Ever thought of creating a library with thousands of free books? You'd never have to spend a dime. It sounds impossible, but it's not! Free books, on nearly any subject you can think of, are all over the web, ready to be read, downloaded, and shared. All you need to do is speed up your reading so you have enough time to get through all of them!
A huge quantity of books previously unavailable to the public were released starting in 2019 to the public domain, thanks to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998. Because of an amendment to that act, works published between 1923 and 1977 can enter the public domain 95 years after their creation.
Many of the sites listed in this article can get you access to the tens of thousands of books (and movies, songs, and cartoons) available under this act. Downloads should be free and without retribution under U.S. copyright law. Keep an eye on your favorite sites; they will update regularly with these now legal-to-download books.
Here are the top 20 sites where you can find and download a wide variety of completely free books online, anything from romance novels to computer technology manuals.
Easy to search and offers lots of ways to find free books
Free account gives you access to a personal page to manage your bookshelf and interact with the community
Comprehensive quotation database
Only has classic books and those with Creative Commons licenses
No way to download free books directly from this site
Read Print is an online library where you can find thousands of free books to read. The books are classics or Creative Commons licensed and include everything from nonfiction and essays to fiction, plays, and poetry.
Free registration at Read Print gives you the ability to track what you've read and what you would like to read, write reviews of books you have read, add books to your favorites, and to join online book clubs or discussion lists to discuss great works of literature.
You can access the books on Read Print without joining, however, you won't have access to the other features mentioned above.
There are several ways you can find what you're looking for at Read Print:
For example, if you're searching for books by William Shakespeare, a simple search will turn up all his works, in a single location.
Once you've found a book you're interested in, click Read Online and the book will open within your web browser. You also have the option to Launch Reading Mode if you're not fond of the website interface. Reading Mode looks like an open book, however, all the free books on the Read Print site are divided by chapter so you'll have to go back and open it every time you start a new chapter.
If you find a free book you really like and you'd like to download it to your mobile e-reader, Read Print provides links to Amazon, where the book can be downloaded. However, when downloading books from Amazon, you may have to pay for the book unless you're a member of Amazon Kindle Unlimited.
Selection includes more than just classics and Creative Commons books
Great categorization makes finding what you love easier
Appears some functionality may not be available on the new site
Some areas haven't been updated in more than a year
ManyBooks is one of the best resources on the web for free books in a variety of download formats. There are hundreds of books available here, in all sorts of interesting genres, and all of them are completely free. One of the best features of this site is that not all of the books listed here are classic or creative commons books.
ManyBooks is in transition at the time of this writing. A beta test version of the site is available that features a serviceable search capability. Readers can also find books by browsing genres, popular selections, author, and editor's choice. Plus, ManyBooks has put together collections of books that are an interesting way to explore topics in a more organized way.
In addition to these basic search options, you can also use ManyBooks Advanced Search to pinpoint exactly what you're looking for. There's also the ManyBooks RSS feeds that can keep you up to date on a variety of new content, including: All New Titles By Language.
All of the free books at ManyBooks are downloadable — some directly from the ManyBooks site, some from other websites (such as Amazon). When you register for the site you're asked to choose your favorite format for books, however, you're not limited to the format you choose. When you find a book you want to read, you can select the format you prefer to download from a drop down menu of dozens of different file formats.
The Literature Network: This site is organized alphabetically by author. Click on any author's name, and you'll see a biography, related links and articles, quizzes, and forums. Most of the books here are free, but there are some downloads that require a small fee.
Free Computer Books: Every computer subject and programming language you can think of is represented here. Free books and textbooks, as well as extensive lecture notes, are available.
Librivox.org is a dream come true for audiobook lovers. All the books here are absolutely free, which is good news for those of us who have had to pony up ridiculously high fees for substandard audiobooks.
Librivox has many volunteers that work to release quality recordings of classic books, all free for anyone to download. If you've been looking for a great place to find free audio books, Librivox is a good place to start.
Authorama.com features a nice selection of free books written in HTML and XHTML, which basically means that they are in easily readable format. Most books here are featured in English, but there are quite a few German language texts as well. Books are organized alphabetically by the author’s last name. Authorama offers a good selection of free books from a variety of authors, both current and classic.
Authorama offers up a good selection of high-quality, free books that you can read right in your browser or print out for later. These are books in the public domain, which means that they are freely accessible and allowed to be distributed; in other words, you don't need to worry if you're looking at something illegal here.
Authorama is a very simple site to use. You can scroll down the list of alphabetically arranged authors on the front page, or check out the list of Latest Additions at the top.
Once you find something you're interested in, click on the book title and you'll be taken to that book's specific page. You can choose to read chapters within your browser (easiest) or print pages out for later.
If you're looking for an easy to use source of free books online, Authorama definitely fits the bill. All of the books offered here are classic, well-written literature, easy to find and simple to read.
Project Gutenberg is one of the largest sources for free books on the web, with over 30,000 downloadable free books available in a wide variety of formats.
Project Gutenberg is the oldest (and quite possibly the largest) library on the web, with literally hundreds of thousands free books available for download. The vast majority of books at Project Gutenberg are released in English, but there are other languages available.
If you already know what you are looking for, search the database by author name, title, language, or subjects. You can also check out the top 100 list to see what other people have been downloading.
International Digital Children's Library: Browse through a wide selection of high quality free books for children here. Check out Simple Search to get a big picture of how this library is organized: by age, reading level, length of book, genres, and more.
Ebooks and Text Archives: From the Internet Archive; a library of fiction, popular books, children's books, historical texts and academic books. The free books on this site span every possible interest.
Questia Public Library has long been a favorite choice of librarians and scholars for research help. They also offer a world-class library of free books filled with classics, rarities, and textbooks.
More than 5,000 free books are available for download here, alphabetized both by title and by author.
Wikisource: Online library of user-submitted and maintained content. While you won't technically find free books on this site, at the time of this writing, over 200,000 pieces of content are available to read.
Wikibooks is an open collection of (mostly) textbooks. Subjects range from Computing to Languages to Science; you can see all that Wikibooks has to offer in Books by Subject.
Be sure to check out the Featured Books section, which highlights free books that the Wikibooks community at large believes to be “the best of what Wikibooks has to offer, and should inspire people to improve the quality of other books.”
Bibliomania: Bibliomania gives readers over 2,000 free classics, including literature book notes, author bios, book summaries, and study guides. Free books are presented in chapter format.
The Open Library: There are over one million free books here, all available in PDF, ePub, Daisy, DjVu and ASCII text.
You can search for ebooks specifically by checking the Show only ebooks option under the main search box. Once you've found an ebook, you will see it available in a variety of formats.
Sacred Texts contains the web’s largest collection of free books about religion, mythology, folklore and the esoteric in general.
Another site that isn't strictly for free books, Slideshare does offer a large amount of free content for you to read. It is an online forum where anyone can upload a digital presentation on any subject.
Millions of people utilize SlideShare for research, sharing ideas, and learning about new technologies. SlideShare supports documents and PDF files, and all these are available for free download (after free registration).
Free eBooks offers a wonderfully diverse variety of free books, ranging from Advertising to Health to Web Design. Standard memberships (yes, you do have to register in order to download anything but it only takes a minute) are free and allow members to access unlimited eBooks in HTML, but only five books every month in the PDF and TXT formats.
A VIP membership here (at $39.95 for a full year or $49.95 for a lifetime membership) gives you unlimited access to any book you want, in any format.
The Online Books Page: Maintained by the University of Pennsylvania, this page lists over one million free books available for download in dozens of different formats.
World Public Library: Technically, the World Public Library is NOT free. But for $8.95 annually, you can gain access to hundreds of thousands of books in over one hundred different languages. They also have over one hundred different special collections ranging from American Lit to Western Philosophy. Worth a look.
They also have what they call a Give Away Page, which is over two hundred of their most popular titles, audio books, technical books, and books made into movies. Give the freebies a try, and if you really like their service, then you can choose to become a member and get the whole collection.
Scribd offers a fascinating collection of all kinds of reading materials: presentations, textbooks, popular reading, and much more, all organized by topic. Scribd is one of the web’s largest sources of published content, with literally millions of documents published every month.
However, Scribd is not free. It does offer a 30-day free trial, but after the trial you'll have to pay $8.99 per month to maintain a membership that grants you access to the sites entire database of books, audiobooks, and magazines. Still not a terrible deal!
In addition to the sites referenced above, there are also the following resources for free books:
So, you’ve got yourself an eBook reader, smartphone, tablet, or other portable device and you want to put some eBooks on it to take with you. There are many options for obtaining free eBooks as well as purchasing, borrowing, or even renting eBooks.
We’ve listed some sites that allow you to download free eBooks directly or be notified when eBooks are available for free or for a discounted price on popular eBook sites. If you can’t find the eBooks you want on the free sites, there are several sites that allow you to purchase current, best-selling eBooks singly or through a monthly service. There are even special sites for lending and borrowing Kindle and Nook books with other readers across the U.S. We’ve also listed a couple of sites dedicated to searching for PDF eBooks, documents, etc.
We’ve previously shown you how to find thousands of free eBooks online using sites such as Project Gutenberg, ManyBooks.net, DailyLit, and FeedBooks. You can even find free eBooks on Amazon. We’ve listed additional sources for free eBooks here.
The Internet Archive Text Archive contains a wide range of free fiction, popular books, children’s books, historical texts and academic books.
Free-eBooks.net offers unlimited free access to eBooks in HTML format and access to five eBooks each month in PDF and/or TXT format. Download books from all-new, rising authors and independent writers. Many categories of fiction and non-fiction books are available. If you’re a writer, you can also submit an eBook.
VIP memberships are available that provide unlimited access to PDF and TXT formats, as well as the HTML format. As a VIP member, you can also download unlimited books in the MobiPocket and ePub formats, get first access to new books, priority customer service, and storage space for your favorite books. You can pay $7.95 monthly (renews automatically), pay $39.97 for a year, or currently (as of the writing of this article) buy three years for the price of 40% off two years, $49.97.
eReaderIQ is a free service that provides price drop alerts for Amazon Kindle books and watches your favorite titles to let you know when they are available for Kindle. You can also view a regularly updated list of all non-public domain freebies on Amazon.com and sign up to be notified by email when a new free book is released.
eReaderIQ also offers a superior search engine that allows you to search the Kindle Store by genre and keyword, and define the price range, reader age, language, and more.
Hundred Zeros is a collection of best-selling eBooks that are currently free on Amazon. You can download and read any of these books on your computer, mobile phone, tablet, Kindle or inside your favorite web browser. The list is updated every hour.
BookBub is a service that keeps you updated on great book deals. They notify you about free or deeply discounted books, sometimes discounted as much as 90% off the original price. Only high-quality content is listed, books that are best-sellers, from a top-tier publisher, or have received top reviews and ratings from critics and readers. You can specify which categories you want to get notified about so you won’t get emails about deals you don’t want.
NOTE: The deals you receive from BookBub are only available for a limited time, so be sure to act quickly.
Free Par-TAY offers links to free, quality eBooks from many different genres. The free eBooks on their site can be downloaded on specific dates posted on the site. You can also sign up for their newsletter to be notified of which eBooks are going to be available for free. Signing up for the newsletter automatically enters you in a drawing to win $100 in Amazon Gift Cards and in a drawing for a new Kindle.
Freebooksy posts a free eBook at least once a day. The eBooks cover multiple genres, so everyone can download something they like. The eBooks are free for at least the day they are posted, and sometimes for a few days beyond that. The dates the eBooks are available for free are posted.
Getting free eBooks is great, but sometimes you can’t find the book you really want for free. There are many ways to purchase, or even rent, current, best-selling eBooks. We list some of the more popular sites for buying and renting eBooks here, some of which also offer monthly subscription services.
The Amazon Kindle Store offers over one million eBooks, including new releases and New York Times bestsellers. You can read the first chapter of most books so you can decide if you want to buy the book. As mentioned earlier in this article, there are also many free eBooks available on Amazon, including popular classics.
Of course, you can buy the Kindle devices on Amazon, but you don’t need a special Kindle device to read Kindle books. Free Kindle apps are available for every major smartphone, tablet, and computer. Once you buy a Kindle book, you can read it on any device that has the Kindle app installed. Using Amazon’s Whispersync technology, you can automatically save and synchronize your furthest page read, bookmarks, notes, and highlights in your Kindle books across all your devices. That means you can start reading a book on one device, and pick up where you left off on another device.
Some libraries offer a service that allows you to check out eBooks, and you can have them delivered wirelessly to your Kindle app.
The Nook Book Store by Barnes & Noble offers something very similar to the Amazon Kindle Store. You can purchase eBooks for Nook devices and free Nook software for mobile systems and computers such as Android, iPhone, iPad, PC, and Mac. You can also sync books you are currently reading across devices, just like Kindle books.
Fictionwise.com is committed to providing the Internet’s most comprehensive collection of fiction and nonfiction in many popular eBook formats. They offer award-winning and high quality eBooks by top authors in all the major genres and are working towards making Fictionwise the most technically advanced eBook website, including providing a sophisticated search and sorting options.
EBooks.com offers a large range of eBooks in every subject category in multiple formats for your Apple or Android device, Nook, Kobo, PC, Mac, etc., so there’s something available for everyone. The software required to read books from eBooks.com is free. You can search for eBooks by subject, title, or author, or use the full-text search to search by keyword.
If you want to find out when new eBooks become available in your areas of interest, you can sign up to receive free email alerts.
EReader.com offers eBooks that are carefully prepared to maximize the reading experience. They focus on delivering quality eBooks for a wide range of mobile devices. Their eReader software is free for all of their supported platforms and devices.
The Google Play Book Store offers millions of books to choose from in every imaginable category for reading on Android smartphones or tablets, iPhones, and iPads. You can also choose to download your purchased books as ePub or PDF files for use on other eReaders or for reading on your computer.
Books purchased from Google Play are stored in the digital cloud, which means you can access them from any compatible device, whenever and wherever you want. You can start reading a book on one device, continue reading it on a different device, and maybe even finish it on a third device, as long as each device has an internet connection.
Powell’s Books offers competitively priced Google eBooks, Adobe Digital Editions, and DRM-Free PDFs for reading on your iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Android phones and tablets, your computer, and a variety of other eReader devices.
There are online services available that make it easy to lend and borrow Kindle and Nook books. You can loan any Kindle book that has lending enabled (not all books are lendable) to one other user for 14 days. At the end of the loan period, the title is automatically transferred back to your Kindle. While the book is out on loan, you are not able to read the book. For more information on lending and borrowing Kindle books, see the Amazon page about lending Kindle books. You can also lend out your Nook books and borrow other users’ Nook books. For both services, any book you own can only be loaned once.
You may not find every book you want to read, but you can borrow a wide selection of books from these websites.
The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library allows you to choose from over 145,000 titles to borrow for free as frequently as a book a month, if you own a Kindle device and you have an Amazon Prime membership. There are no due dates on borrowed books. Available titles include all seven Harry Potter books and over 100 current and former New York Times bestsellers.
NOTE: This only works with the Kindle devices, not with the free Kindle apps on other devices.
Amazon also offers a Kindle Textbook Rental service that allows you to save up to 80% off the list price of the print textbook. You can choose any length of time to rent the book from 30 days up to 360 days. You only pay for the exact time you need the book. Extend your rental time or decide to convert the rental to a purchase. You don’t need a Kindle device to rent textbooks. You can rent and read the textbooks on a PC, Mac, Kindle, or a mobile device, such as a smartphone or tablet. If you make notes or add highlights in the textbook, they are accessible to you at anytime, even after the rental expires, at kindle.amazon.com.
Now you can check out library books as eBooks without ever setting foot in a library. The Library To Go website mentioned here is for libraries in the Northern California area. Go to the website for a library near you to find out if they offer eBook lending and how to borrow eBooks from them.
Library To Go uses the Adobe Digital Editions software for eBooks and OverDrive Media Console for audiobooks. You can borrow eBooks in Kindle format (for U.S. libraries), EPUB, and PDF. Kindle books can be delivered to both Kindle devices and Kindle reading apps on other devices. EPUB eBooks have “reflowable” text that fits any screen, so they are good on most mobile devices. PDF eBooks have fixed text, but you can zoom in on the text to create a large-print eBook.
Library To Go allows you to check out up to three titles and your cart will hold up to 15 titles. This differs, depending on the library. For example, the Ventura County Library in California (powered by OverDrive Media Console) allows you to check out up to five titles and your cart will hold up to seven titles. The lending period can vary from title to title. Titles are generally removed from your cart after 30 minutes so that other users can have the chance to check them out.
On the Library To Go site, you can place up to four titles on hold at one time. They send you an email when a title becomes available. You have five days to check out your hold after we email you notification that it is available. On the Ventura County Library site, you can place up to five titles on hold at one time and you have four days to check out the books on hold once they become available.
NOTE: Use the OverDrive service to find a public library in your area that allows you to check out books on your eReader. This is a relatively new service, so not all libraries are connected, yet. Check both the OverDrive site and your local library’s website to see if eBook rentals are available at your library. Also, be sure to check out the eBook lending policies for your local library.
Open Library is an open, editable library catalog, building towards a web page for every book ever published. Once registered on the Open Library site, you can borrow up to five eBooks for two weeks each from the growing collection of mainly 20th century titles available now. Each title in the library can be borrowed by one user at one time and can be read in a web browser, or in Adobe Digital Editions, as a PDF or ePub.
eBookFling makes it easy for readers across the U.S. to borrow and share their Kindle and Nook eBooks. Earn credits by lending your eBooks, and use those credits to borrow eBooks from other users. The eBooks are automatically returned in 14 days. If you don’t want to lend an eBook, you can pay to borrow one.
Lendle allows you to lend and borrow Kindle books easily for free. You can lend Kindle books to people you know through Amazon, but Lendle also allows you to lend and borrow Kindle books with any U.S. Amazon Kindle users. Earn Amazon gift cards when you lend your Kindle books. A Kindle device is not required; Lendle works with the free Kindle apps for the PC and Mac computers, as well as mobile devices such iPad, iPhone, Android, and other popular devices.
Lendle pays all users a small credit for every book they loan through Lendle. The price we pay for each book varies based on the price, demand, and supply of that book. Once you’ve loaned out a book, Lendle waits the full 21 day loan period (seven days for the borrower to accept, and then 14 days for the loan) before crediting the lend. Once you reach $10 in credits, Lendle pays out a $10 Amazon gift card. The gift cards are paid in bulk, twice a month.
BookLending.com is a website that matches lenders and borrowers of Kindle eBooks. To participate in lending and borrowing Kindle books, you must first register as a user on the site or connect using Facebook Connect. Registering on BookLending.com creates a profile, which you can access from the top, right corner of the screen. Your profile page allows you to review the status of your loan offers and requests, initiate loans, and delete loan offers and borrow requests.
The following web pages contain search engines specifically used to find free PDF eBooks, articles, documents, and almost any kind information stored in PDF format.
PDFGeni is a dedicated search engine for finding PDF eBooks, manuals, catalogs, data sheets, forms, and documents you can download and save. You can also preview the PDF files you find. Either search from the website directly or install the provided plugin (see the link in the upper, right corner of the search page) to add PDFGeni to the Firefox search bar.
You do not need to sign up to use the PDFGeni search engine.
PDF Search Engine is another easy-to-use search tool for finding PDF eBooks and other PDF files. Sometimes the results give a direct PDF link. But, in other cases, you might need to download a torrent using a torrent client.
If you use an RSS reader to stay up-to-date on your favorite websites, you can also keep current on the availability of free eBooks with the following RSS and Twitter feeds.
NOTE: If you find other Twitter feeds about free eBooks that you want to view in your RSS reader, see our article about viewing Twitter feeds in your RSS reader.
Ever thought of creating a library with thousands of free books? You'd never have to spend a dime. It sounds impossible, but it's not! Free books, on nearly any subject you can think of, are all over the web, ready to be read, downloaded, and shared. All you need to do is speed up your reading so you have enough time to get through all of them!
A huge quantity of books previously unavailable to the public were released starting in 2019 to the public domain, thanks to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998. Because of an amendment to that act, works published between 1923 and 1977 can enter the public domain 95 years after their creation.
Many of the sites listed in this article can get you access to the tens of thousands of books (and movies, songs, and cartoons) available under this act. Downloads should be free and without retribution under U.S. copyright law. Keep an eye on your favorite sites; they will update regularly with these now legal-to-download books.
Here are the top 20 sites where you can find and download a wide variety of completely free books online, anything from romance novels to computer technology manuals.
Easy to search and offers lots of ways to find free books
Free account gives you access to a personal page to manage your bookshelf and interact with the community
Comprehensive quotation database
Only has classic books and those with Creative Commons licenses
No way to download free books directly from this site
Read Print is an online library where you can find thousands of free books to read. The books are classics or Creative Commons licensed and include everything from nonfiction and essays to fiction, plays, and poetry.
Free registration at Read Print gives you the ability to track what you've read and what you would like to read, write reviews of books you have read, add books to your favorites, and to join online book clubs or discussion lists to discuss great works of literature.
You can access the books on Read Print without joining, however, you won't have access to the other features mentioned above.
There are several ways you can find what you're looking for at Read Print:
For example, if you're searching for books by William Shakespeare, a simple search will turn up all his works, in a single location.
Once you've found a book you're interested in, click Read Online and the book will open within your web browser. You also have the option to Launch Reading Mode if you're not fond of the website interface. Reading Mode looks like an open book, however, all the free books on the Read Print site are divided by chapter so you'll have to go back and open it every time you start a new chapter.
If you find a free book you really like and you'd like to download it to your mobile e-reader, Read Print provides links to Amazon, where the book can be downloaded. However, when downloading books from Amazon, you may have to pay for the book unless you're a member of Amazon Kindle Unlimited.
Selection includes more than just classics and Creative Commons books
Great categorization makes finding what you love easier
Appears some functionality may not be available on the new site
Some areas haven't been updated in more than a year
ManyBooks is one of the best resources on the web for free books in a variety of download formats. There are hundreds of books available here, in all sorts of interesting genres, and all of them are completely free. One of the best features of this site is that not all of the books listed here are classic or creative commons books.
ManyBooks is in transition at the time of this writing. A beta test version of the site is available that features a serviceable search capability. Readers can also find books by browsing genres, popular selections, author, and editor's choice. Plus, ManyBooks has put together collections of books that are an interesting way to explore topics in a more organized way.
In addition to these basic search options, you can also use ManyBooks Advanced Search to pinpoint exactly what you're looking for. There's also the ManyBooks RSS feeds that can keep you up to date on a variety of new content, including: All New Titles By Language.
All of the free books at ManyBooks are downloadable — some directly from the ManyBooks site, some from other websites (such as Amazon). When you register for the site you're asked to choose your favorite format for books, however, you're not limited to the format you choose. When you find a book you want to read, you can select the format you prefer to download from a drop down menu of dozens of different file formats.
The Literature Network: This site is organized alphabetically by author. Click on any author's name, and you'll see a biography, related links and articles, quizzes, and forums. Most of the books here are free, but there are some downloads that require a small fee.
Free Computer Books: Every computer subject and programming language you can think of is represented here. Free books and textbooks, as well as extensive lecture notes, are available.
Librivox.org is a dream come true for audiobook lovers. All the books here are absolutely free, which is good news for those of us who have had to pony up ridiculously high fees for substandard audiobooks.
Librivox has many volunteers that work to release quality recordings of classic books, all free for anyone to download. If you've been looking for a great place to find free audio books, Librivox is a good place to start.
Authorama.com features a nice selection of free books written in HTML and XHTML, which basically means that they are in easily readable format. Most books here are featured in English, but there are quite a few German language texts as well. Books are organized alphabetically by the author’s last name. Authorama offers a good selection of free books from a variety of authors, both current and classic.
Authorama offers up a good selection of high-quality, free books that you can read right in your browser or print out for later. These are books in the public domain, which means that they are freely accessible and allowed to be distributed; in other words, you don't need to worry if you're looking at something illegal here.
Authorama is a very simple site to use. You can scroll down the list of alphabetically arranged authors on the front page, or check out the list of Latest Additions at the top.
Once you find something you're interested in, click on the book title and you'll be taken to that book's specific page. You can choose to read chapters within your browser (easiest) or print pages out for later.
If you're looking for an easy to use source of free books online, Authorama definitely fits the bill. All of the books offered here are classic, well-written literature, easy to find and simple to read.
Project Gutenberg is one of the largest sources for free books on the web, with over 30,000 downloadable free books available in a wide variety of formats.
Project Gutenberg is the oldest (and quite possibly the largest) library on the web, with literally hundreds of thousands free books available for download. The vast majority of books at Project Gutenberg are released in English, but there are other languages available.
If you already know what you are looking for, search the database by author name, title, language, or subjects. You can also check out the top 100 list to see what other people have been downloading.
International Digital Children's Library: Browse through a wide selection of high quality free books for children here. Check out Simple Search to get a big picture of how this library is organized: by age, reading level, length of book, genres, and more.
Ebooks and Text Archives: From the Internet Archive; a library of fiction, popular books, children's books, historical texts and academic books. The free books on this site span every possible interest.
Questia Public Library has long been a favorite choice of librarians and scholars for research help. They also offer a world-class library of free books filled with classics, rarities, and textbooks.
More than 5,000 free books are available for download here, alphabetized both by title and by author.
Wikisource: Online library of user-submitted and maintained content. While you won't technically find free books on this site, at the time of this writing, over 200,000 pieces of content are available to read.
Wikibooks is an open collection of (mostly) textbooks. Subjects range from Computing to Languages to Science; you can see all that Wikibooks has to offer in Books by Subject.
Be sure to check out the Featured Books section, which highlights free books that the Wikibooks community at large believes to be “the best of what Wikibooks has to offer, and should inspire people to improve the quality of other books.”
Bibliomania: Bibliomania gives readers over 2,000 free classics, including literature book notes, author bios, book summaries, and study guides. Free books are presented in chapter format.
The Open Library: There are over one million free books here, all available in PDF, ePub, Daisy, DjVu and ASCII text.
You can search for ebooks specifically by checking the Show only ebooks option under the main search box. Once you've found an ebook, you will see it available in a variety of formats.
Sacred Texts contains the web’s largest collection of free books about religion, mythology, folklore and the esoteric in general.
Another site that isn't strictly for free books, Slideshare does offer a large amount of free content for you to read. It is an online forum where anyone can upload a digital presentation on any subject.
Millions of people utilize SlideShare for research, sharing ideas, and learning about new technologies. SlideShare supports documents and PDF files, and all these are available for free download (after free registration).
Free eBooks offers a wonderfully diverse variety of free books, ranging from Advertising to Health to Web Design. Standard memberships (yes, you do have to register in order to download anything but it only takes a minute) are free and allow members to access unlimited eBooks in HTML, but only five books every month in the PDF and TXT formats.
A VIP membership here (at $39.95 for a full year or $49.95 for a lifetime membership) gives you unlimited access to any book you want, in any format.
The Online Books Page: Maintained by the University of Pennsylvania, this page lists over one million free books available for download in dozens of different formats.
World Public Library: Technically, the World Public Library is NOT free. But for $8.95 annually, you can gain access to hundreds of thousands of books in over one hundred different languages. They also have over one hundred different special collections ranging from American Lit to Western Philosophy. Worth a look.
They also have what they call a Give Away Page, which is over two hundred of their most popular titles, audio books, technical books, and books made into movies. Give the freebies a try, and if you really like their service, then you can choose to become a member and get the whole collection.
Scribd offers a fascinating collection of all kinds of reading materials: presentations, textbooks, popular reading, and much more, all organized by topic. Scribd is one of the web’s largest sources of published content, with literally millions of documents published every month.
However, Scribd is not free. It does offer a 30-day free trial, but after the trial you'll have to pay $8.99 per month to maintain a membership that grants you access to the sites entire database of books, audiobooks, and magazines. Still not a terrible deal!
In addition to the sites referenced above, there are also the following resources for free books:
There is no friend as loyal as a book — Ernest Hemingway
Apart from serving as a constant companion in solitude, books serve as food for the mind by stimulating our imagination and creativity. However, buying a new book each time can burn a hole in your pockets. Thankfully we have lots of free books online, ready to be read or downloaded without costing you a dime!
We have compiled a list of the best sites where you can read free ebooks online and download them legally to create your own library of favorite virtual books. In this list of top 12 sites mentioned below, you will find a comprehensive assortment of completely free online books, ranging from classic novels to computer technology guides.
But before you jump to the list of free sites to download ebooks, do check out our other lists of free and legal services:
“One web page for every book ever published” – is the ultimate goal of Open Library, an initiative of the quite popular Internet Archive which serves as a digital library of Internet sites.
There are millions of free books to read on the website which can be downloaded in other formats such as EPUB, DJVU, MOBI, and PDF. You can search for good reading material on varied subjects and genres such as Fantasy, Biographies, History, Medicine, Art, etc.
Open Library has an advanced search option as well that lets you search ebooks through titles or authors. In case you cannot remember either of them, you can search for a particular free book to read online just by entering a favorite line from the book.
Visit Open Library
With a huge archive of over 57,000 free books for downloading, this website offers a diversified reading collection for readers. As Project Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to make books available for free of cost, it neither charges any registration fee nor requires you to sign up.
From Classics to Periodicals and History to Social Sciences, there are free books available on all types of subjects. You can search for specific titles or explore by genre and download books in EPUB, MOBI Kindle, HTML, and simple text format too.
In case reading books online is on your resolution list for 2019, do check this free books site as several books are scheduled to enter the public domain for this year. Another perk this site offers is directly saving ebooks to cloud storing services such as Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive easy access.
Visit Project Gutenberg
With more than 50,000 free online books available on the website, ManyBooks serves as an excellent option for bibliophiles to appease their craving for good books. The site hosts a variegated collection of books formatted for eReaders like Kindle and other popular formats such as EPUB, MOBI, PDF, TXT, etc.
Browsing for books is quite easy on ManyBooks as it offers neatly categorized sections of texts in different genres. Moreover, it has a Recommended and Featured Authors section that can help readers pick their next book.
Every ebook page on this site contains helpful information such as genre, author’s name and word count. As most of the content on ManyBook belongs to the public domain, you can download books legally and free of cost.
Visit ManyBooks
This website offers free books to read online on every category you can think of. If you are specifically looking for an educational textbook or business book, Bookboon will help you find exactly what you need.
This free book site has thousands of ebooks ready to be download and read. You just need to visit the free section and enter a few details to download books. The website is easy to navigate and well categorized.
Apart from English, Bookboon offers texts in other languages such as German, Dutch, Danish, French, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Spanish and Czech.
Visit Bookboon website
Feedbooks offers an immense collection of original as well as public domain books for free. The website has a neat interface with well-cataloged sections of books ranging from Short Stories, Mystery Novels, Action, Fantasy, History to even Academic Books and much more.
The Download page for each book displays helpful information such as synopsis, word count, reading hours, publishing date, etc. You can download books online for free without signing up in standard formats such as EPUB, MOBI, and PDF.
Exploring new reading material on Feedbook is easy with the search options. You can find the free books to read on Free Public Domain Books and Free Original Books section. Besides, it has sections like Bestsellers, New Releases and Editorial Reviews which can help you to find new books to read online.
Visit Feedbooks
The tagline of this website “Read Anywhere. Anytime” says it all. Free-eBooks offers good literary works of fiction, non-fiction, and academic texts. The UI of the site may seem a little cluttered, but if you spend some time digging around the website, you will find a lot of free books to read.
There is a featured section on the website which showcases the best ebooks at a particular time and great books of all time. Browse through categories to find what you like. Although there is a limit of 5 ebook downloads per month and that too in PDF format, the rich collection of free books to read on the website makes up for it.
Visit Free-eBooks
Would you rather listen to books instead of reading them? Try LibriVox. It is a digital library of audiobooks which are absolutely free. The free audiobooks are read by volunteers that work to release quality recordings of classic books.
Even though audiobooks aren’t technically ebooks, it is surely a great way to enjoy books when you are on the move and keeps you entertained. It is also a great help for the visually impaired and helps them enjoy great literary works for free.
You can download the titles in MP3 and there are links to the ebook versions available on each title’s page. LibriVox also runs weekly podcast in case you are interested. Since all books are recorded in 128 kbit/s, it makes a pleasant listening experience.
If you are looking for some literary work by Indie authors, Smashwords is the right place to look. This online directory of books offers content created by independent authors and publishers across the world.
The collection of online books present on Smashwords includes several subject topics and genres such as Adventure, Business, Classics, Fantasy, History, Religion, Philosophy and many more. Just make sure you click the “free” tab before searching for a book.
You can search the platform using quick filter buttons like word count and ratings to find ebooks according to your tastes and download free ebooks in various formats such as EPUB, MOBI, PDB, and TXT.
Visit Smashwords
If you are looking for a good website where you can read and download ebooks in PDF format for free, your search ends here. This ebook publisher digitizes books that have attained the public domain status to be downloaded in PDF format which can be read on many devices.
The interface of PDF Books World is easy to use, and the content has been categorized into fiction, non-fiction, novels, academic and juvenile section. The comprehensive bookshelves on this platform offer free pdf books on any subject for readers of all ages.
Unlike other platforms, PDF Books World does not list any download links to external websites. Instead, they store it on their server itself and offer free membership for a lifetime.
Visit PDF Books World
This web portal lets you browse thousands of free books online as well as audiobooks in various genres like Art, Biography, Computers, Fiction, History and much more.
Bookyard has a pretty simple webpage where you can either publish or download books for free according to authors or categories you prefer. Downloading content from Bookyards is hassle-free and does not require registration.
Visitors to this website can also choose to donate if they wish to and check out the educational links to more reference materials and documents.
Visit Bookyards
Hathi Trust is a digital library dedicated to the student community. It has been formed by a partnership of major research institutions and libraries who have joined hands to ensure that all cultural records are preserved in a digitized format for the use of future generations.
Numerous academic research organizations in the U.S. and libraries around the world act as the source of digitized content hosted on this website. It has a powerful search option which lets you find free books online in is database through titles or authors.
Hathi Trust has a compilation of pre-curated collections of texts on topics such as Ancestry, Manuscripts, and Old Psychology Texts. One can read books online on this website without registration, but downloading them requires you to sign up.
Visit Hathi Trust
If you are looking for non-fiction content, Wikibooks might be the best place to begin. As a part of the non-profit organization Wikimedia Foundation, the site hosts an extensive collection of ebooks on subjects like Humanities, Engineering, Computing, Science, Languages, and other academic topics.
Navigating through the website is pretty easy and further of subjects into multiple categories makes it easier to find specific content. Otherwise, you can always use the search option to conduct a site-wide search as well.
You can either read books online on the website or download PDF files for offline reading. Its Featured Books section displays books that are liked by a majority of Wikibooks community to help other readers in selecting ebooks to read.
Visit Wikibooks
All the aforementioned online sources offer a fine collection of books. Besides, these websites haven’t been listed in any particular order so go ahead and knockout yourself with a rich collection of free books on these platforms. Since they offer a deluge of reading material, I am sure you won’t be running out of your stash of books anytime soon. Meanwhile, if you come across some other good websites for free books online that we might have missed out, do share with us in the comment section.
Also Read: Best Free Music Websites To Download Songs Legally
Ever thought of creating a library with thousands of free books? You'd never have to spend a dime. It sounds impossible, but it's not! Free books, on nearly any subject you can think of, are all over the web, ready to be read, downloaded, and shared. All you need to do is speed up your reading so you have enough time to get through all of them!
A huge quantity of books previously unavailable to the public were released starting in 2019 to the public domain, thanks to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998. Because of an amendment to that act, works published between 1923 and 1977 can enter the public domain 95 years after their creation.
Many of the sites listed in this article can get you access to the tens of thousands of books (and movies, songs, and cartoons) available under this act. Downloads should be free and without retribution under U.S. copyright law. Keep an eye on your favorite sites; they will update regularly with these now legal-to-download books.
Concurrent engineering research and applications. Scholarly examinations of the latest CE theory and practice in the world's leading teaching and research institutions are augmented by contributions from senior business managers and consultants, who report on specific CE case histories together with issues associated with concurrent life-cycle management and CE strategies.
Here are the top 20 sites where you can find and download a wide variety of completely free books online, anything from romance novels to computer technology manuals.
Easy to search and offers lots of ways to find free books
Free account gives you access to a personal page to manage your bookshelf and interact with the community
Comprehensive quotation database
Only has classic books and those with Creative Commons licenses
No way to download free books directly from this site
Read Print is an online library where you can find thousands of free books to read. The books are classics or Creative Commons licensed and include everything from nonfiction and essays to fiction, plays, and poetry.
Free registration at Read Print gives you the ability to track what you've read and what you would like to read, write reviews of books you have read, add books to your favorites, and to join online book clubs or discussion lists to discuss great works of literature.
You can access the books on Read Print without joining, however, you won't have access to the other features mentioned above.
There are several ways you can find what you're looking for at Read Print:
For example, if you're searching for books by William Shakespeare, a simple search will turn up all his works, in a single location.
Once you've found a book you're interested in, click Read Online and the book will open within your web browser. You also have the option to Launch Reading Mode if you're not fond of the website interface. Reading Mode looks like an open book, however, all the free books on the Read Print site are divided by chapter so you'll have to go back and open it every time you start a new chapter.
If you find a free book you really like and you'd like to download it to your mobile e-reader, Read Print provides links to Amazon, where the book can be downloaded. However, when downloading books from Amazon, you may have to pay for the book unless you're a member of Amazon Kindle Unlimited.
Selection includes more than just classics and Creative Commons books
Great categorization makes finding what you love easier
Appears some functionality may not be available on the new site
Some areas haven't been updated in more than a year
ManyBooks is one of the best resources on the web for free books in a variety of download formats. There are hundreds of books available here, in all sorts of interesting genres, and all of them are completely free. One of the best features of this site is that not all of the books listed here are classic or creative commons books.
ManyBooks is in transition at the time of this writing. A beta test version of the site is available that features a serviceable search capability. Readers can also find books by browsing genres, popular selections, author, and editor's choice. Plus, ManyBooks has put together collections of books that are an interesting way to explore topics in a more organized way.
In addition to these basic search options, you can also use ManyBooks Advanced Search to pinpoint exactly what you're looking for. There's also the ManyBooks RSS feeds that can keep you up to date on a variety of new content, including: All New Titles By Language.
All of the free books at ManyBooks are downloadable — some directly from the ManyBooks site, some from other websites (such as Amazon). When you register for the site you're asked to choose your favorite format for books, however, you're not limited to the format you choose. When you find a book you want to read, you can select the format you prefer to download from a drop down menu of dozens of different file formats.
The Literature Network: This site is organized alphabetically by author. Click on any author's name, and you'll see a biography, related links and articles, quizzes, and forums. Best free one piece games. Most of the books here are free, but there are some downloads that require a small fee.
Free Computer Books: Every computer subject and programming language you can think of is represented here. Free books and textbooks, as well as extensive lecture notes, are available.
Librivox.org is a dream come true for audiobook lovers. All the books here are absolutely free, which is good news for those of us who have had to pony up ridiculously high fees for substandard audiobooks.
Librivox has many volunteers that work to release quality recordings of classic books, all free for anyone to download. If you've been looking for a great place to find free audio books, Librivox is a good place to start.
Authorama.com features a nice selection of free books written in HTML and XHTML, which basically means that they are in easily readable format. Most books here are featured in English, but there are quite a few German language texts as well. Books are organized alphabetically by the author’s last name. Authorama offers a good selection of free books from a variety of authors, both current and classic.
Authorama offers up a good selection of high-quality, free books that you can read right in your browser or print out for later. These are books in the public domain, which means that they are freely accessible and allowed to be distributed; in other words, you don't need to worry if you're looking at something illegal here.
Panic at the disco billboard. Nov 16, 2018 Billboard's Jake Cornell hits the streets of New York City to find out how well people know the lyrics to some of Panic! At the Disco's most iconic songs. The audio track was uploaded to Panic! At the Disco's official YouTube channel on the same day of its release, on May 23, 2018. An official music video for the song was uploaded on August 27, 2018. As of November 2018, the music video has surpassed 100 million views. Billboard is sharing their end of the year top 10 lists, and among the top rock arists are Panic! At The Disco and twenty one pilots The end of the year is quickly approaching, and to celebrate. At The Disco new songs, albums, biography, chart history, photos, videos, news, and more on Billboard, the go-to source for what's hot in music. At the Disco is an American rock band that originated in Las Vegas, Nevada.Their 2005 debut album, A Fever You Can't Sweat Out, reached number 13 on the US Billboard 200, and has sold more than 2.2 million copies since its September 2005 release, spearheaded by the quadruple platinum top 10 hit single, 'I Write Sins Not Tragedies'.The band's second album, Pretty.
Authorama is a very simple site to use. You can scroll down the list of alphabetically arranged authors on the front page, or check out the list of Latest Additions at the top.
Once you find something you're interested in, click on the book title and you'll be taken to that book's specific page. You can choose to read chapters within your browser (easiest) or print pages out for later.
If you're looking for an easy to use source of free books online, Authorama definitely fits the bill. All of the books offered here are classic, well-written literature, easy to find and simple to read.
Project Gutenberg is one of the largest sources for free books on the web, with over 30,000 downloadable free books available in a wide variety of formats.
Project Gutenberg is the oldest (and quite possibly the largest) library on the web, with literally hundreds of thousands free books available for download. The vast majority of books at Project Gutenberg are released in English, but there are other languages available.
If you already know what you are looking for, search the database by author name, title, language, or subjects. You can also check out the top 100 list to see what other people have been downloading.
International Digital Children's Library: Browse through a wide selection of high quality free books for children here. Check out Simple Search to get a big picture of how this library is organized: by age, reading level, length of book, genres, and more.
Ebooks and Text Archives: From the Internet Archive; a library of fiction, popular books, children's books, historical texts and academic books. The free books on this site span every possible interest.
Questia Public Library has long been a favorite choice of librarians and scholars for research help. They also offer a world-class library of free books filled with classics, rarities, and textbooks.
More than 5,000 free books are available for download here, alphabetized both by title and by author.
Wikisource: Online library of user-submitted and maintained content. While you won't technically find free books on this site, at the time of this writing, over 200,000 pieces of content are available to read.
Wikibooks is an open collection of (mostly) textbooks. Subjects range from Computing to Languages to Science; you can see all that Wikibooks has to offer in Books by Subject.
Be sure to check out the Featured Books section, which highlights free books that the Wikibooks community at large believes to be “the best of what Wikibooks has to offer, and should inspire people to improve the quality of other books.”
Bibliomania: Bibliomania gives readers over 2,000 free classics, including literature book notes, author bios, book summaries, and study guides. Free books are presented in chapter format.
The Open Library: There are over one million free books here, all available in PDF, ePub, Daisy, DjVu and ASCII text.
You can search for ebooks specifically by checking the Show only ebooks option under the main search box. Once you've found an ebook, you will see it available in a variety of formats.
Sacred Texts contains the web’s largest collection of free books about religion, mythology, folklore and the esoteric in general.
Another site that isn't strictly for free books, Slideshare does offer a large amount of free content for you to read. It is an online forum where anyone can upload a digital presentation on any subject.
Millions of people utilize SlideShare for research, sharing ideas, and learning about new technologies. SlideShare supports documents and PDF files, and all these are available for free download (after free registration).
Free eBooks offers a wonderfully diverse variety of free books, ranging from Advertising to Health to Web Design. Standard memberships (yes, you do have to register in order to download anything but it only takes a minute) are free and allow members to access unlimited eBooks in HTML, but only five books every month in the PDF and TXT formats.
A VIP membership here (at $39.95 for a full year or $49.95 for a lifetime membership) gives you unlimited access to any book you want, in any format.
The Online Books Page: Maintained by the University of Pennsylvania, this page lists over one million free books available for download in dozens of different formats.
World Public Library: Technically, the World Public Library is NOT free. But for $8.95 annually, you can gain access to hundreds of thousands of books in over one hundred different languages. They also have over one hundred different special collections ranging from American Lit to Western Philosophy. Worth a look.
They also have what they call a Give Away Page, which is over two hundred of their most popular titles, audio books, technical books, and books made into movies. Give the freebies a try, and if you really like their service, then you can choose to become a member and get the whole collection.
Scribd offers a fascinating collection of all kinds of reading materials: presentations, textbooks, popular reading, and much more, all organized by topic. Scribd is one of the web’s largest sources of published content, with literally millions of documents published every month.
However, Scribd is not free. It does offer a 30-day free trial, but after the trial you'll have to pay $8.99 per month to maintain a membership that grants you access to the sites entire database of books, audiobooks, and magazines. Still not a terrible deal!
In addition to the sites referenced above, there are also the following resources for free books: