I read about forty books a year. If I bought all of them new at full price, I would spend something like seven hundred dollars annually on books. I cannot afford that. Nobody I know can, except maybe people who have “library” in their house as a room name rather than just a corner of the living room.

But I also refuse to pirate books. Writers deserve to eat. So I have found every legal way to read for cheap or free, and here is the full list.

Your Public Library Card Is a Superpower

If you have a library card, you can access Libby — the app that lets you borrow ebooks and audiobooks for free. No late fees because the books return themselves. The selection depends on what your library has purchased, but most major library systems carry thousands of titles.

If your local library’s selection is small, check if you can get a card from a larger system in your state. Many states allow any resident to get a card from the state’s largest library system for free. In California, for example, any resident can get a San Francisco Public Library card regardless of where they live.

Project Gutenberg and Open Library

For books published before 1928 — which is a lot of classics — Project Gutenberg has over 70,000 free ebooks. Everything from Jane Austen to Dostoevsky to Sherlock Holmes. Standard Ebooks takes the same public domain texts and formats them beautifully, with proper typography and covers. These are the editions you want to actually read.

Used Bookstores and Little Free Libraries

Physical used bookstores sell paperbacks for two to five dollars. Little Free Libraries — those small wooden boxes on posts in front of people’s houses — are completely free. Take a book, leave a book. I have found genuinely good reads in these, including a first edition of a book I had been meaning to buy.

BookBub and eReaderIQ

Sign up for BookBub — it sends you a daily email with ebooks on sale in your preferred genres, usually for two or three dollars. eReaderIQ tracks price drops on Amazon Kindle books and alerts you when something on your wishlist goes on sale. I have bought books for ninety-nine cents that were fifteen dollars the week before.