11 places for thrifty bookworms to download free e-books

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By Kyli Singh2018-08-28 17:15:00 UTC

Looking for the next great book to sink your teeth into? Look no further.

As the year rolls on, you may find yourself wanting to set aside time to catch up on reading. We have good news for you, digital bookworms — you can get in a good read without spending a dime. The internet is filled with free e-book resources so you can download new reads and old classics from the comfort of your iPad. 

Here’s a list of 11 places where you can find a wealth of free e-books (yes, free e-books!).

In the free section of the Google eBookstore, you’ll find a ton of free books from a variety of genres. Look here for bestsellers, favorite classics, and more. Books are available in several formats, and you can also check out ratings and reviews from other users.

With a collection of more than 45,000 free e-books, Project Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to create and share e-books online. No registration or fee is required, and books are available in ePub, Kindle, HTML, and simple text formats.

The Open Library has more than one million free e-books available. This library catalog is an open online project of Internet Archive, and allows users to contribute books. You can easily search by the title, author, and subject.

If you’re looking for out-of-print books in different languages and formats, check out this non-profit digital library. The Internet Archive is a great go-to if you want access to historical and academic books.

Searching for a particular educational textbook or business book? BookBoon may have what you’re looking for. The site offers more than 1,000 free e-books, it’s easy to navigate and best of all, you don’t have to register to download them.

With more than 29,000 free e-books at your fingertips, you’re bound to find one that interests you here. You have the option to browse by most popular titles, recent reviews, authors, titles, genres, languages, and more. These books are compatible for Kindles, iPads and most e-readers.

From romance to mystery to drama, this website is a good source for all sorts of free e-books. When you’re making a selection, you can go through reviews and ratings for each book. If you’re looking for a wide variety of books in various categories, check out this site.

Want to listen to books instead? LibriVox is home to thousands of free audiobooks, including classics and out-of-print books.

Thanks to public domain, you can access PDF versions of all the classics you’ve always wanted to read in PDF Books World’s enormous digital library. Literature, plays, poetry, and non-fiction texts are all available for you to download at your leisure. 

Similar to PDF Books World, Feedbooks allows those that sign up for an account to download a multitude of free e-books that have become accessible via public domain, and therefore cost you nothing to access. Just make sure that when you’re on Feedbooks’ site you head to the “Public Domain” tab to avoid its collection of “premium” books only available for purchase.

If you’re having a hard time finding a good children’s book amidst the many free classics available online, you might want to check out the International Digital Children’s Library, where you can find award-winning books that range in length and reading levels. There’s also a wide selection of languages available, with everything from English to Farsi.

This story was originally published in 2014 and updated in 2018.