Today I want to give a shout out to all the wonderful free M/M reading that abounds online. Not just the “free for a week” stuff, which can be a great chance to try a new author or pick up a book I’ve been hovering over, but also all the permafree stories.

Some of it is on the big vendors, like Amazon. Books like The Magpie Lord by KJ Charles, or The Lodestar of Ys by Amy Rae Durrison, Learning to Feel by NR Walker or Diversion by Eden Winters, or (hopefully) my own Into Deep Waters and Nor Iron Bars a Cage, give readers top quality fiction for free.

There’s also a lot of great free fic elsewhere. AO3 (Archive of Our Own) has a lot of fanfic (some excellent) and also a lot of original fiction. From all the now-free work of Jane Davitt and Alexa Snow (like Room at the Top or Laying a Ghost) to the turn of the century Westerns of Lucius Parhelion, or the hockey fic of Taylor Fitzpatrick, there is a lot to love.

Some authors have extensive free work on their websites (like the FBI/jewel thief fun of Shadow of the Templar series by M Chandler, or the million free words with all the content warnings of Special Forces by Marquesate and Aleksandr Voinov.)

One place that used to be very useful for finding free books was Goodreads – but their new-look book page is removing the url field from the book listing. That means you will no longer have a direct link to freebies reviewed there. (And if you have favorites you use their page to get to, it’s a good idea to put that link in your review of the book, to preserve it.)

Goodreads also used to host some free downloadable books, and I found that although those have disappeared, you can still download them if you have the old link. So for example, I recommend grabbing a favorite I don’t think is elsewhere – Louder Than Sirens, Louder Than Bells by KD Sarge – https://www.goodreads.com/ebooks/download/14760824-louder-than-sirens-louder-than-bells – a college first love story; Other longer works from the first two years of the Goodreads M/M Group writing may also be available. If there are any stories you particularly liked, try substituting the book link in the above url – you might find one.

The M/M group also has all the stories from the third year on available for download on their own website – http://www.mmromancegroup.com/ (Note the header bar for the different years.)

Several of mine are only available there – the stories are a big mix of lengths and author writing styles, since they all were a volunteer effort, but many gems are mixed in among them. You can search by author name, as well as by title.

So while losing the Goodreads url listings will make freebies a bit harder to sort through and find, there is a ton of excellent free reading, including novels, always available. (And this is one more reason piracy has no excuses. There is more good legitimate free stuff than anyone could read in a lifetime. If someone is stealing paid books, it’s not because they’re poor and can’t afford good stories, it’s because they’re greedy and have no ethics.)

If you have a favorite free book that you think not enough people have read, let us know in the comments. Because yeah, we authors want to sell books and make a living. But in a tough world, where war and disease have made it harder to get ends to meet, we can celebrate sharing the generosity of others, and the joy of reading.

– Kaje Harper

August 2022