Remember those
old vinyl records? Remember jumping on the 8-track bandwagon? Switching over to
cassette tapes? How much money you spent converting your music collection to
compact discs? To MP3s?
How about your
VHS movie collection? You probably emptied the bank switching over to DVD, and
God forbid you upgraded to Blu-ray. Keeping up to date with technology is
expensive, and it's happening to books, as well. With eBooks quickly replacing
hardcovers and paperbacks, you're in for easier reading access, portability and
saving some space, but you're also going to shell out some cash to build up
your library.
But you don't
have to.
There are a
ton of free eBooks out there, no matter what eReader you own—Amazon's Kindle,
Barnes & Noble's Nook, Sony's Reader, etc. And with those eReaders comes
fantastic eBook stores for easy browsing and purchasing. They have tons of
great digital literature for sell, but you shouldn't waste your money unless
necessary (or want to). There's plenty of free options out there, so make sure
you exhaust the free before you receive the fee.
The majority of the free eBooks available
are either promotional items or older, out-of-copyright, pre-1923 books, which
account for nearly 2 million titles.
And it doesn't matter what eReader you own, or if you prefer reading digital
copies on your computer, because you can convert almost any of the common eBook
files into the version you need using something like Calibre.
Okay, enough
babbling—here's some of your options.
Step 1 Amazon Kindle Store
Yes, there's tons of costly eBooks at
Amazon's Kindle Store, but there's also some free eBooks available. Actually,
there's thousands of classics available for nothing, from Pride and Prejudice to Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon.
·
Link: Kindle Popular Classics
Also, Amazon
has tons of limited time promotional items, which means free for a
"limited" time. If you check on a regular basis, you can come out
with some pretty decent freebies.
·
Link: Limited-Time Offers (sorted
by price)
Step 2 Google eBookstore
Yes, Google has an eBook store now, aptly
called Google eBookstore.
It opened roughly four months ago, and also has free eBooks for download. Their
traditional formats are supported on Android and Apple iOS devices, Nook and
Sony e-readers, and the web.
·
Link: Best of the Free
Step 3 Internet Archive Texts
You've probably seen a few out-of-print
television commercials, after-school specials or instructional videos at the
Internet Archive, like this motivation one or this one for
letterpress printing. But they also have an abundance of free texts, which you
can download in different formats like ePUB, Daisy, PDF, plain text, DjVu, MOBI
or Kindle.
·
Link: Texts
But an easier
way to search for eBooks from the Internet Archive is through their initiative
Open Library, where they're trying to provide a page on the web for every book
ever published (a daunting task). Just go to the website and do a search,
making sure the "only show ebooks" option is checked. Then just click
on the book link to see the formats.
Available in ePUB, Daisy, PDF, plain text, DjVu, MOBI or you can send directly to your Kindle.
·
Link: Open Library
Step 4 Project Gutenberg
This amazing
website is run by none other than the inventor of the electronic book, Michael
Hart. He invented eBooks way back in 1971 (yes—they're that old!) and to this
day, continues to make free eBooks available to all who wish to download them
at Project Gutenberg. There's over 33,000 freebies for the taking, which is
100% legal and available as ePUB, Kindle, HTML and text documents.
·
Link: Project
Gutenberg
Step 5 ManyBooks.net
ManyBooks is
just like Gutenberg above, only it has a hipper vibe, one that's more easy to
navigate. The best thing—it has over 26,000 free titles in over 20 digital
formats, including LIT, LRF, ePUB, MOBI, PDF, etc.
·
Link: ManyBooks.net
Step 6 FeedBooks
FeedBooks does
sell eBooks, but they also have a large collection of public domain books,
along with a section where authors can publish their own books for people to
download and enjoy freely—a great idea. These are available in ePUB format.
·
Link: Public Domain Books
·
Link: Original Books
Other Notable Places
to Get Free eBooks
The ones above
are the best and most versatile places on the web to get free reading content
for your e-Reader, but there are some still worth visiting. Here they are:
·
Baen Publishing
Enterprises
Just search for a book (available web, Kindle, MOBI, Palm, ePUB, Nook, RTF, HTML and more).
Just search for a book (available web, Kindle, MOBI, Palm, ePUB, Nook, RTF, HTML and more).
·
Barnes & Noble's Free Nook Books
They don't have much, but it's worth a glance.
They don't have much, but it's worth a glance.
·
Sony Reader Store Free eBooks
Also not many, but worth checking out.
Also not many, but worth checking out.
·
Kobo Free eBooks
Available in ePUB format.
Available in ePUB format.

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