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Guide to DRM-Free Living: Bookstores & Publishers
By Steve Solberg
Posted: 2024-04-28T17:19:09Z

DRM Free book stores:


  • Beam Book Store sells DRM-free books in German. Some books are distributed with a buyer-unique watermark, although this watermark does not limit book usage.
  • Book View Café sells ebooks without DRM or an EULA
  • The Bundle of Holding is a DRM-free bookselling site that sells time-limited, DRM-free offers of tabletop roleplaying game rulebook .PDFs and RPG-related ebooks.
  • Chicago Shorts, DRM-free ebooks, passages and short stories selected by the University of Chicago.
  • Closed Circle -- Small DRM-free ebook store, direct from the authors themselves. Specializing in fantasy.
  • Delphi Classics sells copies of classic texts edited and formatted as ebooks. All epub files are DRM-free, but not the .mobi files.
  • Ediciones Babylon -- Spanish books and ebooks free of DRM.
  • Editions Fleurus is a French publishing house with over 1000 titles available.
  • Elegant Solutions Software and Publishing Company -- eBooks in a few portable formats.
  • The Fifth Imperium CD-ROM images. Mostly the images are of the free CD-ROMs included with some Baen Books. Baen Books allows the CD-ROMs to be copied and distributed for free. Every CD-ROM contains several complete novels in HTML format, and some have extras, like MP3 readings. All CD-ROMs also contain artwork for the CD-ROM itself.
  • Girlebooks is a resource for classic and contemporary ebooks by female writers.
  • Humble Bundle (Books) sells collections of DRM-free ebooks, with two bundles available at any point in time. While they also sell games and mobile apps, these are not reliably DRM-free and we reccomend checking in detail before making any purchases.
  • Immatériel.fr -- a French distributor of ebooks that indicates DRM-free titles with smiley faces.
  • J-Novel Club distributes translated Japanese light novels and manga without DRM.
  • Lektu is a Spanish-language DRM-free ebook store. In addition to books, it has audiobooks, ecomics, and music.
  • Suomalainen Kirjakauppa is a Finnish-language bookseller that uses watermarks on the first page of ebook purchases rather than DRM.
  • MyNavi is a DRM-free storefront for Japanese-language books, including books on programming, shogi strategy, and tsumego.
  • U.S. Government Bookstore offers both print and DRM-free digital publications from across the entire US federal government, ranging from art and travel to business, education, and history.
  • Verso is a popular British publisher of critical theory texts. Their books are DRM-free, but they are watermarked.
  • Weightless Books is an independent DRM-free ebooksite devoted to ebooks of all sorts.

Publishers:

  • 0s&1s is both a digital publisher and a distributor of e-books published by twenty-seven different independent presses in the United States and Canada—including Black Balloon Publishing, Coach House Books, Red Hen Press, and Tin House Books.
  • AK Press is an long-running and well-known publisher of anarchist texts who offer DRM-free ebooks in addition to their print selections.
  • Angry Robot sells a variety of DRM-free science fiction and fantasy novels
  • Apress is a publisher of IT-related technical books. .
  • Baen Ebooks sells DRM-free ebooks from an assortment of science fiction and fantasy publishers, including Baen Books, Del Rey, and Tor. They also offer a number of no-cost downloads in their "Free Library".
  • Le Bélial is a French publishing platform free of DRM.
  • Blackstone Publishing releases DRM-free books through a variety of retailers.
  • BookRefine is a DRM-free publisher that takes a strong stance against copyright trolling and sending DMCA takedown notices.
  • Boss Fight Books publishes DRM-free, documentary-style books about classic video games.
  • Bragelonne will provide a DRM-free download of their ebooks for customers who first purchased it through a DRM service.
  • BWB Texts is a New Zealand-based publisher.
  • Carina Press is a digital-first imprint from Harlequin covering many genres.
  • Flat World Knowledge is the world's largest publisher of free and open college textbooks.
  • Goal Publications is a queer-owned publisher of young adult literature, catering specifically to the furry fandom.
  • Homeless Book is a DRM-free publisher offering a wide range of books on politics and political theory in Italian.
  • Inside Outsider Publications specializes in publishing fiction which deals with environmental and social issues.
  • Liber Liber is a non-profit publisher of Italian-language ebooks.
  • Lost Art Press is a small Midwestern publishing company that seeks to help the modern woodworker learn traditional hand-tool skills. They sell boutique hard copies as well as DRM-free PDF downloads of nearly all of their books.
  • Manning eBooks publishes computer books for professionals--programmers, system administrators, designers, architects, managers and others.
  • New Internationalist is a not-for-profit cooperative "exist[ing] to report on the issues of world poverty and inequality; to focus attention on the unjust relationship between the powerful and powerless worldwide; to debate and campaign for the radical changes necessary to meet the basic needs of all; and to bring to life the people, the ideas and the action in the fight for global justice."
  • No Starch Press publishes and sells DRM-free ebooks on a wide range of non-fiction topics and howto guides. It's also the publisher of Ada & Zangemann, a book introducing software freedom concepts to children of all ages.
  • OR Books -- is a progressive anti-DRM publisher
  • Packt Publishing has DRM-free books for IT professionals.
  • The Pragmatic Bookshelf has DRM-free books by and for programmers in a variety of formats.
  • Propaganda Yayınları is an independent publishing house specializing in Turkish languages works on political and socioeconomic issues, including feminism, anarchism, economics, and philosophy.
  • Publie.net is a French publisher that offers most titles DRM-free displaying a smiley face icon.
  • Rocky Nook is digital photography-focused publisher that offers all ebooks without DRM.
  • Rosenfeld Media sells DRM-free ebooks about user experience design and also includes a DRM-free digital copy with every physical book they sell.
  • Saga Press is a sci-fi and fantasy imprint of Simon & Schuster. Their ebooks are all DRM-free.
  • Sher Music Co. publishes jazz and Latin music real books and method books, and their ebooks are DRM-free.
  • SIGNAL 8 PRESS is a publishing company focusing on East Asia and the Pacific Rim which publishes engaging novels, short story collections, and nonfiction written in English.
  • Sophia Institute Press publishes faithful Catholic classics and new Catholic books by the enduring figures of the Catholic intellectual tradition.
  • Springer Science+Business Media is an international publisher of books on science, technology, and medicine.
  • Star Trek Books is a subsidiary of Simon & Schuster. Their ebooks are all DRM-free.
  • Take Control Books offers highly practical, tightly focused ebooks covering Apple products.
  • Tor/Forge/Tom Doherty Associates -- Science fiction and fantasy publisher of Macmillan, sells DRM-free books.
  • XML Press is a publisher of technical communications books whose ebooks are all DRM-free.
  • Zubaan Books is an Indian feminist publishing house that sells DRM-free materials.