eBooks.com

★★★★☆

Sometime last year I saw eBooks.com on a list of bookstores rated by ethics where it was the highest rated eBook seller. (It’s still only 63/100, but it’s tied with Better World Books, and waaaay ahead of Amazon at ZERO. They’re a small company, and they only do books – they’re not part of a larger conglomerate – and they do write about their company ethics stances on their website.)

So I figured I’d give it a try and bought a few books from them.

The online store and help documentation is a bit sparse, but they have a good selection of books available, which is the more important part!

Reading Options

They don’t sell hardware (which simplifies a lot of supply chain questions!), but they have a mobile reader app for Android and iOS. On Android at least, it’s bare-bones compared to the Kindle or Kobo app. But it doesn’t get in your way: you can read books easily, whether side-loaded from your device or downloaded directly from your account. Frankly it’s kind of refreshing that the app isn’t trying to sell me more books! It runs fine on my Android-powered Boox Poke3 with an e-ink screen, as well as on my phone and tablet.

They also suggest PocketBook or Bluefire Reader as alternate apps, neither of which I’ve tried.

Of course, DRM-free books (from publishers that allow them, like Tor) can be read on anything.

Like Kobo, they have an online reader on the website. You can also read books on a desktop through Adobe Digital Editions. ADE only runs on Windows and macOS, but eBooks has a guide to running it on Linux using Wine, which I did manage to get working. Sort of.