More and more people are getting into digital reading and I have a feeling there will be an explosion of Kindles sold this holiday season. While reader’s comfort level with digital reading grows they are bound to seek out more and more digital books online and of course, if they can, would prefer reading online books for free. For this article we will strictly discuss books that are in the Public Domain as we are adamant about an authors right to earn a living. Web sites that offer free online books keeps growing, we’ll list some of these great resources here and if you know of other places to access free books online then please share via a comment below.
Authorama With authors like Kafka, Kipling and Lewis Carroll you will fiond something for everyone here. A very nice selection of free books that are in the Public Domain. You can read these right in your browser or print them out if you prefer a paper version. This site includes a couple works by Oscar Wilde as well, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Solome
Project Guttenberg is likely the most popular place for reading online books for free. The have gathered quite a collection with over 33 thousand books that you can read online or on your Kindle. One thing that I like about this website is that they offer a top 100 list of free online books. If you are looking for some classic books this is probably the place for you. Agatha Christie, Dickens, Walt Whitman, Jane Austin, Bram Stocker are just a sampling of the books that you can read online.
If it’s the Classics that you are interested in then take a look at Digital Classics where they say that their free online books are bound in the finest electronic leather, nice. If you are going to be reading online books for free and are interested in authors like William Blake, Jane Austen, Aristotle or stories like Don Quixote or Wuthering Heights then take a look here.
University of Pennsylvania has an extensive collection of online books all very neatly categorized. One interesting section they have is a list of books that at one time or another were banned. Banned books online like Thoreau’s Civil disobedience and even more recently banned books like The Federal Mafia by Irwin Schiff which explains ways that Americans can avoid paying taxes legally – no wonder it became a banned book.
If your free reading requirements lean more towards technical books, computer programming books, iPhone applications or Photoshop then you may want to take a look at eBookPDF.net. I’m about to try downloading a couple free WordPress eBooks. There selection covers a broad range of computer and Internet technical eBooks.
Finally The World Public Library boasts over 750 000 titles. If you are a military science fiction fan then this is the place. The offer a nice collection of free books from the well known publisher Baen – 72 different free books. With 125 different collections of books just about everyone will find something here. Another collection for example is the Christian Classics Ethereal Library with over 250 titles to choose from.
If you are just beginning reading online books for free you can come back here from time to time as we will be adding to the list. Enjoy your free books.
