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

  • Cory Doctorow -- Author's site. Fiction and non-fiction by Cory Doctorow.
  • 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.
  • E-Books Directory -- Legally free eBooks, documents, and lectures from all over the internet, availible in PDF format and organized by subjects.
  • FreeBookSpot -- An online source of free eBooks organized by subject matter.
  • Gutenberg Canada -- Canada has different copyright laws than the US. These eBooks are public domain in Canada. content is HTML and TXT.
  • Internet Archive:Text -- Free Books from a variety of sources, most available as scanned PDFs and OCRed plain text.
  • Light and Matter -- Introductory physics textbooks in availible in HTML and PDF. Released under both Creative Commons and the GFDL.
  • 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. Availible 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.
  • Stanford Collection -- Documents and some eBooks - check the dime novels and medieval collection.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Lowelands -- YA fantasy and speculative fiction
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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).
  • WOWIO -- Offers free eBooks to read online.

[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] 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.

[edit] German

  • 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.

[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] Spanish

  • Axxón Móvil -- Monthly compilation of the science-fiction Argentinian webzine Axxón, with Plucker and EPUB versions.

[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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