9 Ways to Save $$ on Ebooks & Audiobooks for Your Homeschool

Buying ebooks & audiobooks can get pricey! These free & nearly-free options will delight the book lovers in your family.

I was a saver when I was young — except when it came to books. I remember driving to the “big mall” an hour away with my grandma. Remember the days when you could find bookstores in the mall? We’d stop in at Waldenbooks, and I’d choose two books—usually Baby Sitter’s Club—pay and carefully carry my little brown paper bag out to the car.

By the time we returned home, I’d have one book nearly finished. By the end of the night, both would be read.

With those memories of buying books and the delight it brought me, buying digital books should seem natural. But as a Gen-Xer, I want something to hold that *feels* like a book.

While I do pay for books, in this digital age, I always start by looking for free sources. With the number of books we read, this is almost necessary!

So where can you find free & nearly free ebooks & audiobooks?

Totally Free Audiobooks & Ebooks

Libby (a.k.a. Overdrive)

90% of our audiobooks come from via Libby. The app is easy to navigate and integrates easily for playing in the car. If you have a library card from more than one library, as we do, you can add them all for easy search & checkout.

Check out this super-cool tool that scours your libraries while you’re browsing Amazon, Audible, Bookshop.org, etc.

Hoopla

Hoopla is another library service for free ebooks & audiobooks. While Hoopla can’t be used offline (like Libby can), titles are always available. If your library carries it, you can access it.

{Does your library not offer digital books? Need a bigger selection? Or MORE? I’ll show you how to do that.}

Amazon Prime Reading

Are you an Amazon Prime member? Even if you don’t have a Kindle, you can get one free ebook each month via Prime Reading. It requires you to have the Kindle app, which is available for Apple & Android but is free.

Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg is a long-time site dedicated to making it easy to access books in the public domain. A bonus of this service? You don’t need an e-reader to read these books — you can read them online. The database is vast, but you won’t find new titles here.

Librivox

Librivox is kinda’ like the audio corollary to Project Gutenberg. Brought to you by volunteers, Librivox offers thousands of free audiobooks for you to enjoy. You can search by title, subject, genre, etc. There are even books in more than a dozen languages!

And a classic — Storynory

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Storynory. Storynory was the very first podcast I introduced to my kiddos. They offer delightful retellings of classic fairytales, myths, and famous authors like Rudyard Kipling and L. Frank Baum. But they also offer a host of original stories now, too. It remains a podcast, but an app is also available in Apple’s App Store.

The Most Underrated Homeschool Website

Buying used is a great way to save $$ in your homeschool, but who wants to search multiple used book sites to find a match and the best price?

Add All takes the work out of it by searching for you.

Enter a title or author, Add All searches on more than a dozen sites, and then returns the price + shipping.

(Nearly) Free Audiobooks & Ebooks

Don’t rule out a book subscription service. They may be a good choice if your family finishes many books each month. Some months, we go through more than two dozen books between school and pleasure reading.

Scribd

Scribd— like Hoopla — has the advantage of always having titles available. And they have an additional advantage — in addition to ebooks & audiobooks, you can also check out magazines, sheet music, and more.

Kindle Unlimited

You can also subscribe to their monthly subscription service, Kindle Unlimited. Kindle Unlimited includes selected ebooks & audiobooks. This year, my kiddos gobbled up numerous Hourly History books for free via Kindle Unlimited.

(We don’t usually subscribe during the school year when I have less time for reading because the children’s selection is limited. This year was a rarity.)

Audible

You can certainly subscribe to Audible (and get some good deals with your credits), but did you know you can buy audiobooks from Audible without a subscription? They regularly run sales where you can grab books for $3-7/each. This is a terrific deal for books that you anticipate reading more than once.

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