Where to buy banned books (and why some are hard to find)

Most banned books are easy to buy. A ban usually happened somewhere else, or long ago: Ulysses and Nineteen Eighty-Four are in every bookshop. The hard ones are books a retailer stopped selling, books a publisher withdrew, and books nobody has reprinted. Here's where to look for each kind.

Books still in print

Anything on the In print shelf can be ordered new. Every in-print book page here has a Buy on Bookshop.org button. Bookshop.org is an online bookshop that shares part of each sale with independent bookshops. (It's an affiliate link: we earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. See affiliate links.)

Any local bookshop can also order an in-print book for you: give them the title, the author or the ISBN.

Is there a "banned books section" in shops?

Some chains and many independent bookshops set up a banned-books table or shelf, especially around Banned Books Week in the autumn. These displays mostly feature classics and books recently challenged in US schools. They're a good place to start, but they rarely carry withdrawn or out-of-print titles.

Books Amazon doesn't sell

Amazon has stopped selling some titles; see books banned by Amazon. Removal by one retailer doesn't make a book illegal. Look for:

• Other bookshops and the publisher: small publishers often sell their books directly from their own websites.
• Used-book marketplaces that list stock from independent second-hand dealers.
• Online auctions, for older printings.
• Libraries (below).

Books withdrawn by their publisher

When a publisher recalls a book, the copies already sold stay in circulation. Titles like Children for the Devil turn up from second-hand dealers, often at high prices. Sometimes another publisher reissues the book: Fortunate Son was recalled by St. Martin's Press in 1999 and reissued by Soft Skull Press in 2000. See Withdrawn by publisher.

Out-of-print and scarce books

1. Check for a reprint. Search the title and author on a bookshop site; small presses reissue older titles, sometimes under a new name.
2. Try your library and interlibrary loan. Most public libraries can borrow a book from another library on your behalf, often for free or a small fee. That covers many books you'd never find to buy.
3. Check Open Library. Every book page here links to its Open Library record, which shows the editions and, for some books, a free digital loan.
4. Search the used-book marketplaces and set an alert: prices for scarce titles jump around, and a cheaper copy often appears later.

The Out of print / scarce shelf lists these books.

Free and legal

Books whose copyright has expired are in the public domain and can be read free, legally, from online libraries. In the US that includes most books published before 1930, such as Ulysses, Candide, The Prince and Trilby. Copyright rules differ by country, so a book free in the US may not be in Europe. We never link to unofficial PDF copies of books still in copyright.