Comment by 🚀 MisterImpossible
Re: "I would personally recommend z-lib.gd, it's basically like…"
Z-Lib is great and I also recommend annas-archive.org
2025-09-10 · 8 months ago
6 Later Comments ↓
🚀 stack · 2025-09-10 at 12:31:
my standby is Library of Trantor using Tor. It has epubs only, which is a good thing. I find pdfs (visually) impossible to read on anything my desktop pc
Anna's archive is great, but the download subsystem seems like a cruel joke.
🚀 MisterImpossible · 2025-09-10 at 16:03:
I totally agree with you on the download queue thing. It's not too bad sometimes when I only have to wait 20 seconds, but in the past I've had to wait 10 minutes for no obvious reason.
🚀 RubyMaelstrom · 2025-09-11 at 09:01:
I'm an epub supporter, myself. They just format better on my ereader that way. I just downloaded all of the books on Project Gutenburg and now I'm trying to decide where to start making a dent on this list of 71K titles...
🛞 MaAkThRsYoOySrHtKaAm · Nov 16 at 14:31:
Thanks for the updated Z-Libg tld. It's hard to keep track when they get shut down all the time.
If you are not a fan of Anna's download queue, try the torrents. I've noticed the file name for the files in torrents are just the md5 hash of the file.
How to Find Your File
When you search for something on the Anna's Archive site, you will notice the url ends with /md5/ followed by the hash. I'll use an example from the comics torrent.
If you search for "Soloist in a Cage 02-Shiro Moriya [Eurocomicss].cbr" you will arrive at a page that ends with /md5/000bf45a63205b284a33d1c204a12607.
That's nice, but now you need to find it in the torrent's metadata with the list of files.
The following torrent clients may have a feature to allow you to search by file name:
- qBittorrent
- BiglyBT
- Deluge
- Tixati
You should be able to uncheck all files and select only the file you want to download.
That said, they appear to be in desperate need of seeds. So considering keeping the torrent active and seeding yourself if possible.
They have a lot of various torrent archives. The tags on the website might help to determine which archive you should look in. You could just go ahead and grab all of the torrents to get all of the metadata (be sure to pause them) and then search those whenever you're seeking a file based on the hash. It shouldn't be too complicated and should save downloading time. That is provided there are qualities seeds.
🛞 MaAkThRsYoOySrHtKaAm · Nov 17 at 09:58:
Ok it seems it is not always that easy to get an individual file from a torrent. Some of the archives are a huge .tar.
Testing with a random file:
https://annas-archive.org/md5/d3d7b17e409175a6d94a2d8c9aeb7880
The torrent link is on the page:
https://annas-archive.org/dyn/small_file/torrents/managed_by_aa/zlib/pilimi-zlib2-19330000-21079999.torrent
That is unfortunately a 527.8GB .tar archive. The entire file would need to be downloaded before being able to extract anything...
The good is since, searching the same hash over at z-lib works. Hopefully that is the case for anything that is in Anna's z-lib archives.
As far as the epubs... It turns out they are doing a special for Black Friday donations.
https://z-library.ec/how-to-donate
During Black Friday users who make ANY donation from November 14, 2025 to December 1, 2025 will get one-month unlimited (up to 999 daily) downloads.
That means a donation for as little as $1 will allow for premium access to convert files over 3 MB to ebup. Sounds like a good deal.
🦔 bsj38381 [OP] · Nov 17 at 16:09:
I personally would download a book as a PDF or TXT files from z-lib.
Original Post
I would personally recommend z-lib.gd, it's basically like an infinite online library, but you can get books for free in any format, I personally would pick PDF file format.