ve always thought of searching for illegal torrent downloads on Reddit like a digital archaeologist searching for a specific, known site in a big, unknown dig area. Instead of randomly digging, you look for the known dig sites – i.e. very actively moderated subreddits with a strict set of rules prohibiting spam. r/illegaltorrents used to be one of the main hubs for this sort of thing, but that sub has since been removed from the site. Instead, I try to score via subreddits dedicated to specific genres and ask users there for help locating particular translations of classic literature. If the user happens to have a clean copy of what I’m after, he will typically share it with me via a private message. Not the way things are meant to be, perhaps, but I feel much safer sharing and receiving files via private messages than I would with public links.

As always, verify the identity of anyone sharing links with you. An account that is old (years), has diverse posting history, and generally posts within the norms of civil conversation is far more trustworthy than an account solely dedicated to sharing download links. Note that Reddit is not a platform to host files, therefore a subreddit promising to host direct downloads is likely to be a scam in itself. Use Reddit as intelligence gathering and then shop on the “marketplace” itself.

Quendarion · Answer

I just noticed that the best info is often hidden in comments to a post unrelated to the topic at hand. For example, I was looking for a good source for a particular textbook series for a textbook that we are publishing. I stumbled upon a post in r/productivity about studying techniques, and in one of the comments someone mentioned that they got all the volumes of a particular series from a site such as "suchandsuchsite.com". I chased down the site, and it's a perfect, clean site for what we're looking for.

Generally, the most reliable information is buried in the comments of some random post. For this reason, I try not to go directly to the 'download' subreddits, because they are just too targeted. The best people to recommend something are those that are passionate about the actual content, not just the way to download it. Therefore, I stick to the subreddits for the genres I'm interested in (scifi, fantasy, historical fiction) and just keep an ear open for topics that mention accessibility. It's slower this way, but in the long run it's safer.

Sheddie · Answer

I’m the type of person who gets just as much excitement out of searching for things online as I do finding them. So, for example, I might dig through years old forum posts, following a mention here and there of some site in old posts on r/books. From there, I might venture on over to r/techsupport and start reading on ways to safely browse, a comment here or there extolling the virtues of a certain privacy focused browser. And on from there.

As I follow along on this resource-gathering journey, I collect not only site names, but ways of thinking, strategies, tactics and other tidbits of info that ultimately equip me to safely download what I need. In the end, the download is the easy part. The real value of all this is the education you gain along the way about how to be online securely. It takes what could be a rather simple question and makes a rich journey of online security literacy out of it.

rheyaomboy · Answer

I use a lot of rules for what kinds of things look good on Reddit based on their appearance. So, a single link with no surrounding text gets ignored. A link with some surrounding text that explains why this mirror is different from others and perhaps why you should use an adblocker? That's highly promising. A comment consisting of a list of well-known websites (e.g. LibGen, Anna's Archive, Z-Library) with no links? Most often those are the safest bets, as people assume that the reader already knows how to find those sites and are therefore writing for someone with at least a little knowledge.

This means I tend to judge posts on a scale of low to high effort and associate high-effort with helpful and low-effort with risk. Therefore, I find this rule to be applicable across all subreddits, regardless of topic, and it tends to focus more on the quality of the individual’s response rather than the community in which it was posted.

Best Subreddits To Download Ebooks Reddit Without Viruses?

13 Answers

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