Where can I buy German books?

This post contains an affiliate link to Amazon. It means I’ll get a few pence if you buy anything – at no extra cost to you.

The obvious answer is “in Germany”, which is perfect if you’re going there soon. But what if you don’t have the chance to visit Germany for a long time? Your German is getting good and you would like to read some German books, or other books which have been translated into German.

It is worth to try your local library as they sometimes have a foreign language section. If they don’t, ask them if it would be possible to start one.

Charity shops also sometimes have foreign books, especially the Oxfam Bookshops often have a foreign section. I have managed to buy the odd gem there.

You can, of course, order from Amazon.de  but have to add postage costs.

And then there is Kindle …

I have already written about the old classics that you can download for free and read on your PC or Kindle or some stories which help you learn and how to use a dictionary on Kindle but how do you find general German kindle books?

If you know the title you can check for them on Amazon.com or whichever amazon you use, but they are not always easy to find.

A far easier way is to search amazon.de – but then you find out that you can’t buy Kindle books from there unless you live in Germany!

So here is an easy trick:

Find an interesting book on amazon.de. I chose a book by Nika Lubitsch, one of my favourite German authors:

I changed the ‘de’ in the URL to ‘co.uk’ and found that the book is also available in the UK and bought it. Some books are only available in one country but most can be found on all the amazon sites.

Now you can buy as many German Kindle books as you like.

Don’t know where to start? Search for ‘kostenlose deutsche ebooks’ and check out all those free ones. And don’t worry, if you don’t have a Kindle. Amazon has free Kindle reading apps, which means you can read ebooks on your computer, tablet or smartphone. Amazon also has their own limited list of German books (This is the UK list) – might be worth a look as well!

Have fun – and let me know if you’ve found some interesting books!

Edit: LibriVox also has free downloadable  audio books, including German ones – worth a look.