alt.hn

6/28/2026 at 4:58:56 PM

Show HN: DRM-Free Books

 https://frequal.com/Perspectives/DrmFreeAuthors.html

by TeaVMFan

6/28/2026 at 9:28:36 PM

I wish someone would build something like hiring.cafe but for DRM free digital content. One search query => uniform search results with direct link to purchase page on relevant marketplace. Basically just scrape and index every DRM free content marketplace and put it behind a single search interface.

by rickcarlino

6/28/2026 at 9:21:05 PM

The Pragmatic Programmers have always sold DRM free commercial book (to my knowledge).

https://pragprog.com/

Having commercial publishers that will sell you high quality books without DRM is brilliant and I'll always support that.

by Lio

6/28/2026 at 7:11:10 PM

> DRM-free classics that are out of copyright.

I started down this road with a few books about two years ago, and I have so many now on my list to read that I hardly ever get to reading a modern book.

I read a lot from Standard Ebooks. But one thing to keep in mind with them- they do edit the books to make changes for readability. Not necessarily a big deal, but something to know.

by technothrasher

6/28/2026 at 9:16:19 PM

Same. Ironic that a quirk of modern technology would put classical literature back in fashion.

by bluebarbet

6/28/2026 at 7:38:16 PM

All of Cory Doctorow books are DRM free.

https://shop.craphound.com/

by philips

6/28/2026 at 9:21:51 PM

Do you know if you can buy as a gift for someone else?

by AtheistOfFail

6/28/2026 at 7:59:47 PM

I added a link, thanks! Mr. Doctorow seems to include 3 formats in every purchase (PDF, MOBI, and EPUB), which should cover just about any device.

by TeaVMFan

6/28/2026 at 5:48:28 PM

I don't see any mention here of books sold by Tor. All their books are DRM-free.

by babblingfish

6/28/2026 at 8:19:31 PM

Can one buy Tor books without going through Amazon? I had trouble doing that last I tried.

by kreyenborgi

6/28/2026 at 8:34:36 PM

I’ve bought Tor books from Google Play and gotten DRM‐free EPUB files from it.

by bentley

6/28/2026 at 5:59:26 PM

I added it to the list of DRM-free sources at the end, thanks!

by TeaVMFan

6/28/2026 at 6:26:05 PM

Useful list. I wish more book stores made DRM status obvious before checkout.

by murats

6/28/2026 at 7:13:40 PM

So this is a similar idea to Project Gutenberg?

by Leptonmaniac

6/28/2026 at 7:25:05 PM

So after seeing this project on the front page of hackernews. I decided to add my EPUB reader on a submission as well[0]: https://epub.mirror.forum

and although I already previously had the idea of showing books from gutenberg but your idea made me find more importance in it and I ended up doing so in two different implementations: https://guten.mirror.forum and https://gutencf.mirror.forum, so I thank you for that!

[Offtopic: I am/was also surprised to see that there is a lack of API or platforms if suppose I created this app and I wanted to give users genuine ways to pay. Aside from the walled gardens of Kindle or specific apps, I am unable to give my users a way to just search books, pay for them and download it (atleast to my understanding at the moment) which is a sad thing :-( ]

I hope people are able to give love to my submission at [0] / the link down below. Cheers and take care and have a nice day if a real human is being out there reading this :-D

Hope you like or enjoy it and find it useful!

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48710584

by Imustaskforhelp

6/28/2026 at 6:40:42 PM

Nice. Good to know that Tor books are DRM-free.

by shmerl