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 internet, ready to be downloaded, read, and shared. These are the best sites with free books covering a wide variety of subjects, anything from romance novels to computer technology manuals.
A huge quantity of books previously unavailable to the public was released starting in 2019 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 below give access to the tens of thousands of books (plus movies, songs, and cartoons) available under this act. Downloads should be free and without retribution under U.S. copyright law.
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ManyBooks
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What We Like
Selection includes more than just classics and Creative Commons books.
Great categorization makes finding what you love easier.
Variety of download formats.
What We Don't Like
A few areas of the site hardly ever receive updates.
Some books do cost money.
ManyBooksis one of the best resources on the web for free books in a variety of download formats. There are hundreds of titles here in all sorts of interesting genres, and they're completely free. Not all the books are classics, so if you're into other genres, this site is a good alternative to others in this list.
Unlike some sites, this one lets you browse free books by language. You can also search by author and genre. The ManyBooks Articles page is another handy way to browse their collection, with articles such as "Books Like Everest 1922" and reviews.
Downloading books requires a free account login. Then, you're then given several download options, such as EPUB, PDF, FB2, RTF, HTML, and more. They're also readable online through the site's built-in book reader.
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Free Computer Books
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What We Like
Extensive collection of computer books.
Includes lecture notes.
What We Don't Like
Dated site design.
Everything on the site is just hyperlinks to other sites.
Lacks file format variety.
Every computer subject and programming language you can think of is represented at Free Computer Books. There are free textbooks, extensive lecture notes, and more.
Some of the genres include computer and programming languages, computer science, data science, computer engineering, Java, and networking and communications. There are also many subgenres, giving you an easy way to find the book you're after.
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Librivox
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What We Like
Free audiobooks (which can be quite pricey!).
Audiobooks are available in multiple languages.
Large collection of children's audiobooks.
What We Don't Like
Books are read by volunteers, which means performances can be hit or miss.
Many listed authors have zero books available.
If you've been looking for a great place to findfree audiobooks, Librivox is a good place to start. The site has many volunteers that work to release quality recordings of classic books. All the titles here are absolutely free, which is good news for those of us who've had to pony up ridiculously high fees for substandard audiobooks.
Use the New Releases RSS feed with a feed reader service to stay on top of new additions.
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Authorama
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What We Like
Easily readable format.
You can read right in the browser.
No account necessary.
What We Don't Like
Bare bones website.
Lacks books in foreign languages (except some German).
Lacks advanced search features.
Authorama offers a good selection of free books from a variety of authors, both current and classic. They're organized alphabetically by the author’s last name and are written inHTML and XHTML, which means they're in an easily readable format. Most books here are featured in English, but there are quite a few German language texts as well.
This site offers up a good selection of high-quality, free books you can read right in your browser. These are books in the public domain, which means they're freely accessible and allowed to be distributed. In other words, you don't need to worry if you're looking at something illegal.
The website is really simple to use, but maybe too simple. The search box is basic and the only other way to find books is by scrolling through the author list. But, you don't need a user account to read these titles online, and they're all formatted nicely.
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Project Gutenberg
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What We Like
Over 60,000 titles available.
Wide variety of formats.
Top 100 list aids discoverability.
What We Don't Like
Majority of books are in English only.
Books may not be free outside the U.S.
ProjectGutenbergis one of the largest and oldest sourcesfor free bookson the web, with over 60,000 downloadabletitlesavailable in a wide variety of formats. The vast majority are released in English, but there are other languages available.
If you already know what you're 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 are downloading.
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Google Play Books
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What We Like
Saves books in your online account.
Read from the website or the mobile app.
What We Don't Like
Requires a Google account.
If you like to read ebooks through Google Books, you'll be pleased to know that there's a full page of just free titles.
Google lists the top 100 free books available on Google Play through the link below. The side menu on that page lets you easily find all the free textbooks they offer, which include popular classics from authors like Oscar Wilde, Charles Dickens, Edith Wharton, Edgar Allan Poe, Jane Austen, H.G. Wells, Homer, etc.
Books you "download" through this site appear in your Google Play Books account, where they're readable online, through the mobile app, and offline if you decide to export the book to a file.
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International Children's Digital Library
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What We Like
Large collection of international children's books.
Search by country, recently added, and more.
What We Don't Like
The books are actually just images of scanned pages.
Some pages are too large to read comfortably.
Browse through a wide selection of high-quality free books for children at International Children's Digital Library (ICDL). These are scans of physical books, so each page is a separate image you can scroll through and read.
On the home page are helpful links so you can browse the library by language, character, shape, format, genre, and more.
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Archive.org's eBooks and Texts
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What We Like
Books across a wide variety of interests.
You can sort by view count or popularity.
Several downloading options.
What We Don't Like
It can be difficult finding exactly what you want from numerous search results.
Site can be slow to respond.
From theInternet Archive at Archive.org, eBooks and Texts is a library of fiction, popular books, children's books, historical texts, and academic books. The free books on this site span every possible interest.
You can sort these books by view count to see the most popular ones, as well as by title or date published. Another way to find free books to read here is through collections such as California Digital Library, Getty Research Institute, and Boston Public Library.
There are usually several download options if you don't want to read the book online, such as PDF, EPUB, and Kindle.
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Wikisource
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What We Like
Hundreds of thousands of pieces of content available to read.
Audio available for certain texts.
What We Don't Like
User-submitted content could vary in quality.
Technically, there are no books on this site.
Wikisource is an online library of user-submitted and maintained content. While you won't technically find books on this site, there are still hundreds of thousands of pieces of content available to read, and some are in an ebook form.
Wikisource:Index is a good place to browse the options.
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Feedbooks
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What We Like
No login necessary.
EPUB downloads.
Browse public domain books by category.
Ad-free website.
Helpful sort and filter options.
What We Don't Like
Other parts of the site have books that cost.
Search tool mixes in paid and free books.
Feedbooks is another excellent source for public domain book downloads. There are thousands of titles that are 100% free and can be saved to your device in moments without needing a user account.
A sorting menu lets you arrange the list of books by release date or best selling, and filters help you locate books in a particular genre, in a specific language, and more.
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Wikibooks
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What We Like
Wikimedia Cookbook offers a worldwide collection of recipes.
Wikijunior offers books for children 12 and under.
Offers community features like a forum.
What We Don't Like
Mostly just textbooks.
Small collection.
Not all of the books are completed.
Wikibooksis an open collection of mostly textbooks. Subjects range from computer and engineering to science, humanities, languages, and more. Every book has a list of contents and other information to give you a solid idea of what it's about.
The best way to read these books is to download them with the PDF option.
The Featured Books and Stacks/Departments pages are good places to start if you're not sure what to browse for.
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Open Library
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What We Like
Good alternative if Archive.org isn't working for you.
Multiple formats available.
Readers can "sponsor" books they want to see on the site.
What We Don't Like
Just pulls results from Archive.org.
Sponsoring requires a donation.
Open Library is a search tool that pulls data from Internet Archive. You might use it if Archive.org (listed above) isn't helping you find the right book. You can search hundreds of thousands of books here, and most are in multiple formats such as PDF, ePub, Daisy, and DjVu.
You can search for ebooks specifically by checking the Ebooks option after running a search.
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Sacred Texts
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What We Like
Large collection of free religious texts.
There's a random button for when you just want to read something.
You can save pages to read offline.
What We Don't Like
Dated site design.
Text is quite small.
Sacred Textscontains the web’s largest collection of free books about religion, mythology, folklore, and the esoteric in general.
You can view a list of all the books by title or author. You can also browse by category or search for a book title, author, or subject. There's even a random button if you're unsure what to look for.
Every book is available online from their website. You can save each page if you want an offline version.
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What We Like
Good place to find presentations, infographics, and more.
What We Don't Like
Lots of non-free content.
Limited download options.
Registration required.
SlideShare is another site with both free and paid books. It's an online forum where anyone can upload a digital presentation on any subject. Millions of people utilizeSlideShare for research, sharing ideas, and learning about new technologies.
The site supports documents and PDF files, all available as free downloads. You have to log in to download these books, but registration is free.
Check out SlideShare's most popular titles for an idea of what people are reading.
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Free-eBooks.net
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What We Like
Diverse selection of free books.
Also offers audiobooks.
Large number of categories.
What We Don't Like
You can only download five free books a month.
Free-eBooks.netoffers a wonderfully diverse variety of free books, ranging from fiction and non-fiction to textbooks, academic text, classics, and more. Some of the subcategories include advertising, parenting, humor, science, engineering, self-teaching, sci-fi classics, and poems.
You have to register for a free user account to use this site, but only five books are free, so choose wisely.
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The Online Books Page
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What We Like
Boasts over three million books.
Dozens of different formats.
Offers partial searches.
Updates often.
What We Don't Like
Extremely basic site.
Links to downloads on other websites.
The Online Books Page, maintained by the University of Pennsylvania, lists over three million free books available for download in dozens of different formats. The site itself is pretty boring, but the long list of titles might make you a repeat visitor.
You can browse these free book downloads by new listings, author, title, subject, or serial. There's also a search tool where you can find books by running a partial author or title search.
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eBooks.com
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What We Like
Hundreds of free books.
Download or view online in your browser.
What We Don't Like
Must go through a "checkout" process even though they're free.
Some books need special software if you want to read them offline.
eBooks.com has a couple ways to find free books. Use the link below to access a list of a few hundred completely free eBooks that you can read online or download as an ACSM file—those are DRM protected files that work with Adobe Digital Editions (directions are available on the download page).
The other way is to browse their DRM-free eBooks. Some of these aren't free to download, but the ones that are can be downloaded and opened like any EPUB file.
You can filter these books by subject, like computers or religion, or by a number of fiction and non-fiction subcategories. There's also a format (PDF or EPUB), release date, and language filter.
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Scribd
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What We Like
Offers a wide range of reading materials, including sheet music and magazines.
One of the internet's largest sources of published content.
Mobile app available.
What We Don't Like
Free only for 30 days.
Costs $9.99/month.
Scribdoffers a fascinating collection of all kinds of reading materials: books, audiobooks, documents, sheet music, magazines, and more. This is one of the web’s largest sources of published content, with literally millions of documents published every month and organized by category.
However, Scribd is only free for 30 days. Unlike other sites on this list, you have to pay every month after the trial to continue using it. The membership grants you access to the site's entire database.
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