eBookee

Introduction

You know, it is a great deal more difficult to find high-quality free indie eBooks on the internet than one would think.

Unfortunately, this is not the case. I fancy myself quite proficient when it comes to file sharing, and otherwise finding free indie downloads on the internet (I mean, just take a look at this index of great sites that I have created!), but there is one type of media that continues to elude me … and that is, of course, the free indie eBook.

I don’t know exactly why free indie eBooks are so rare. Perhaps it has to do with their relative lack of popularity in our digital, social media age of soundbite Twitterature?

Where are all the good free indie eBooks?- Whatever the case may be, finding a good, free indie eBooks download site can be rather cumbersome. It may not be hard at all to find a site that claims to let users download free eBooks. No, those are everywhere. The real difficulty comes in finding a high-quality site for downloading free indie eBooks. They are, truly, few and far between.

More often than not, sites for downloading free indie eBooks are shoddily designed, have glaringly missing titles and authors in their libraries, are limited when it comes to available eBook formats, do not offer a decent in-browser reading experience, and are lousy with annoying ads everywhere that you look and click This, of course, should not be the case. If I can download free indie movies, TV shows, and music for free on torrent sites that offer a fairly decent user experience, why shouldn’t the same be true of downloading free indie eBooks?

Well, it is my sincere hope that my list of free indie eBook torrent sites and free eBook download sites can come in handy in helping you to find the perfect eBook resource for you. After all, the more sites that you have at your disposal, the more likely it is that you’ll be able to find whatever free eBooks that you are looking for, right? Seems like sound logic to me.

Could eBookee be the site that you have been waiting for? – And that brings us to the site that we will be taking a look at today: eBookee. Although not a torrent site, eBookee is a massive search engine of free eBooks. Actually, to put it more accurately, eBookee is a search engine that provides links to thousands upon thousands of free indie eBook downloads – they do not, it should be noted, feature any eBook files directly on the site themselves (smart).

Still, though, when it comes to finding free indie eBooks, the more links the merrier. Although eBookee is far from the largest collection of free eBooks on the web (there are some that contain literal millions), this site is, it turns out, especially great for a certain niche. But we will cross that bridge when we get there.

Having been around since 2007, eBookee is a formidable and reliable resource for downloading free eBooks. Is this the right site to download free indie eBooks for you, though? Well, let’s dive in and take a look, shall we?

Design

As I alluded to earlier, I have seldom come across a free indie eBooks site that I liked, at least from a design perspective. This remains the case, unfortunately, after taking one look at eBookee. The site has a very uninspired, sloppy, and confusing design to it. Certain sections, for instance, are missing links; formats, once they are stablished, are inconsistently followed; and there is not a powerful browsing or searching system in place that makes for an easy or intuitive discovery of eBooks.

There is, however, a somewhat helpful site menu bar which follows your stay on this site. Here, you can browse eBooks by genre (and subgenre thanks to a primitive dropdown menu system). Browse by clicking on eBooks, Subscription, Technical, Study, Novel, Nonfiction, Medical, Tutorial, Entertainment, Business, Magazine, and Share. These are the main categories of the site, which should give you some indication of the kinds of books that are available here as well.

Once you click on a title, though, the confusion of the site becomes even more apparent. There are several “download” links, many of which are not, in fact, links to download free indie eBooks but hidden ads. I cannot stress enough how much I loathe this practice when it comes to free indie download sites like this. There is nothing I hate more than being misled or when someone tries to dupe me. If you are going to create a free eBooks site, please respect your users enough not to do stuff like this, okay?

Free Indie Content and Features

Once you do finally figure out how to find the correct free indie eBook download link (if you do), you’ll find that eBooks are available in multiple formats, which is not something that every free indie eBook site can say for themselves. Some titles are available in PDF, others in ePub; there are audiobooks as well, which can be downloaded in MP4. So, range of file types is definitely not a problem here at eBookee.

As far as the kind of free indie content available … as you may know already, most of these free indie eBook sites tend to sort of skew towards one kind of book that they primarily specialize in. Some sites are great for finding literary classics, for example, whereas others may be primarily useful for history textbooks, or whatever the case may be. eBookee, although it offers a broad range of genres, I would say, is probably best for self-education, particularly when it comes to educating the self on matters of coding, design, and project management.

eBookee, however, does also have a dearth of fiction (mystery, classics, fantasy, erotica, sci-fi, etc.), nonfiction, children’s books, and more. But the majority of the eBooks (at least from browsing the featured and most downloaded books on the site) seem to be geared towards coding, design, and other forms of literature meant primarily to teach readers a specialized skill of some sort.

Mobile and Desktop Experience

The mobile version of eBookee is a bit of a letdown. Of course, it is accessible on mobile devices. That is not the problem. The problem lies in the fact that it is not particularly well optimized for mobile viewing. You know how some sites present a different format, one that is ideal for browsing on a phone or tablet? eBookee does not afford its readers this convenience.

The end result is one that requires the user to put in a lot of additional effort. Be prepared to do a lot of screen pinching in order to zoom in to read tiny text and be able to successfully tap the correct link. If you are planning to use eBookee, I wouldn’t recommend doing so on a mobile device. That being said, it would not be an impossible task, if you were in a pinch.

Suggestions that I have for eBookee

Frankly, there is a long list of things that I am eager to see change about this site. The most glaring one, though, has to be eBookee’s use of false and misleading download links. Again, I view this as a gauge of how much you respect your users. If you are going to advertise to me, just do it. Don’t trick me into clicking on ads. Ideally, you wouldn’t advertise, but if you must, at least have the decency to be honest about it.

Secondly, eBookee needs a site design overhaul. The inconsistencies and cluttered design of this site is unappealing. The same is true (to an even greater degree) when it comes to the site’s mobile design. Come on, it’s 2020, how do you not have a mobile-friendly site design yet?

I think that eBookee should consider offering a premium membership, which would be ad-free and could potentially fund those design changes that I suggested. Just a thought!