11 Answers2025-08-13
I use a somewhat old-school method here at The Rap Sheet. To begin with, I keep a personal spreadsheet of my own library. When I’m not sure whether I have a certain book or not, I first check the ISBN on that spreadsheet. If that fails, I immediately search for the book on AbeBooks, because – as a marketplace for used and rare books – the sellers here are highly accurate with regard to the ISBN of the copy they are selling.
Looking through a few listings confirms the ISBN number for me. The listing for a used book also includes a photo of the cover. In this case, it is easy enough to tell that one listing is for a hardcover edition and the other for a paperback edition. I prefer browsing a used bookstore this way as opposed to a purely digital search for an ISBN.
12 Answers2025-08-11
I have mentioned used bookstores on here before, but for online/free the Internet Archive’s Open Library is a great digital lending library of books, which you can borrow in digital format for a set time period. It has a decent selection of finance books, particularly older ones and seminal works. You do need to create an account which is free and the Open Library is a non-profit project. In addition to these used bookstores, corporate annual reports and even individual shareholder letters can be very valuable. For instance the letters from Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway are available on the Berkshire website for free every year, and are an amazing insight into the world of investment and business. In raw and unstructured form they are even more insightful than 99% of the finance books available today.
2 Answers2025-05-21
A search for rare books online can take a lot of time, especially if you know where to look. So I thought it would be a good idea to list some of the search spots I use regularly. There’s Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive, which offer lots of free rare books. The Open Library allows you to borrow rare books online in the form of e-books. Digitized versions of rare books from university libraries like the Harvard University Library Digital Collections can also be accessed online for free. In addition, there are many online forums like the community of the rare books forum on Reddit (r/rarebooks), where one can find tips and links to search spots.
9 Answers2025-06-10
The local library where I work has a little trick for this, using the “editions” tab on WorldCat. The trick is to search for a title, and get back a list of all known editions of that work, each with its own OCLC number, published, and date. Then you can click through to the full bibliographic record for each edition. It’s a bit of a clunky interface, but it’s the only place to get a view even remotely approaching this, and for really obscure stuff, searching the abstracts of academic dissertation can yield results: some PhD student has probably done the bibliographic work for a critical edition as part of their research.
5 Answers2025-07-09
Looking for free Christian audiobooks? Check out the free section on Audible, or the public domain books on Google Play Books. “Hinds’ Feet on High Places” by Hannah Hurnard is a great example of a free Christian audiobook. Many Christian radio stations also feature sections of free audiobooks on their websites. Follow Christian publishers like Thomas Nelson or Zondervan on social media for promotions when they give away free audiobooks. Websites like Open Culture put together lists of free audiobooks, which include a wide selection of Christian titles, both new and classic.
3 Answers2025-08-17
Free services for book narration? Here are a few online services that I have come across recently. The best service I have found so far is probably Librivox which appears to be a love letter to public domain literature in audio format. I have been listening to ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ on Librivox for weeks now. Also worth a look is the free Libby app which connects to your local library and provides access to a large collection of audiobooks which are read professionally by a number of actors although not all of them are free.
TikTok is also an amazing resource for finding users who create short little clips of book readings. Sometimes they even read the whole book, but other times they just do little snippets and it’s a great way to discover new books. I’ve also been loving the podcast ‘LeVar Burton Reads’ where he reads and analyzes short stories, however they aren’t full length books. The world of free book narrations is vast and can be found in hidden corners of the internet by things like amateur YouTube channels and even subreddits that only post free resources for book narration.
4 Answers2025-08-07
I get free legal thrillers from BookBub – many free books are offered on a daily basis. Occasionally a publisher such as Tor will make an eBook free to download for a period of time. Open Library at Archive.org is also a good source of free eBooks – you create an account and then borrow books. This is all to be done within the bounds of the authorized distribution of the copyrighted work.
9 Answers2025-08-01
Try to work out what isn't in the book. If a secondary world contains no magical or supernatural elements then perhaps it’s alternate history rather than fantasy. The book may not be a romance if there is no central love story or relationship between main characters. This is a good logical exercise to use when a book contains many elements and appears to be ‘genre blend’. Working out what the book is not can help to give you a starting point and help you to work out what it could be. For example, if a book is not set in the future or space then it’s not science fiction. If there is no crime or puzzle then it’s not a mystery.
2 Answers2025-07-21
I simply search for the book title + 'ISBN' on Google or DuckDuckGo and half the time the number is listed in the results snippet. ISBNs for books are also listed in Amazon book listings under the 'Product Details' section at the bottom of the page. Simple enough!
4 Answers2026-07-13
Scan the book using the Google Books app. By taking a photo of the barcode on the back of the book using your phone, you should be able to search for the exact edition. It’s often quicker than manually entering the book. If the Google Books app fails to find the book, I use BookFinder dot com to search for books by their ISBN. BookFinder aggregate second-hand stock from hundreds of retailers worldwide, providing a good indication of what you actually have.