Book lovers all over the world are starting to wake up and smell the coffee: ebooks are way better than paper books
Books Suck: Why I Love My Kindle More Than Dead Trees
Books Suck: Why I Love My Kindle More Than Dead Trees
Modern e-readers hold thousands of novels, weigh next to nothing, have built in lights, and don’t give you a concussion when they hit your nose.
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. The benefits are many, like not having to lug around a 10-pound doorstop, being able to bring your whole library with you everywhere, and backing up your entire library to the cloud.
But if you’re a voracious reader, buying ebook after ebook can burn a huge hole in your wallet. One option is to subscribe to an ebook subscription service
Scribd vs. Kindle Unlimited: Which Netflix for Books Is Best?
Scribd vs. Kindle Unlimited: Which Netflix for Books Is Best?
There are slim pickings for those who want an all-you-can-eat service for eBooks, with Scribd and Kindle Unlimited the only two offerings left. So, which deserves your hard-earned cash?
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that grants access to an entire library of ebooks for a monthly membership of just a few dollars.
The other option is to save your money and switch to freely available ebooks instead. You’d be surprised how many ebooks you can get without paying a cent, and that applies to both fiction and non-fiction. Where can you find these free ebooks? Well, we’re glad you asked…
When BookZZ claims to be “the world’s largest ebook library,” it’s not kidding. It currently plays host to over 2.7 million ebooks as well as 52.4 million scientific articles from publications all over the world — it would take several lifetimes to consume everything on offer.
BookZZ has both fiction and non-fiction, spanning different genres (e.g. science fiction, fantasy, thrillers, romance) and types (e.g. novels, comics, essays, textbooks). It’s nothing short of impressive.
The books can be browsed in two ways: by category (of which there are 27 major categories and hundreds of minor categories) or by recently added (which isn’t terribly useful in my experience). The browsing interface is a bit messy, but it gets the job done.
Or you can use the search option, which lets you search by title, author, description, and more. The Advanced Search lets you narrow the results by year, language, and format (e.g. PDF, EPUB, MOBI, DOC). You’ll never run out of things to read here.
BookZZ is actually a mirror for LibGen, or Library Genesis, but we prefer BookZZ because its interface is less clunky and a bit easier to navigate.
Project Gutenberg is a charity endeavor, sustained through volunteers and fundraisers, that aims to collect and provide as many high-quality ebooks as possible. Most of its library consists of public domain titles, but it has other stuff too if you’re willing to look around.
As of this writing, Gutenberg has over 53,000 free ebooks on offer. They are available for download in EPUB and MOBI formats (some are only available in one of the two) or they can be read online in HTML format.
You can browse the library by category (of which there are hundreds), by most popular (which means total download count), by latest (which means date of upload), or by random (which is a great way to find new material to read).
Because it’s a charity, Gutenberg subsists on donations. If you appreciate what they’re doing, please consider making a tax-deductible donation by PayPal, Flattr, check, or money order.
Feedbooks is a massive collection of downloadable ebooks, both fiction and non-fiction, both public domain and copyrighted, both free and paid. As of this writing, over 1 million titles are available, but only a portion of them are free.
The split between “free public domain ebooks” and “free original ebooks” is surprisingly even. A big chunk of the public domain titles are short stories whereas a big chunk of the original titles are fanfiction, but don’t let that turn you away — you can find some great stuff here otherwise.
Most of the ebooks are available in EPUB, MOBI, and PDF formats. They even come with word counts and reading time estimates, in case you take that into consideration when choosing what to read.
ManyBooks is a nifty little site that’s been around for over a decade. Its purpose is to curate and provide a library of free and discounted fiction ebooks for people to download and enjoy.
Much of its collection was seeded by Project Gutenberg back in the mid-2000s, but has since taken on an identity of its own with the addition of thousands of self-published works that have been made available at no charge.
The browsing interface has a lot of room to improve, but it’s simple enough to use. Downloads are available in dozens of formats, including EPUB, MOBI, and PDF, and each story has a Flesch-Kincaid score to show how easy or difficult it is to read (perfect for improving your English
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Perfect Your English Speaking Skills With These 5 Udemy Courses
Learning English can be tricky. Grammar is one of the stumbling blocks. These five Udemy classes will help you speak and write English with better fluency.
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).
Unlike the other sites on this list, Centsless Books is a curator-aggregator of Kindle books available on Amazon. Its mission is to make it easy for you to stay on top of all the free ebooks available there.
Note that some of the “free” ebooks listed on Centsless Books are only free if you’re part of the Kindle Unlimited program, which may or may not be worth it for you
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Kindle Unlimited — Is It Really Worth It?
Amazon’s rumored "Netflix for books" service is finally here: Kindle Unlimited. In theory, it sounds fantastic. But is it all that it is hyped up to be?
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.
Consider signing up to the free Centsless Books email newsletter to receive update notices for newly free ebooks and giveaways. The newsletter is only sent out on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, so it won’t spam you up too much.
Centsless Books also has a separate U.K. version of the site, which you may prefer if you’re from across the pond and tend to use Amazon UK instead.
Between the three major ebook formats — EPUB, MOBI, and PDF — it’s quite possible that you prefer the latter. You wouldn’t be the first, and you won’t be the last. PDFs have a lot going for them, including near universal support across platforms and several awesome PDF reader apps
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The 6 Best PDF Readers For Windows
Most people don’t stop to think about the PDF reader they install – they just install Adobe Reader. Adobe’s PDF Reader isn’t the only option, though – there are quite a few high-quality, free PDF…
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.
If you want to stick to PDFs only, then you’ll want to check out PDFBooksWorld. It’s far from the largest ebook collection out there (a little over 1,000 titles at the time of writing) but they’re all free and all guaranteed to be PDF-optimized.
Note that you’ll need to create an account to use this site.
How Else Do You Get Free Ebooks?
In addition to the above, don’t forget about Amazon Prime! It now comes with something called Prime Reading
Amazon Adds 1,000 Free eBooks to Prime
Amazon Adds 1,000 Free eBooks to Prime
Prime Reading offers Amazon Prime subscribers unlimited access to more than 1,000 eBooks, magazines, short stories, comic books, and more. All for free.
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, which grants access to thousands of contemporary ebooks in addition to all of the other benefits of Prime
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6 Amazon Prime Benefits You Might Be Ignoring Right Now
Scratch the surface. Amazon Prime has so many more benefits that people have forgotten about or simply don’t realize exist.
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.
If you’re already paying for a Prime membership, then these ebooks are essentially free. But if you don’t have Prime and don’t care about the other benefits, it may be hard to justify.
One last note: now that you have a bunch of ebooks waiting to be read, you’ll want to make sure you use a solid ebook reader whether you intend to read on a computer
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5 Best PDF & Ebook Readers for Windows
Windows is establishing itself as a cross-platform operating system. It’s already running on tablets and 2-in-1 devices, making eBook reader applications for the desktop more relevant than ever.
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or read on a mobile device
Don’t Like Amazon? Alternatives To The Kindle eBook Reader App For Android
Don’t Like Amazon? Alternatives To The Kindle eBook Reader App For Android
Amazon has its own set of flaws that send readers looking for an alternative that’s just as good. Looking to get away from Amazon, the Kindle, and DRM? Here are some of the best ebook…
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.
Which sites do you find the most useful? Are there any other ways to get free ebooks that we overlooked? Share your thoughts with us down in the comments!
Image Credit: Tim RT via Flickr
Originally written by Aibek Esengulov on October 5th, 2008