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Good Online Sources for Free Books?
hydopower asks: "I recently stumbled upon a collection of online libraries. This was fascinating to me, but too many of them cost money or offer Google Print-like limited functionality. I decided to put together a list of sites that offer free books in a format that would allow a person to actually read through them. As Slashdot readers are known for being well read and for enjoying free things, I figured I'd tap into the knowledge pool here. Any suggestions?"
a very specific item but, those learning python can use the excellent and free dive into python .
http://www.techbooksforfree.com/
Project Gutenberg
Lots of literature. And most are just straight text so you can read them with anything.
Gutenburg
http://www.gutenberg.org/
gus
.. if only.
Try the Baen Free Library. You are out of luck here if you don't like "sci fi", and the selection is rather small, but the files are nice and unemcumbered and they do have some great ones like Fallen Angels.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Tech books for free: ahref=http://www.techbooksforfree.com/http://www.t echbooksforfree.com/>
t ml/http://www.xml.com/ldd/chapter/book/index.html/ >
Linux Device Drivers: ahref=http://www.xml.com/ldd/chapter/book/index.h
Also some for Samba, Subversion, CVS, etc.
O'reilly offers a few of their books under an open doc license: http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/
"He was a wise man who invented beer." - Plato
How about Creative Commons?
Celebrate the finer things in life
The Perseus project at Tufts is an excellent source of ancient literature, as well as some translations.
;)
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/
If true classics are your thing.
http://www.ibiblio.org./
Bye!
Online Books Page From UPenn.
THE most complete listing I have seen.
www.blackmask.com has a large number of books (many that are also in gutenberg) in several formats:
HTML, PDF, Mobipocket, MS Reader, rocket eBook, iSilo, and EasyRead
There is, of course, a very active ebook scene on the p2p networks and irc. Some people collect them just like the warez kiddies. Personally, I don't have the patience or energy to mess with those folks, but if you're not concerned with (il)legality, irc is, by far, the most comprehensive resource for ebooks.
My local library has been expanding its ebook offerings, and I've read several on my pda. They use drm'ed mobipocket and pdf formats which allow you to check out books for three weeks, after which they expire.
I would suggest pestering your local library district to ramp up its collection. It's the cheapest and most ethical way to read copyrighted works.
Best Windows Freeware
Cory Doctorow:
Eastern Standard Tribe (CC)
A Place So Foreign (and eight more) (CC)
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (CC)
Lawrence Lessig:
Free Culture
Tech and science books:
Version Control with Subversion (CC)
An open source math book
Light and Matter, a series of physics texts by Ben Crowell
Lists:
The Assayer is a place to find and review open books.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
I can't speak for others, but I buy books, hard cover, paperback and electronic. I have no problem paying for the books I read, but I also appreciate the ability to download the older, public domain, books. I bought my PDA mainly for the purpose of reading books.
Its amazing how some people, who won't even post in the open, are willing to flame people that they don't even know who are attempting to learn.
Perhaps you are interested in Bhargav's Book Archive?
[o]_O
BookRags has all the Gutenberg etexts in html format among all their student products (study guides, essays etc).
There's a great place a few buildings over from here. The registration process is a pain (you have to give them various bits of personal information), but the books you can get are almost unlimited -- they've had almost everything I've looked for, including some fairly obscure SF -- and it's free.
The real advantage is the books you get can be read with no special equipment. (Some people use special glasses, but I've never needed them)
It's called a library.
Or did you mean books you can keep, and only in electronic format?
http://www.sacred-texts.com/index.htm http://www.hermetic.com/ http://www.hermetics.org/library.html
Another nice spot to bookmark (which is updated as new books in the series are released) is Bruce Peren's Open Source Series:
http://www.informit.com/promotions/promotion.asp?
The books are published in print by Prentice Hall PTR, but are also released after a few months freely under the Open Publiction License (more about the license in the link below).
http://www.informit.com/content/downloads/perens/
-geoff313
If I need to research a topic, i'll sometimes use this www.netlibrary.com Its a great resource, has over 41 thousand books, and a lot of the books are new, and recently published on a myriad of subjects. The only downfall is that you have to be a college student. otherwise you can only acccess the books that have been released into public domain. Which isnt bad either. If your interested and in school, try logging in from your school library, and you can create a username and password, then once you get that, you can log in from anywhere. I've been giving friends and family the login, and they love it. Oh yea, and theres no Ad's
Try The Assayer. It's a catalog of free books, specializing in modern books that have been set free by their authors (not old public domain books, which you can get on Project Gutenberg). Users can also submit reviews. There are some links here that might also be of interest.
Find free books.
Eserver.org has a fair amount of lit and other books/publications.
Amateurs discuss tactics. Professionals discuss logistics.
... is a great Unix book!
http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/
Check out your local library and see if they're registered with NetLibrary, it's free if your library is registered with them. They have a decent collection of books.
Adobe offers a few free ebooks, both fiction and non-fiction. However, let me warn you, they are DRM'd.
Then there is also the Gutenberg Project as many others have already mentioned.
If you are using MS Reader, then Microsoft offers some free books as well.
Fictionwise sells ebooks, but they also have free novels, short stories and audio books from time to time. Currently they have 26 items available for free, including a lot of sci-fi.
Audible
Audible sells audio books, but they have some free items also. There is a new free item every week or so for subscribers.
ereader
ereader has a few free ebooks. During December last year, they had a different free ebook each day for a few weeks.
Audio Books for Free
AudioBooksForFree has free audio books, but in a very compressed format. You have to pay to get better quality, but for $100 you can buy everything.
Baen Books
Baen Books has a free library with sci-fi books.
Project Gutenberg
This one has been pointed out a few times, but it is the biggest. It is here and here. I think the first one is the official site.
Manybooks is a great website for downloading Project Gutenberg books. It provides a cleaner interface and dynamically generates 10 different formats to match your pda/application. It also recently got its RSS feed working so make a Live Bookmark in Firefox to see their recent additions.
There's a nice little online book trading co-op at http://www.bookcrossing.com./ People share books, trade books, and "release books into the wild" to track them. Kinda fun.
OK, now what?
Agreed. It's not always about money anyway.
Sometimes books aren't practical. Reading a hardcover on the subway, with sharp corners on the book and sharp turns in the track, is an exercise in arousing hatred. My Clie lets me keep one hand on the pole at all times. No falling down while flipping pages! It also takes up much less space during rush hour.
DN
Interestingly, the site converts books to various formats from a source version coded in Theological Markup Language.
The Internet Archive's Texts collection has about 25,000 books online, and is working with many partners to get more.
I have a list of about 1300 interesting texts hosted by The Archive, here, which has links to The Archive's details pages for those books.
Enjoy!
-- TTK
The Hun is a free online portal to sources of free porn:
The Hun's Thumbs-Up
The Hun's Yellow Pages
Happy Hunning!
-- TTK
I've been working on scanning images from antiquarian books for a few years, and recently started opening the process up so others can help out. The current state is at Pictures from old books; the new collaborative site will be fromoldbooks.org (since there are textual transcriptions as well as images), probably in a month or so.
Live barefoot!
free engravings/woodcuts
e-donkey. Incredible selection of math books in djvu format.
The toad can't burp - and for some reason can't fart either, so it swells up and eventually explodes. --Anonymous Coward
All sorts of reference, fiction, nonfiction, even poetry.
-jpeg
Darned RIAA. :)
"I love how geeks at this site are almost proud of the amount of money they waste on PDAs, cell phones, the newest videocard, high-end speakers, and other geek toys (not to mention donating to put Enterprise on for another season) but when it comes to spending money on something serious that facilitates learning, such as books, all of the sudden they feel the need to do whatever they can to get things for free. Here's a radical suggestion: cut down on buying electronic beeping gadgets (and using them when you drive!) and you'll be amazed at how much money you'll have to spend on books. I think you'll find that it's money well spent in the long run."
Hi there mister Dinosaur. I quoted you in full, because yours is one of the best examples of old-world, conservative, anal-retentive, vested-interests thinking I have seen in a long time.
OK, so you want to do the math? Lets do the math.
Geeks will buy gadgets. It's part of what defines them.
Now, geeks have gadgets and the internet has free books. Why not connect the two? You cannot give me a single reason for that, I am sure.
Oh, and as long as you spend your days looking back, please consider that those hallowed books you so revere were once considered a heresy. "Why buy books?" your ilk would cry in righteous indignation. "Wake up and smell the coffee! Live in the real world! Story tellers are not just much cheaper, they also enhance their stories by their telling. When you buy a book, you rob story tellers from their income. Why do you hate Greece?" ("Why do you hate America?" wasn't as popular in those days.)
Well, we know what happened to those people. They refused to read the pamflet that told them that the maximum speed for chariots had been raised from 15 to 30 kph, and got killed trying to cross the road.
When I bought my Palm Zire, I had the same question, but had trouble finding gratis ebooks. Most Google searches seemed to lead to commercial publishers who offered one free ebook as a teaser, often a public domain work they had probably plucked off of Project Gutenberg.
So I created a webpage, Free Palm ebooks, that tells owners of Palm Pilots where to find the free ebooks in native Palm formats, the reader software, and more.