You might be surprised by how many good free ebook sites there are out there. Nowadays, you can find pretty much any popular (and not) book online. You just need to know where to look. Here are my favorite free ebook sites.
These are simple Google-like search engines but for PDF files. I usually start my ebook search using one of these sites. Type in the title of the document or book name you’re looking for and click on the search button. Find your book in the search results and click on download link. Done.
So far my top 3 ebook search sites are:
In case you have never heard of this one before, the simplest way to define Scribd would be to call it Youtube for documents. People can upload whatever text documents they want and easily share them with others.
You’ll find lots and lots of free ebooks here. You only need to know what to look for. For instance try searching for George Orwell, Leo Tolstoi, etc.
And obviously it gets copyrighted ebooks much like YouTube gets copyrighted videos. I am not sure if they are doing anything to deal with them, but the fact is there are plenty of them on Scribd.
Oh and as we have mentioned before, Scribd is also an excellent resource for free document templates.
Project Gutenberg (aka PG) has the largest collection of public domain books. These are the books that out of copyright and available for anyone to use for any purpose. Lots of books from the world’s greatest fiction authors such as Dickens, Joyce, Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Anton Chekov and Edgar Allan Poe fall into this category.
This site is the oldest producer of free ebooks on the Internet. PG is an extremely popular site and now has over 20,000 works. If you’re not sure where to start check out their Top 100 page.
For those of you who like to have ebooks on their portabe device we got some sites as well. Below are what I believe the best websites for books that can be read on mobile devices.
For iPhone users in particular there is a website called TextOnPhne. It’s a great ebook site that comes with its own ebook reader app. There are over 30,000 free books for your Apple device. Check out the demo video here.
These sites are mainly for tech books, covering everything from computer science, engineering and mathematics to programming and web development.
DailyLit is a bit different from the rest but I really like what they’re doing there. DailyLit can deliver a small excerpt from the book of your choice to your email on a daily basis. One excerpt per day, and so untill the book is finished.
The reason it wroks so well is that it only takes around 3-5 minutes to read each excerpt. If you feel like reading more you can request a next excerpt with a click of a button.
While more than a half of all books cost about $4.95 per book others are free. There are plenty of good titles among the free ones as well, some of my favorites include My Life and Work (by Henry Ford), Siddhartha (by Herman Hesse) and Random Reminiscences of Men and Events (by John D. Rockefeller). Check it out.
Are you aware of any other cool websites for ebooks? Share them in comments.
(By) Aibek, the guy behind MakeUseOf.com
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Filed Under: Lists of tools
Tags: books, downloads, ebook, freebies, pdf
What about readprint.com?
I’d like to point out one more ebookshare.net
Looking for free (e)magazines instead of books? Zinio is doing a free, green giveaway for one year subscriptions. http://www.goreadgreen.com
This is a great list, there is a site http://www.esnips.com, which can be added to this wonderful list
You said 6. So there’s no bonus. A bonus would be 7.
Thoses are from Istanbul
to add the list.
flazx.com
knowfree.net
ebookee.com
oebook.com
ebook.laku-abis.com
Thanks for the collections
Eric
http://www.businesssoftwaresolutions.com.fj
Form Charles Wright who writes computer articles for The Age newspaper in Melbourne, Australia, some commercial sellers of ebooks:
http://ebookmall.com/
http://booksonboard.com/
http://ebooks.com/
Free great physics textbook:
Motion Mountain
http://www.motionmountain.net/
I think people already know…
Thank you for the great list, another addition to where to get these free e-books: http://book.populair.eu
Great article, and great links. Will check out your other lists.
Thanks.
Hey,
Thanks a lot for this info.
http://www.pdfchm.com
This site has a big collection of free ebooks. Can download it by becoming a member. The membership is also free.
My comment is: Thank you a ton. Great compilation of resources.
Ebooks for portable device, the BEST website is easily: http://www.wattpad.com. Its exclusively for mobile device.
netbks.com GREAT site.
Thanks for including DailyLit in your list!
I wanted to point out that more than half of our books are free. Currently we have 700+ free books with more added regularly.
We also offer forums and other features for our readers so that they can talk about books and reading. That element of community is missing from many ebook sites, but we think reading is more fun when you have the ability to share the experience with others.
Thanks again for collecting these resources–it’s much appreciated by ebook fans.
Maggie
DailyLit
http://manybooks.net Contains the same set of books as the Project Gutenburg site but in a much friendlier format.
Thanks for the great list. Another good website to check out for recreational reading is http://www.book-bot.com/. You can read thousands of books for free and it saves your progress, so that you can pick up right where you left off!
What about baen publishing? http://www.baen.com …they have tons of free inprint books in their free library.
/Erik
Librivox is a great resource for the audio version of books no longer under copyright… pop some literature into the digital audio device of choice and enjoy.
I would recommend this link —–> http://peekapage.blogspot.com/search/label/E-books
Sell inventions, sell patents and sell ideas - Ever
wondered - how can I sell my ideas and how can
I sell my inventions or how can I sell my patent.
Free ebooks and information, check out http://www.free-ebooks-canada.com many can be re-sold or given away.THX
Witguides.com has heaps of free ebooks that you can download
without having to sign up or do anythig. Plenty of the latest title too.
Go To -
Nice list by the way
wher can i find this ebook for free…
“Multiplayer Gaming and Engine Coding for the Torque Game Engine”
please reply meeeee…….to my mail id
sudaleo@gmail.com
Hi Everyone!
Tons of similar informaion in form of ebooks, software, scripts, templates and many more are also available free on our website http://www.freeyourself.biz
Regards,
Saroj Dhongadi
http://www.freeyourself.biz
WebLiterature - http://www.webliterature.net - should fit the bill since Project Gutenberg-type classic literature books are also under consideration. WebLiterature brings forward a huge library, all classics, to read for free of cost.