The pleasure of reading a physical book is still unparalleled and many of us practice it whenever we have the chance, for example, now that we are about to start the well-deserved summer vacation. But even the most purist of us have ‘fallen’ into the temptation of buying an e-book reader, which, although not as a replacement, has ended up being an excellent complement.
No, it’s not the same as the song said, but digital has its advantagessuch as the ease of organizing the library, being able to carry 20, 100 or 300 titles in a small device or listen to them in an increasingly present audiobook format. In addition, readers have improved a lot in terms of comfort of use, display quality, connectivity or autonomy, with electronic ink panels increasingly successful and with the possibility of buying a decent device in the 100 euro range.
10 portals where to get free eBooks
And if the offer of readers in wide, what can we say about the books themselves. The offer is impressive. Never in history has there been access to so much content, with dedicated portals where you can find almost any title you are looking for and at a very good price, as well as other sites that offer alternative material outside the more official or commercial line. And add audiobooks.
There is also piracy, as with any digital content… which should be avoided if we want to support writers and continue to enjoy reading. It is not worth it since there are websites where you can legally download free eBooks like the ones we are going to remind you today. You would need many lifetimes to read them all. Let’s go with them.
Overdrive
One of the best digital libraries where to get free ebooks and not only those in the public domain, but also recently released mainstream titles. You just need a valid and active public library card or be a student to get access. Overdrive works with more than 30,000 public libraries in over 40 different countries around the world. In addition to eBooks, you can also listen to audiobooks for free.
Open Library
Open Library offers a directory that makes it easy to search all the free e-books available in the large digital library The Internet Archive. The number of titles available has already reached a colossal 1.5 million items. The site is open source and anyone can edit the information available for each book and has scrollable categories to improve searches.
Feedbooks
Another good collection of downloadable fiction and non-fiction e-books. It offers many copyrighted, paid titles, but also free ones that you can find in the public domain category. Most are available in EPUB, MOBI and PDF format. They even come with word counts and reading time estimates, if you want to know. There are also some free original books, unordered, but you can find them in the different categories.
PDFBooksWorld
EPUB and MOBI are specialized media specially designed for e-book reading, but PDF is also used and for a good reason: universal support for all platforms and devices. If you use it this is your site. While the collection is “small” compared to the above, with only a few thousand titles, they are all free and guaranteed to be optimized for PDF. And they can be read online which makes them ideal for citations or academic projects.
Project Gutenberg
Another of the best, attractive from the very name of a project. sustained by volunteers and fundraisers as a portion of their income goes to charities. Taims to collect and provide as many high-quality, free e-books as possible. Most of their library consists of public domain titles, but they also have other things if you browse the site by category, popularity, or latest additions. They are available on their website for download in EPUB and MOBI format and can be read online in HTML format.
Kindle Store
Amazon’s e-book store could not be missed because it is surely the largest in the world. The company sells a huge number of titles every day and facilitates access to large readers with Kindle Unlimited, a subscription service that offers unlimited reading to millions of titles and a selection of magazines to which you can access three months free trial. In addition to a wealth of inexpensive titles (priced at 0.99 euros) it also offers a selection of free eBooks and that is why we include it.
Free-Ebooks.net
Another site where you can find thousands of free ebooks included in six different categories. Note that in order to download for free you will have to register. The account is free, but you can only download up to five free titles each month. Although there is a little bit of everything on the sites in this article, most of them are in English. The good thing about this site is that they are available in dozens of other languages.
Elejandria
Highly recommended for students and teachers due to the amount of classic books of all times that it offers, public domain and free. They are distributed in PDF format and also in ePUB and Mobi to connect if you use Kindle readers. A quality collection, free, but without too many current commercial titles.
International Children’s Digital Library
If you and your teachers have been able to instill in your children the joy of reading, this is the place to go. Books are available in a variety of lengths and levels of reading difficulty. You can even search by criteria that might stimulate them. Each book is listed in a specific category for easy searching. It seems small, but there are great titles available and also in a variety of languages, albeit, like the rest, with the majority in English.
Centsless Books
A very different site from the previous ones as it is an aggregator of free Kindle books that are available on Amazon. Its purpose is merely that, to make it easier to keep track of all the free ebooks available from the e-commerce giant. Keep in mind that some of the e-books listed are only free for users subscribed to the Kindle Unlimited service.
To conclude and if you love technology as much as we do, we recommend these. Five technology books to enjoy this summer that our colleagues at MCPRO have selected.
