Free eBooks: General collections

gutenberg.org - Over 27,000 free etexts. Incredible source of public domain classics.
books.google.com - One of the largest libraries of scanned books anywhere - amazing. Fantastic for old books and for historical research - full texts often available and searchable.
www.alchemywebsite.com/index.html - Probably the worlds greatest collection of free Alchemy ebooks. Fascinating and unusual.
2020ok.com
http://www.ancientlibrary.com - Small list of books on classical antiquities and mythology
www.asksam.com/ebooks - Seems to need the AskSam reader to download and read, PC only.
www.baen.com/library - Lots of free, recently-written novels and an interesting essay on the reasons for the free library.
http://www.bartleby.com - Online collection of classic literature and reference books. Readable online but not downloadable.
www.bizzydays.com/freeebooks.htm Includes some "rebrandable" PDFs. Email subscription may be required here.
www.bookcrossing.com Unusual site, a sort of "Where's George" for books....
www.booksalley.com
www.bookyards.com Over 17,000 eBooks plus giant list of links to other sources
bookyards.blogspot.com Bookyards' pick of some of the best online eBook libraries
www.brandable-ebooks.com
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/meta/authors.html - University of Adelaide eBook collection
www.dailylit.com
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books - Over 30,000 free texts online.
dlb.netfirms.com/ebooks.htm
www.diesel-ebooks.com/cgi-bin/category/free_download - Some free in .lit format, some for sale
www.docstoc.com - Giant library and repository of professional and technical documents
www.ebooks4free.net - Fantastic Site. Loved this one - the real deal. All kinds of really great collections linked to from here. One of the best.
www.ebookdirectory.com - Lots of marketing, self improvement and affiliate style ebooks in here.
www.ebookheaven.co.uk - Free samples of Sci-Fi and Fantasy books.
www.ebooktags.com - All sorts of ebook resources, bookmarked by users.
www.e-booksdirectory.com - First class site - up to date, really well laid out and great selection.
www.e-library.net/free-ebook.htm - The free eBook category of e-library.net. A fair amount of marketing style eBooks.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page - Large collection of free, editable textbooks from Wikipedia.
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/ebooks - Over 10,000 publicly-accessible texts.
http://www.fictionwise.com/eBooks/freeBooks.htm - Free fiction section from this bookseller.
http://www.floodle.net - Interesting collection, many "101 tips" style eBooks.
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook2.html - Medieval Sourcebook - amazing collection of full texts of Medieval manuscripts
www.friedbeef.com - Blog post listing large number of free book resources.
www.free-ebooks-canada.com - Interesting site - a number of shorter "how-to" style eBooks
http://www.free-ebooksonline.com/index1.htm - a number of "how to" and marketing style eBooks
http://librivox.org/ - Free Audiobooks from the public domain
http://www2.nd.edu/Departments//Maritain/aristotl.htm - Aristotle et. al.: "Readings for Philosophers and Catholics"
www.freeebooks.info - eclectic collection; provides summaries and then links to full texts.
www.freetechbooks.com - Great site listing fully-legal "free online computer science, engineering and programming books, textbooks and lecture notes"
www.getfreeebooks.com
www.globusz.com - Collection of free eBooks from authors who want to promote their works.
www.issuu.com - Fantastic user-uploaded library of eBooks, magazines and other documents
www.justfreebooks.info - Search engine for free books that looks at over 700 sites.
http://www.librivox.org - Site specializing in free audiobooks of public domain works
www.manybooks.net - Fantastic site - thousands of eBooks downloadable in a large choice of formats
www.memoware.com - Large number of eBooks in various formats
www.onlinefreeebooks.net - Collection of links to ebooks, large number of automotive technical manuals
www.pdfbooks.co.za - much public domain content; PDF format eBooks
www.pdfoo.com - site loaded really slowly but has a lot of content
www.planetebook.com - Good collection of classics in PDF format
www.pmillett.com/tecnical_books_online.htm - Fantastic and unique collection of scanned old public domain books about radio and tube electronics
www.scribd.com - Giant catalogue of user-uploaded content, multiple download and viewing options. Great site.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/cat/alsidx.htm - Sacred Texts Archive - Incredible collection of mystical, religious and spiritual texts of all kinds (txt files)
www.snipfiles.com
www.welltoldtales.com - Free 15-30 minute podcast audio stories. Unique site.
worldlibrary.net - For an annual fee of $8.95 you can access 750,000 eBooks free for personal use.
www.wowio.com - Free online viewing, pay for downloads.

Free eBooks: Specific

In addition to collections such as those listed above, there are also a huge number of free eBooks available individually. A good example would be the PDF textbooks of web design language manuals, such as those available from www.w3.org. If you are looking for documents of a certain type - try the including "filetype:pdf" etc in your seach queries. Amazing what this search uncovers with relevant keywords added. More info on this from Google here: http://www.google.com/help/faq_filetypes.html

Free eBooks: About

There are a huge number of free eBooks out there. However, it's important to know where the good ones are.

Many writers and literature collections give away eBooks. This is typically done for one of the following reasons:

1) The book is one of the many in the "public domain" - and these are able to be distributed freely - so a library is created which hopes to benefit humanity and give an opportunity to all to enjoy the benefits and pleasures of reading.
2) The author simply wants to share something they think you will like.
3) They want you to get a taste of their work so that if you like it, you might buy their other works.
4) They are promoting another product they have for sale, and the eBook is really a kind of sales pitch or "teaser".
5) The eBook offers you some secret or sensationalized tidbit of information for free, and is hoping to get you to click on "affiliate links" embedded in the PDF (an affiliate link is a specially coded link to the sales page of a product, which enables the seller of the product to track which affiliate sent the traffic, and give them their sales commission.)

There are no guarantees of quality with PDF eBooks. Some are amazing, others, not so. But one of the interesting things about the genre is that it "levels the playing field" as far as product exposure is concerned. In other words, you get all kinds of stuff - and, similarly to underground music genres, there are some true undiscovered diamonds nestling amongst the weeds.

In addition to quality sources of free eBooks, there are a number of "fake" or poor quality free eBook sites which seem to me only to exist in order to try to game the google rankings and then try to profit from advertising! One site in particular kept me going round and round trying to find an actual free eBook. I combed through a large number of sites and kept the ones that appeared genuine... this was actually something of a task and I trimmed down my original shortlist by perhaps 75%!

There are also some dubious websites out there that claim to be "free ebook" sites, that provide links to copyrighted books! Such sites are, in my opinion, thinly disguised scams that disclaim responsibility for contents that they link to, yet knowingly link to copyrighted content that has been pirated, in an attempt to profit from creating a high-traffic database of such materials. We believe such sites prey on the innocent by encouraging them to help themselves to "free goods" which are in fact, stolen. We will never knowingly link to such sites.

This page has a giant list of web sites that actually have collections of free ebooks, etexts and documents. There's more than a lifetime's reading here. (Note - we've done our very best only to include fully legal sources of free eBooks - however, please check copyright restrictions before downloading anything. And if you find anything untoward, please let us know - we only want to link to genuine quality sources here at planetearthforfree.com!)

If you find any other great sources - please let us know and if we think they're cool, we'll add them to the list.

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