Free (Legal) Books Online

Surely we all know what .torrent or .nzb file formats are all about. *waves her Pirate Flag of Peace™* But what do you know: While no one becomes a writer because they hate writing, many people become accountants because they love writing, but couldn't make more than a couple hundred dollars from it, and not because their books were bad.

But what if you have no money? And an itch for something new to read? 

Well, you can visit the library, for starters.

And then there's the wonder of free -- and legal -- books that you can find online.

Below's a selection of such sites. I'm expanding the list constantly. If you have any new additions, by all means comment.
  1. Amazon Kindle > Free Popular Classics. Sometimes the choices displayed on that page get a little weird. (Though I promise you I download them all.)
  2. Amazon Kindle Shop sorted by price, low to high. Meaning, free releases appear first.
  3. Bartleby. Apart from many books which can be read online, they also have a downloads section for the Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction.
  4. BiblioMania. Prepare to be blinded by main page's red background, but the contents are worth it.
  5. Free Ebooks Library.
  6. Gaslight. A discussion site with a rather large archive of texts, fiction and non-fiction, pertaining to mysteries written in 19th and the beginning of 20th century.
  7. Goodreads Ebooks. Aside from numerous giveaways, in which you can participate, Goodreads also has a section from which you can download free excerpts and certain full books.
  8. Google Books. Books are not available for download at all locations, but you can still search them and browse through them online quite effectively.
  9. Internet Archive: Texts.
  10. Literature Collection.
  11. Many Books. Ratings and reviews by readers. Excerpts from stories. Downloads in many formats, including my preferred .mobi.
  12. Open Library.
  13. Project Gutenberg. You can start with their Top 100, if you'd like. As my e-reader is a Kindle, I love the fact that Gutenberg has many books in .mobi format. Also, if you use Dropbox or Google Drive, you can send books to your accounts with one click.
  14. Short Stories. What it says. An extensive collection of short stories in many genres. It has classics, contemporaries, and I believe there's a submission section as well. Aside from author, you can list by ratings or length. There's also a Children's section.
  15. the University of Chicago Press monthly free e-book. I highly recommend you subscribe to this list.

No comments:

Post a Comment

I moderate all comments, but please rest assured that I don't censor them. The only reason your comment might go unpublished is if you're behaving like a troll.