3 Places to Find Free Ebooks

With the world of digital reading material at your fingertips and probably a little more time to bury your nose in a book than usual, your credit card could soon have a reason to protest—but it doesn’t have to. Discover five different places you can download free e-books online below.

1. PROJECT GUTENBERG

Project Gutenberg is a digital library with more than 60,000 e-books in the public domain. You won’t come across the hottest new thriller on here, but you will find countless classics in every genre, available to read online or download as EPUB or Kindle files. Make your way through Jane Austen’s whole catalog, tackle Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, or get hooked on an Agatha Christie whodunit.

2. MANYBOOKS

ManyBooks is another site that features older books in the public domain, but it also includes e-books by self-published authors you probably haven’t heard of. It’s a great place to discover something new (or old), and the site layout is well-organized and modern.

3. INTERNET ARCHIVE

The Internet Archive is a treasure trove of material both for research purposes and recreational reading. After you sign up for a free account, you can borrow up to 10 books at a time, each for a two-week loan period, though you might have to hop on the waitlist for popular works that aren’t in the public domain. The Internet Archive’s Open Library contains plenty of modern novels, like Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games and some Stephen King bestsellers, and it recently launched a temporary National Emergency Library with more than a million e-books that you can check out immediately—no need to join a waitlist. However, since the Internet Archive acquires e-books through donations, purchases, and partnerships with academic libraries, rather than licensing them directly from publishers, authors have spoken out against the National Emergency Library, explaining that its unlimited lending model prevents them from earning royalties on their work. If you’re looking for the best way to support an author, we recommend sticking to library-affiliated apps like hoopla (or ordering a physical book from your favorite indie bookstore).

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