On this page you will find a list of tools, communities and websites that can be useful to the modern reader.
Web libraries
Archive.org : They have a lot of rare books scanned properly (as well as a mountain of user submitted content). You can view the books with a free account directly on their site, it is also possible to use adobe digital editions to download and see them on a windows computer. This site can also be used to share your releases without having to seed torrents or send them to unreliable hosts that might disappear at any time.
pdfdrive.net: They crawl the web and index all the PDFs they can, it can contain interesting content at times.
scribd.com: Mostly a waste of time but some of the user uploaded content can be useful. Really hard to download stuff from there though, you have to share your own “original content”. Sending a lorem ipsum text worked the time I wanted to use it. Can be used to find self published ebooks from dead e-celebs.
Audible: A lot of audiobooks, some exclusive, some classics, some trash, some great. You get one free if you have an amazon account, and if you cancel after a day, you get a second one for free as well (and then you can cancel the subscription).
Amazon and Kindle Unlimited: They have pretty much everything, and what they don’t have is on their marketplace as well with their seller partners/losers. This place sucks but free returns can be taken advantage of to read a book or two if you’re fast (you have like two weeks to send it back free of charge).
Gutenberg: Proofread books in various formats, what we do here but bigger, scans or which source was used to make the book are often not available sadly. Legal content only unless you live in Mexico with the 100 years after death copyright extension.
Wikisource: Really cool proofreading tools, each page is referenced with the transcript. Only downsite is that it’s wikimedia foundation backed..
Gallica BNF: Many digitized books from the french national library. Most items are public domain and can be downloaded for free, some are sadly restricted.
Hathi Trust: Compilation of digitized books by many institutions, some items are restricted, edu emails work great to access them.
Your local library: They probably have at least some books worthy of your time. Downside is that it usually requires ID and proof of address to borrow items. They are sometimes free and if you live near one
University Libraries: Non-students can usually get a pass as well to borrow some items, they have a lot of expensive academic books on their shelves available for anyone to read on site so a visit might be worth the time if you live nearby.
Your national library: Unless you live in a shithole, there should be an amazing collection, can be free or you might need to pay to get a pass. They usually don’t lend their books. I hear that sometimes you need to be an official scholar with degrees to get access.
IRC channels: Some people have had success with bots on IRC to help them locate a book they are looking for.
Libgen sites: There are many clones of those sites, they contain user uploaded collections of ebooks, quality and legality can vary.
Z-Library: A somewhat dead platform (I hear the tor version still works) that almost became mainstream on us campuses, they have/had a lot of content but are in for the donations, downloads are limited at 5/day without a paid account. Same kind of content as the libgen sites. People should try to archive the items that are not available elsewhere (there is a lot of user uploaded content on there).
Torrent trackers
Thepiratebay: General purpose torrent site, registrations broken so not a lot of new content, most of it is illegal and they have been caught spreading malware and having intrusive ads that mine crypto when you visit their site. Ublock origin / Adnauseam use mandatory!
Myanonamouse: Nice community of book and audiobook lovers, they have some exclusive content, most of it is illegal. Getting invited is not too difficult but they want you to come with your real IP (just go to a public place with free wifi).
Bibliotik: A very discrete platform, invites are hard to come by. Said to be a treasure trove.
TODO https://www.techworm.net/2018/11/best-torrent-sites-download-e-books.html https://www.reddit.com/r/torrents/comments/hdommu/books_torrent_site_recommendations/ https://www.reddit.com/r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH/wiki/reading/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/wiki/megathread/reading_material_and_elearning/ https://www.reddit.com/r/EBook_Resources/comments/k15oe1/ebookrelated_torrents/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ilstu/comments/d0ca5f/a_bit_late_but_you_should_definitely_not_go_to/
Communities
reddit /r/libgen: Reddit tier community but they can have some cool ideas at times
4chan /lit/: Same as the last one, some discussions can be really worthy, please note that you can’t post on 4chan with tor or a vpn for (((security))) reasons.
Intersting texts and manifestos
In solidarity with Library Genesis and Sci-Hub Kinda dumb to pay a domain just for this but the text is cool.
https://liberalgeneral.neocities.org/libgens-bloat-problem/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32539455 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33460970 https://isidore.co/misc/Physics%20papers%20and%20books/Zotero/storage/8UT67MNQ/McCormack%20-%202012%20-%20Are%20E-Books%20Making%20Us%20Stupid%20Why%20Electronic%20Coll.pdf https://forum.mhut.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=7564
Scripts
rename.sh: a little script to rename a bunch of files with simple increasing pattern or left right patterns, it can easily be adapted to many use cases Please check what the script does before running and use it on file copies. (Thanks tifap)
xtract.sh: turns a PDF into many jpeg images. Please check what the script does before running and use it on file copies. (Thanks tifap)
ocrize.sh: Uses ocr.space to generate automatic OCR of jpg files. Please check what the script does before running and use it on file copies. (Thanks tifap)
Printers
Any cheap (second hand) laser printer will do if you want to print our releases, provided you can install the drivers on your computer and find replacement toner and drums easily. Inkjet is good for graphic content but very expensive in the long run.
Ereaders
TODO
Various
Source for glowie effect: https://css-tricks.com/how-to-create-neon-text-with-css/