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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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
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