Sunday, December 07, 2008

50 Places for Free Books Online

50 Places for Free Books Online

I recently went looking for some free Ebooks and was surprised to find that there are many resources for this.  I decided to put together this list of sites that offer free Ebooks as a reference.  Since there are so many, I was not able to check each one out thoroughly.  So comments from you on any of these sites would be appreciated.   I did verify that these all are active and working.

All of the EBooks at these sites are legally available for viewing/downloading.

Since this article has proven popular, I decided to go looking for additional sites and found a few worth checking out.  I did not change the number in the title as I was uncertain how that would affect searches.  These are listed at the end (until I have the time to add in to the list and re-number).

Putting this together was exhausting, but the list is not exhaustive, so I encourage you to post any sites that you know of that are not listed here.  They are listed in alphabetical order.  Enjoy.

1.  4eBooks - Thousands of free eBooks in every computer programing field with reviews and descriptions.

2.  Alive and Free - Links to free ebooks of living authors

3.  Arthur's Classic Novels - Over 4000 novels from the early 20th century

4.  Ask Sam - A small collection of classics, including Shakespeare, and legal, resource and government texts.

5.  Baen Free Library - A small library of downloadable science fiction novels in a variety of formats.

6.  Bartelby - Harvard classics and encyclopedias.  HTML only.

7.  Berkely SunSite Classics - A small collection of classics.  HTML only.

8.  Bibliomania - Over 2,000 classic novels, study guides, biographies and more.  HTML only.

9.  BookRags - Small collection of free with many paid.  Hard to find the free ones.  Available in Word or PDF.

10.  BookYards - 16,000+ books, videos, educational material.

11. DailyLit - Read books online by daily email or RSS feed. Over 700 titles.

12. Diesel eBooks - Offers 750+ ebooks formatted for Microsoft Reader and MobiPocket

13  eLibrary - Thousand of free eBooks

14. eServer - Over 30,000 works covering a variety of interests

15. FeedBooks - Thousand of eBooks downloadable in a variety of formats

16. Franklin - Thousands of free titles available in text and HTML format

17. FreeBookSpot - 5,000 free eBooks downloadable in 96 categories

18. FreeComputer Books - Free computer, math, technical books and lecture notes

19. Free eBooks - Smaller collection divided into categories

20. Free eBooks Net - Free books and resources for authors.  Also magazines

21. FreeTechBooks - Computer science and programming books, textbooks and lecture notes.

22. FullBooks - Thousand of free full text books.

23. GetFreeEbooks - Smaller collection of all free ebooks.

24. Globusz - A place for new authors to post their work and for readers to check them out for free.

25. Google Book Search - Good selection of free ebooks available in a variety of categories.

26. GrtBooks - A large collection of great books and classics.

27. Gutenberg - Over 25,000 books for download there and over 100,000 available through their affiliates.

28. Infomotions - 14,000 listings from full classic novels to Western philosophy.  HTML only.

29. InternetArchive - Over 500,000 texts available for download

30. ManyBooks - 22,000 books available for download in a variety of formats

31. Mary Jo's E Texts - Small collection has not been updated in a while,  but links still work.  Palm.

32. MemoWare - Free books for PDA

33. MIT Internet Classics Archive - Over 400 works of clasical literature available for download.

34. MobileRead - Forum listing thousands of free ebooks.

35. Munsey's - Over 18,000 ebooks available in a variety of formats

36. NetLibrary - Small selection of free.  But annual membership is only $8.95 for over 500,000 works.

37. OnlineComputerBooks - Good selection of free computer books.

38. OnlineFreeeBooks - links to various ebooks (mostly pdf) in 9 categories

39. OxfordTextArchive - Over 2,000 classical texts downloadable as ASCII or DOC

40. PDFBooks - 4,700 pdf ebooks

41. PerseusDigitalLibrary - A large collection of classical texts broken down to time period written.

42. PlaneteBook - Free classical literature

43. PlanetPDFeBooks - Small collection of classical works.

44. ReadEasily - Small collection of works that has option for larger print.  HTML only.

45. ReadPrint - Thousands of books, poems and short stories.

46. RealTime - Free media for IT professionals

47. Scribd - Open library to download or publish documents.

48. SnipFiles - Small collection of free ebooks and software.

49. WitGuides - Small collection of free ebooks in a variety of categories.

50. Wowio - Good size collection of novels and also comic books.

Recent Additions

Bookstacks is a small collection (100+) of classic works available for online viewing, with many also available in Adobe PDF and Microsoft Reader versions.  Nicely set up.

Classic Authors.net contains the works of over a hundred authors (and short biography for each), with a varying number of works per author.  Online viewing only.

Classic Book Library is a small collection (100+) of classic works arranged by genre.  Online viewing only.

Classic Book Shelf Electronic Library offers the works of 50+ authors in varying amounts.  Online viewing only.

Classic Reader offers thousands of free classic books for online viewing.

Fiction eBooks is a interesting small collection of works of fiction (including some Beatrix Potter illustrated childrens books) as well as some books for writers and works philosphy and sociology.  Online viewing only.

Free eBooks is a collection of several hundred works in a interesting range of categories.  Some available for online viewing, others for download in differing formats.

Master Texts is a collection of 30+ authors for online viewing.

Questia Online Library offers over 5,000 classic and rare works for free online viewing.

Although some of these newer entries are smaller collections, they were included as they contained works not available at other sites listed.  Some smaller sites were not listed as they did not have any unique listings.

Libraries on the advice of anonymous poster that most public library systems offer free ebooks, audiobooks, and music downloads to their customers for free, I did some checking and found that there are a large amount of offerings available through online libraries.  It appears most, if not all, require a local library card.  These are sites that have links to local library sites.

LibWeb is a good search source for local libraries online. A good selection of US and worldwide locations.

Public Libraries very good for US, looked not as thorough as LibWeb on worldwide.

Internet Public Library also has some links, but I found the above two to be superior set ups.

More Suggestions from Posters

Book Glutton is a collection of 1200+ books for online reading with the added  feature of  groups available for discussion of the readings.  Nice combination of reading and socializing.  Suggested by an anonymous poster.

Children's Books Online is an excellent collection (600+) of illustrated antique children's books for viewing online.   They are also available for download at a fee.  This little gem was suggested by an anonymous poster.

Free Book Spot is a small collection with a number of unique books in 90 categories available for download in a number of different formats.  Suggested by devinathann.

Webooks is a small (150) collection of "How To" books on unusual topics available for online viewing or download as pdf.  Suggested by an anonymous poster.

Federal Citizen Information Center offers informational booklets on a great variety of subjects.  Many are free and most of the paid ones are available for a free download.  Suggested by an anonymous poster.

Some More Additions

Qvadis hosts over 6,000 free titles available in Palm Database (.pdb) format.

WordiQ offers over 10,000 new and old classics for online viewing.

Cliff Notes has the Cliff Notes for 187 books as well as some basic study guides for various subjects available for online viewing.

The Online Books Page from the University of Pennsylvania  is a listing of over 30,000 free books on the web.   Mostly this references to other sites, but they do have the Gutenberg listings available for download as well as some interesting special exhibits.

The Online Library of Liberty hosts over an interesting collection of over 1,100 books available for online viewing and also for download.

Web Literature has 6500+ works of over 350 authors available for online viewing.  A nice feature is that they try to display the full works of the listed authors.

Again, please feel free to make any suggestions, comments or additions.

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