Amazon is very convenient to use, but the convenience comes at a price. While the list of misconducts is long, the main burden redounds upon the workers in their warehouses and the communities that Amazon deprives of taxes.
Furthermore, their Kindle ebooks have a severe restriction: Digital Rights Management (DRM). This enables Amazon to delete specific books or wipe a Kindle reader completely without justification. In effect, you never really own a Kindle ebook, but license it.
Luckily there are lots of more ethical alternatives, online and offline, for physical books and ebooks (if you’re not familiar with ebooks but are curious, consult our little guide). For audiobooks, you can also have a look at these alternatives for Amazon’s Audible.
Public Libraries
The most ethical way of getting your hands on a book is borrowing it from your local public library. It’s free, it’s the best for the environment and libraries are perhaps the only public spaces left where you can sit, read and relax for as long as you want (i.e. exist) without buying anything.
Modern libraries also lend ebooks, audiobooks, DVDs, Blu-rays, CDs and sometimes even video games. They usually cost nothing to join, your local council’s website will tell you where your nearest library is.
Online Libraries
In addition to your local physical library (where you can get physical and electronic books), different online libraries exist which make digital books available to you.
- Websites:
Local Bookshops
The most ethical way of buying books is from your nearest bookstore. Local bookshops tend to have better working conditions, pay their fair share of taxes and don’t track their users. They also have a human being who can give you free one-to-one advice on books, and a hand-curated selection of titles. If they don’t have what you want they can order it from their suppliers, often within 24 hours.
Online Bookshops
There is a wide variety of more ethical online bookstores than Amazon: They differentiate themselves by donating to charities, cooperating with local bookstores, having explicit no-DRM policies, or just being non-billionaire owned, responsible businesses. Some sell both, physical and electronic books, others only one particular type. Some specialize on a particular type of literature, others are generalist stores.
Please note, that many older works of literature are in the public domain (differs by jurisdiction), and therefore free to download and share (legally) as ebooks (i.e. there is no need to buy them from a bookstore).
- Online bookstores which support charities:
- Online bookstores which cooperate with local bookshops:
- Online bookstores with dedicated no-DRM policy for ebooks:
- Other online bookstores (WARNING: beware of DRM-encumbered ebooks):
- Online bookstores comparison:
Public Domain ebooks
Many classic books are old enough to be in the public domain, so (as ebooks) they are legal to download and distribute free of charge.
There are several major sites which distribute free public domain ebooks. All of these downloads are unrestricted and without DRM.
Volunteers from around the world digitize and proofread books from the public domain to create those ebooks for you. You can help in this process, too!