Need an explanation of private trackers? Want to know how to get started? The subreddit r/trackers has a guide on its wiki.
The rest of this guide will assume you already understand torrenting and private trackers. It will assume you're already a member of MyAnonamouse (MAM) and know the basics of how the site works.
A few warnings before you follow this guide:
To avoid accidentally destroying your ratio, avoid queuing torrents or pausing them in your client. A torrent that is freeleech when you add it to your client may not still be freeleech when you actually download it.
Don't use Autobrr unless you really know what you're doing. This is the #1 way people destroy their ratio on MAM.
Someone informed me they ended up unexpectedly downloading 750 GB of torrents following an earlier version of these instructions. To avoid this, make sure to sort the freeleech torrents by size from small to large, as described in Step 2. This will also make it less likely that you'll accidentally destroy your ratio by mistakenly downloading large non-freeleech torrents.
Before attempting to follow this guide, consider using the site manually for a while and building up some buffer. (Buffer is upload minus download, e.g. if you have 55 GiB of upload and 5 GiB of download, then you have 50 GiB of buffer.) The more buffer you have, the less likely you will be to destroy your ratio by making a mistake.
This guide is only relevant to people who want to join MAM's invite forum, which gives access to other torrent sites. If you don't care about that, you can earn plenty of points for what you need by seeding something like 50 to 100 torrents.
The MyAnonamouse (MAM) economy could not be easier, but new users are often intimidated and confused. Here is a simple way to get all the bonus points you will ever need.
It may seem like there are a lot of steps and a lot of information, but this is only because I am breaking down each step as simply as possible to make sure anyone can understand and follow this guide. Once you are done, it will feel easy.
Step 1. On MAM, go to "Preferences" → "Torrent Search" and set "Torrents per page" to "20". The setting is here: https://www.myanonamouse.net/preferences/index.php?view=torrents
Step 2. Click this very long link. Or, alternatively, follow these instructions to do the search manually. Click the "Search" button without typing anything in. In the first drop-down menu on the search page (which by default says "All torrents"), select "Freeleech" from the menu and click the big "Search" button below it. The search results will now all be freeleech torrents. To avoid accidentally downloading extremely large torrents, make sure to sort the torrents by "Size" from small to large by clicking the yellow or orange up arrow to the left of "[Size]".
Note: Ratio on MAM is largely cosmetic. If you don't care about having a cosmetic ratio, you don't need to limit yourself to only freeleech torrents. You can just sort all torrents by size from small to large. However, if you accidentally download a very large non-freeleech torrent, you might destroy your ratio. So, be careful.
Step 3. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the button that says "Download zip of all displayed torrent files". This will download a .zip file of every .torrent file from that page of search results, which if you followed Step 1 should be 20 .torrent files. (Warning: if you try to do more than 20 torrents at a time without knowing what you're doing and being careful, you could end up getting in trouble.)
Step 4. Unzip the .zip file. Open the .torrent files in qBittorrent or your torrent client. Download the torrents and seed them for at least 6 months. (To somewhat streamline this process in qBittorrent, you can tell qBittorrent to automatically open all .torrent files from a folder on your computer. Go to "Tools" → "Options..." → "Downloads", scroll down, and next to "Automatically add torrents from:", click "Add...".)
Step 5. After exactly 72 hours of seeding these first 20 torrents, repeat Step 2, Step 3, and Step 4. When you repeat Step 2, go to the next page of search results so you don't just download the same .torrent files again. Keep repeating these steps every 72 hours until your account is two weeks old.
Step 6. When your account is two weeks old, revisit Step 1. Your limit for unsatisfied torrents (i.e. those torrents which have not yet been seeded for 72 hours) should now be 50. You can confirm this here: https://www.myanonamouse.net/snatch_summary.php Set "Torrents per page" to "50". Follow Step 2, Step 3, and Step 4 again, now downloading a batch of 50 torrents instead of 20.
Step 7. Repeat Step 2, Step 3, and Step 4 every 72 hours, now downloading torrents in batches of 50, until your account is four weeks old.
Step 8. When your account is four weeks old, in the bonus points store (which you can find by clicking on your bonus points balance), buy 25 GB of upload credit: https://www.myanonamouse.net/store.php Within 15 minutes, your account should be upgraded to Power User. (You can confirm this by hovering your mouse over your username, then clicking "My Info" in the drop-down menu, and checking the "Class" field on your profile.)
Step 9. Once you are Power User, buy 4 weeks of VIP Status in the bonus points store for 5,000 points. Power User increases your unsatisfied torrents limit to 100 and VIP increases it to 150.
Step 10. Revisit Step 1 and set "Torrents per page" to "75". (Since 100 is the maximum, 75 will let you split each batch into two pages.) Repeat Steps 2 through 4 with batches of 150 torrents. (If you choose, in Step 2, you can now download "VIP" or "Freeleech or VIP" torrents instead of just "Freeleech", since all VIP torrents are always freeleech for VIPs. Classes lower than VIP can't download VIP torrents.)
Note: Once you become VIP, it's probably a better idea to switch to just downloading VIP torrents from now on. All VIP torrents are always, automatically freeleech. VIP torrents have two advantages over freeleech torrents. First, there are a lot more VIP torrents than freeleech torrents. There are 289,000 VIP torrents but typically only 1,000 to 2,000 freeleech torrents at any given time. Second, most VIP torrents are permanently VIP, with a small minority being temporarily VIP. By contrast, all freeleech torrents are only temporarily freeleech. Downloading VIP torrents gives you some added protection against unexpected problems or mistakes.
Step 11. Go to the store and see how many bonus points you are earning. Under the "Points earning" heading, it will say "Last update had ___ satisfied torrents worth ___ per hour". That second number is how many points per hour you are earning. Once you are earning 250 points per hour or more, you can comfortably stop downloading new torrents to earn more points. You will be able to buy everything. Since the minimum amount a satisfied torrent can earn is 0.25 bonus points per hour, the maximum number of satisfied torrents you will need to seed is 1,000. (This assumes you are seeding 24/7. If you are seeding less than 24/7, you have to adjust these numbers and earn more per hour to make up for it.)
Step 12. Make sure to visit the site at least every 2 weeks and buy "Max GB" from the store. Your points will max out at 99,999, which means you need to spend them before they hit that limit.
Step 13. If you follow all these steps, by the time your account is 6 months old, you should have at least 1 TiB of upload credit. That means you will gain access to the forum where you can get invites to other torrent sites, which specialize in other forms of media such as TV and movies.
Good luck and have fun!
Frequently asked questions (FAQ):
Help, my torrent client isn't uploading that much data to my peers! That's normal and fine. You only need to care about bonus points, not real upload. Focus on getting bonus points. Ignore real upload.
Help, I'm unconnectable! That's normal and fine. A third of MAM users are unconnectable. If you already tried to forward your ports and it didn't work, don't worry about it. It barely affects anything.
What's the formula for determining how many bonus points are awarded for seeding a torrent? Who knows? And who cares? The exact formula is a secret, but it involves the number of seeders and the file size of the torrent. The award can vary from as low as 0.25 bonus points per hour to as high as 4 bonus points per hour. However, this variation in bonus points is completely irrelevant and is just a distraction. The optimal strategy is unambiguously to seed the largest possible quantity of the smallest possible torrents (regardless of other factors).
Why is this guide necessary? It didn't used to be, but now access to the invite forum requires 1 TiB of upload, which requires seeding a lot of torrents.
Why are there so many steps? So no one gets lost or confused. It's less complicated than it seems. Scrambling an egg is simple, but looks complicated if you write out the instructions step by step. Step 1. Take the eggs out of the fridge...
Why not just download hundreds of torrents manually, one at a time? You can if you want to.
Why should I seek access to the invite forum? You don't have to. The invite forum is how you can become a member of other private torrent sites. If you aren't interested in that, you only need a 2.0 ratio on MAM and 25 GiB of upload to qualify for VIP. Plus about 10 bonus points per hour.
Isn't this just using MAM as a stepping stone? Not if you're actually interested in books (or comics, or audiobooks). Download the books you're actually interested in first. Once you're done with that, use this method to download the hundreds of other torrents you'll need to seed if you want to get enough bonus points for the invite forum.