eBooks for eReaders

Submitted by squee on January 12, 2012 - 4:22pm

By now, most of you know about the eBooks you can download from Denver Public Library, but do you know about other places you can go to get free eBooks for your Nook, Kindle or other eReader? There are many sites out there that have taken books out of their copyright and digitized them for public consumption. They are free, and you never have to return them.

Because most of these titles are outside of copyright, you are not looking at current best sellers. But if you want to get your Shakespeare or Austen on, you've come to the right place. I have actually found a few surprises in some of the catalogs, including some Kurt Vonnegut, P.G. Wodehouse, and Cory Doctorow! All great (fairly) recent authors.

Project Gutenberg is the first and most obvious site out there. At this point, they have well over 36,000 titles available for download. And all of it is for free! They do accept volunteer help and donations, but if you want to get a bunch of books on your Kindle right now, you don't have to pay anything. I ask you, what better price is there?

Once you've been to Project Gutenberg a few times and browsed around a bit, you might be interested in getting some suggestions of what to download for the future. Scroll down the home page and you can find links to recently uploaded eBooks to see what's new in the collection and the Top 100 eBooks and authors downloaded in the last day, week and month. The best recommendation to me is what other people are willing to put on their devices.

Another great resource out there is Many Books. While Many Books has a lot of duplication from Project Gutenberg, it does have some great reviews of eReaders out there. If you don't already have an eReader, or you were thinking of getting one for someone as a gift, they have some great recommendations and thorough reviews.

Feedbooks is another site with some duplicates of Project Gutenberg materials, but it also has a section of original works. This means you have access to all the people's writing before they get published! This does mean that you can't guarantee the quality of the titles you are downloading, but there are some books out there that make me question publishers' judgment anyway... Take a look you might find an undiscovered author!

If you like looking thru original works, take a gander at Bookrix.com. This site is all self-published titles by new authors. If you scroll to the sitemap at the bottom of the page, there is a link for the top rated books on the site. This will help you find some gems!

Audio books are my favorite, far and away. I think we have lost connection with our oral tradition and I feel like audio books are the best way out there to reconnect with that part of our brains. If you are an audio book addict like me, check out Librivox.org, the audio book counterpart to Project Gutenberg. You can find some great titles here to download for keeps (if you wanna) or to give to a friend.

Enjoy all the free stuff life has to offer, including great literature! I hope these resources help.

What other resources have you discovered out there?

squee's blog

Comments

Submitted by Marc D'Hooghe on January 20, 2012 - 10:42pm.

April 2010 we started http:www//freeliterature.org. Non-profit organization to support free e-literature in general by linking to more than 600 sites worldwide in many languages - and Project Gutenberg in particular by producing e-books. Enjoy! and consider helping out with the digitizing?

Submitted by Sarah on January 13, 2012 - 9:50am.

What about the Baen Free Library? --Lots of interest for readers of science fiction. http://www.baen.com/library/

Submitted by Anonymous on January 13, 2012 - 2:38pm.

Cool!

Submitted by Anonymous on January 16, 2012 - 3:55pm.

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