Free eBooks

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This page lists places where you can find free ebooks. It includes links to sites which allow online reading, and sites which provide downloads. You may also be interested in E-book stores, many of which also give away some free books; and EBook Lending Libraries, which allow you to borrow books for a limited time. Need a dictionary?

Contents


[edit] Downloadable Books

In alphabetical order

  • BookBoon.com-- Download your Textbooks for Free. The super guys & girls at BookBoon.com publish over 200 textbooks that students can download totally for free.
  • The Book Depository -- Over 11,000 eBooks available Adobe PDF and with no restrictions. From classics to very interesting and obscure titles, theres soemthing for everyone here.
  • Christian Classics Ethereal Library -- This is a bit of a specialty site, but an excellent one with wide appeal. It provides a massive collection of texts, making it an unbelievable library of the classic Christian writings, covering a wide range of authors. Downloads are available in TXT, PDF, and some in PalmDOC, DOC.
  • Ebook Readers Org -- They provide links to free ebooks on the main page plus sell many used ebook readers.
  • E-Books Directory -- Legally free eBooks, documents, and lectures from all over the internet, availible in PDF format and organized by subjects.
  • epubBooks -- High quality public domain books available in the ePub format, many of which include illustrations and linkable footnotes.
  • FreeBookSpot -- An online source of free eBooks organized by subject matter.
  • Internet Archive:Text -- Free Books from a variety of sources, most available as scanned PDFs and OCRed plain text.
  • Literate Machine -- Free downloadable eBooks, comic books, magazines and artwork from independent artists and writers.
  • Memoware -- Another giant collection of texts. This one is not just classic texts, but does include classics. The advantage of this site is that you can usually find a PalmDOC or iSilo text for most of the books. Other PDA formats are also supported on some books. They have their own excellent guides for many aspects of ebook reading on PDAs. It's a great resource even if you don't download any of their books.
  • MobileRead uploads -- 10,000+ postings in Sony Reader, MobiPocket, IMP, and miscellaneous other formats. Many of these are hand checked versions of the highest possible quality. They have been prepared by MobileReader users.
  • Munseys -- The new name of BlackMask. 20,000+ titles in a variety of formats.
  • Planet eBook -- Free classic literature that has fallen out of copyright. Available in PDF format.
  • Project Gutenberg -- Thousands of out-of-copyright books available for free, with more being added every month. This is a huge collection of classic texts that is sure to include your favorites. It is growing all the time, and the most popular books are even available on a CD or DVD that you can receive for free if you don't have adequate online access. You might even want to consider donating a small amount to support their ongoing work to expand their library. And don't miss their page on converting texts for PDAs and eReaders.
  • Project Runeberg -- Project Runeberg is a volunteer effort to create free electronic editions of classic Nordic (Scandinavian) literature and make them openly available over the Internet.
  • Suvudo Free Library -- Fantasy & Science fiction ebooks in PDF format, with links to free versions in the Kindle and Sony stores.
  • The Fifth Imperium -- CD-ROM images. Mostly the images are of the free CD-ROMs included with some Baen Books. Baen Books allows the CD-ROMs to be copied and distributed for free. Every CD-ROMs contains several complete novels in HTML format, and some have extras, like MP3 readings. All CD-ROMs also contain artwork for the CD-ROM itself.
  • Misc Collection -- useful eBooks - Check this site which has many useful pdf ebooks on various topics available for download
  • The Pirate's Dilemma by Matt Mason -- Author's book-download page. The Pirate's Dilemma is available on a "pay-what-you-want" basis, and may be had for zero dollars. The book looks at the history and current iterations of pirate culture in a pretty groovy way.

[edit] Specialized eBook Sites

This section shows sites containing one book or a specialized subset of books on one topic. This differs from sites that have a wide selection of eBooks available. Author sites should be here. This should also be in alphabetical order.

  • Cory Doctorow -- Author's site. Fiction and non-fiction by Cory Doctorow.
  • Free Spiritual Ebooks -- Download free spiritual ebooks by Nirmala and his wife, Gina Lake, to help you awaken, open your heart, and live more fully in the now.
  • Kenneth Kuttler A math professor's page, wherein the numerous mathematics textbooks he has written may be found in PDF format.
  • Lessig.org Lawrence Lessig's author page, whereat his Creative Commons ebooks may be freely downloaded.
  • Light and Matter -- Introductory physics textbooks in available in HTML and PDF. Released under both Creative Commons and the GFDL.
  • Linear Algebra -- A free linear algebra textbook in PDF format. Licensed under both Creative Commons and the GFDL.
  • Motion Mountain] Free physics textbook available in PDF. Released under Creative Commons.
  • Opening Up Education -- A series of articles about Open Education and current Open Education projects. The Sample Chapters link at the top of the page leads to an option to download the whole book.
  • Plough Publishing House -- Free e-books and articles on the Christian life, discipleship, fear of death, nonviolence, finding peace, and prayer. Adobe PDF files with bookmarks
  • Ultimate eBook Store -- A one stop shop to get completely free ebooks, information, how to guides, for self, life and business improvements.

[edit] Online Reading

The focus of this section is on web sites that are designed for on-line reading. In some cases there may be methods to download the eBooks but that is not the intent of the site. Some sites are in both groups due to the fact that they support both modes. Some sites appear in both groups and probably should be removed from one or the other.

  • Bartleby -- Online eBooks and reference data.

Baen Free Library -- Over 100 free Science Fiction/Fantasy books, mostly from baen books. Available in several unencrypted, non-DRM formats: HTML, Rocket, Ebookwise, Mobipocket, RTF and Microsoft Reader.

  • Blackmask Online -- The original Blackmask.com collection hosted by Project Gutenberg of Web readable books.
  • BookGlutton -- BookGlutton offers a web-based ebook reader and catalog. The Unbound Reader has chapter-by-chapter chat integration for book groups to talk about books online and annotation capabilities.
  • Christian Classics Ethereal Library -- This is a bit of a specialty site, but an excellent one with wide appeal. It provides a massive collection of texts, making it an unbelievable library of the classic Christian writings, covering a wide range of authors. A delightful source because most of the best Christian writing was done a long time ago, and therefore is copyright-free.
  • Connexions is a site devoted to Text Books. The modules (chapters) are individually downloadable but you can read an entire text book online. You can also contribute modules or assemble your own book.
  • Documenting the American South -- University of North Carolina free online collection. Many unique books and other documents available; each is presented on a single HTML page for online reading, and thus is easily saved and read on a portable device.
  • eScholarship Editions -- eBooks from academic presses on art, science, history, music, religion, and even some fiction.
  • Exact Editions -- Features digital magazines. This needs a high resolution color display due to the many images. The magazine is read online with a browser.
  • FanFiction.net -- For anyone interested in reading fan fiction online. A program called FLAG can be used to download these eBooks.
  • Google Books -- Features book searching and reading. They include a list of places that you can get the book.
  • Higher Intellect -- Many older texts along with some newer content on a large variety of subjects.
  • Internet Archive -- Contains copies of web sites, moving images, music, audio, and of course Text, including many eBooks.
  • ISSUU -- A unique site that provides a special tool aimed at reading magazines and other color graphic intense media online. A good selection of magazines and other images are available. A lot of thought was placed in the design of the display.
  • Langridge, Huw -- Author's site. Provides fiction (Science Fiction and General Fiction) for free reading online, some DRM-free downloads available in Adobe PDF.
  • Library of Congress -- Mostly research and online reference information. Historic documents and lots of images. Also serves as a point to other sites with information.
  • L. Lee Lowe -- YA fantasy and SF novels, complete with podcasts
  • Marxists Internet Archive -- Books and articles by hundreds of writers, Marxist and non-Marxist. Some of the books have an option of PDF download, but the PDF version is the webpage printed to a PDF file and thus not very suitable for most ebook readers. Constantly updated.
  • Mortal Ghost -- YA fantasy novel, also with downloadable podcasts.
  • Munseys -- The new name of BlackMask.com with 20,000+ titles in a variety of formats. Select the HTML format for online reading.
  • NetLibrary -- Has free and subscription eBooks for online reading. They also have an offline reader available.
  • Project Gutenberg -- Thousands of out-of-copyright books available for free, with more being added every month. This is a huge collection of classic texts that is sure to include your favorites. It is growing all the time, and the most popular books are even available on a CD or DVD that you can receive for free if you don't have adequate online access. You might even want to consider donating a small amount to support their ongoing work to expand their library. And don't miss their page on converting texts for PDAs and eReaders. Click "read online" for online txt file.
  • Public Literature -- Provides for online reading with continuation on future visits for multiple books. Also provides some read-along audio on certain books.
  • Project Wittenberg -- Project Wittenberg is home to works by and about Martin Luther and other Lutherans. These are mostly HTML texts.
  • Readprint.com -- Has many good books and you can even search the text within the books.
  • Stories online -- Has a wide collection of all genre's of stories, most with a greater or lesser erotic content, but a fair proportion of it of professional grade.
  • TextFiles.Com -- Old text files from BBS days (but some very interesting).
  • Von's Books -- Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy.
  • WOWIO -- Offers free eBooks to read online.
  • ZBOOC -- Free eBook reader or download a PDF, requires a login account.

[edit] Tips

Online reading generally means reading with your browser. Some of the sites have specific add-ons for your browser but most just depend on HTML formatted documents.

  • On-line reading can often be cluttered with advertising and other distractions. Fonts may not be the ones you would choose. http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ is a site containing a browser add-on to filter out the distractions and improve readability.

[edit] eBooks in languages other than English

  • Wiki Books -- Aimed at supplying educational textbooks. Multiple languages available, predominately English.
  • Wiki Source -- A source for online reading in multiple languages. The offerings differ depending on the language.

[edit] Finnish

[edit] French

  • Ebooks libres et gratuits -- Textes classiques libres de droits, téléchargeables dans les formats PDF, Mobipocket, PalmReader, Sony Reader et Word. Nombre de livres disponibles sur le site : quelque 1600. French books only, of course. Conversions very well done, generally.
  • Gallica -- All eBooks in French. These are mostly archived images with some text versions. The text is intended for searching and may not be word perfect. The image (PNG) for viewing the book.
  • Plough Publishing House -- Free e-books and articles on the Christian life, discipleship, fear of death, nonviolence, finding peace, and prayer. .pdf files with bookmarks

[edit] German

  • studentensupport.de-- Download your Textbooks for Free. Over 60 textbooks in German that students can download totally for free.
  • PaperC -- A german startup that brings all sorts of high quality books (mainly educational or science) free for online reading.
  • Gutenberg-DE -- This has nothing to do with the wellknown Project Gutenberg! - It has German literature gbde.py makes it easy to create automagically ebooks of the chopped books.
  • Zeno -- German Literature chapterwise webpages. Unfortunately Automatic Downloading with special software is not prohibited.
  • Plough Publishing House -- Gratis Ebooks auf Deutsch - free e books in German on Christian Life and discipleship. .pdf files with bookmarks

[edit] Italian

  • LiberLiber Italian Classics and not-so-classics, in mutiple formats (odt, pdf, epub, txt, rtf); very rich library. Unfortunately a lot of files won't use the standard ASCII, so beware if you're going to need file conversion.

[edit] Japanese

  • Aozora Bunko -- A digital library for Japanese literature. Several thousands works all of which copyright has expired or freely made available by authors. Since 1997.

[edit] Korean

  • KINBooks(즐북) -- A digital library for Korean literature. Works all of which copyright has expired or freely made available by Users.

[edit] Nordic

  • Project Runeberg -- Project Runeberg is a volunteer effort to create free electronic editions of classic Nordic (Scandinavian) literature and make them openly available over the Internet.

[edit] Russian

  • Lib.Ru -- Lib.ru, also known as Maksim Moshkow's Library, is the oldest electronic library in the Russian Internet segment.
  • Lib.Rus.Ec -- A lot of books, is the largest (100+K titles) electronic library.

[edit] Spanish

  • Axxón Móvil -- Monthly compilation of the science-fiction Argentinian webzine Axxón, with Plucker and EPUB versions.
  • Plough Publishing House -- Libros Electrónicos en Español - free e books in Spanish on Christian Life: marriage, raising children, seeking peace, living in community. .pdf files with bookmarks

[edit] Swedish

[edit] Search Engines

[edit] Lists of Links

  • Finding Free eBooks -- Frequently updated, links to lots of free ebooks with descriptions and file types available; also links to time limited promotional give-aways. Categorized and searchable. Leave comments and ratings. Get the rss.
  • Free Books -- Really big list of links to eBook sites, with descriptions.
  • Free Tech Books -- Links to free computer science, engineering and programming books.
  • Online Novels -- Links to free online novels in multiple genres. Includes links to limited offers and promotions.
  • QuasarDragon -- Links to many free SF, Fantasy and horror resources.


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