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 mobile reader apps for Android and iOS. The older app, Ebook Reader, and the newer app, eBooks.com, are both bare-bones compared to the Kindle or Kobo app. The main difference is the newer app looks a bit nicer. Functionally they’re about the same, letting you read your eBooks.com purchases and DRM-free books already on your device. Frankly it’s kind of refreshing that the apps aren’t trying to sell me more books! Both apps run fine on my Android-powered Boox Go 7 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.