Scribd’s primary service is a paid monthly option, but you can sign up for a one-month trial to gain short-term access to free online books. The site serves as an open sharing platform, in which users can send and share documents of any kind (as long as they adhere to the site’s guidelines). Launched in 2013, Scribd is an online collection of every kind of document you could imagine: books, comics, academic papers, and even sheet music. (If you’re wondering, “What’s the difference between a novel and a novella?” then check out our post on short novels you can read in a day.) Scribd Quarterly West also hosts an annual novella contest, accepting submissions from 14,500 to 35,000 words. The magazine, run by creative writing PhD students at the University of Utah, has also been in existence since 1976 -though available only online since 2011. But we think Quarterly West deserves a mention on this list because of its outstanding short stories, which are longer than those published on many other online literary magazines. Okay, this one isn’t a strictly a free online book source, either.
The Open Library project is run as part of the greater Internet Archive, a library for free online media of all types.
Users can search for contemporary books available from these libraries and then “check out” a PDF copy -one patron at a time -just as if you had visited the actual library. What’s even more unique about Open Library is its collaboration with over 1,000 physical libraries that participate in its In-Library Lending Program. Open Library boasts over 1 million titles, including both classic and contemporary fiction and non-fiction free books. Users can add to the site in almost any way, from fixing a typo in a book to adding a widget into the code. This site is similar to Project Gutenberg but has a Wikipedia-esque twist. Open LibraryĪs the name suggests, Open Library is a free online book resource based on the open ideology: open software, open access, and open documentation.
Here’s some great info about volunteering for LibriVox if you’re interested. You can search for free ebooks by title, author, or genre. LibriVox has a great collection of many genres: short stories, children’s books, general fiction, and non-fiction. Just like Project Gutenberg, LibriVox is run by volunteers and accepts volunteers from all over the globe.
Started in 2005, LibriVox is a not-for-profit, non-commercial website that offers a place to download and listen to free audio books. So this one doesn’t quite count as a place to read free books online, but it’s just as cool. The site does also offer free previews of many of its ebooks for sale, allowing you to decide if the book is worth the purchase. However, Amazon does tend to have some more obscure titles (for better or for worse), as well as newer random books that authors have decided to make free for purchase. Many of these free books are classic novels that are also featured on Project Gutenberg’s extensive selection of free online books.
įor those who have Kindles (or have the free Kindle for PC or Kindle for Mac apps, which let you download Kindle content to your computer or laptop), Amazon offers a large selection of free downloadable books. What we especially love about Project Gutenberg is that’s completely run by volunteers. From proofreading to donating through PayPal, Project Gutenberg is always accepting help from volunteers around the world. Each book is offered in a variety of file formats, usually both with and without illustrations or images. The website has over 50 books each in at least 16 languages, and a handful of books each in another 30 or so languages. Project Gutenberg is online repository of over 50,000 (!) free online books available in several languages as both ebooks and audio book. This one comes first on our list of free books to read online because it’s simply our favorite. So for the love books, here are some great places to get free books online. (These also come in super handy when we’re up at 3 AM for no reason and need a new book to sink our teeth into.) In times like these, we turn to our handy list of free online books. But just because you’re watching your budget a little more closely doesn’t mean you can’t read some excellent works. But some months, it’s just not a good idea to tempt ourselves by even walking into the local bookstore. There are worse problems to be had, certainly. We can walk into a bookstore with the best of intentions -”only one book…okay, maybe two books…but that’s all, no more!” -but of course we always walk out with at least twice what we planned for. At Books on the Wall, it’s no secret that we love reading -and if you’re here, we assume you do too! But if you’re anything like us, you probably spend waaaaaaay too much of your monthly budget on books.