Find Completely Free Ebooks By Popular Authors
Free eBook Downloads In Text and Audiobook Formats
Completely free ebooks are fairly easy to come by. Just do a search for "free ebooks" and the results will show thousands of sites that all claim to provide a large selection. Indeed, the reality of finding almost any book in an electronic format is on the horizon as free ebooks begin to replace traditional lending libraries. Currently though, finding legitimate and legal sources of free ebook downloads is a little more challenging. Luckily there are a few places to find completely free ebooks out there, but be forewarned, at this point in time free often means a very limited selection.
The Largest Completely Free Ebook Sources- Project Guttenberg and Google Books
The largest and most significant source of free ebooks is Project Guttenberg. Over the years over 100,000 books have been painstakenly transcribed from old books all over the world and converted into ebook format. All of the books in the Guttenberg collection are in the public domain, meaning that either the copyright on them has expired or the author has released his or her claim to the copyright and placed it in the public domain. The vast majority of free ebook web sites pull the books from Project Guttenberg and make them available on their own site. Since Guttenberg deals in free public domain titles all another web site has to do is download the ebook, remove the Guttenberg notifications from the front of the book, and it can then be published in any way they see fit.
Google Books is similar to Project Guttenberg as a source for free ebook downloads, but it differs from Guttenberg in many ways. Google Books has entered into an agreement that will allow them to scan and make available tens of thousands of books that were out of print but not yet out of copyright. This means that in coming months and years more and more books will be available as electronic book downloads either in PDF format or the newer EPUB electronic book format. While Project Guttenberg books are often easier to read in an electronic ebook format, Google Books documents preserve the drawings and images on the individual pages.
Other Sources of Completely Free Ebooks By Popular Authors
Some ebook reader manufacturers such as Amazon and Lexycle (maker of the Stanze ebook app for the iPhone) also provide small collections of free ebook downloads of more recent titles from modern authors. Owners of the Amazon Kindle can download hundreds of completely free ebooks from many different online sources, but perhaps the most extensive collection of completely free ebooks are audiobooks provided by area libraries.
In hundreds of communities the local library has teamed with one or more aggregators of audiobooks, compiling libraries of thousands of fairly current and quite popular titles saved in MP3 or WMA format. These completel free ebooks can be downloaded to any device and played during a standard loaning period much the same as a person would do in a traditional brick and mortar library. Users must have a valid library card at one of the community libraries that the services are involved with however. Wilbor and NetLibrary are two of the more common audio ebook providers and both provide lists of libraries that they participate with.
Finding interesting, current, and completely free ebooks can be a frustrating task, but some good rules of thumb will help anyone find the title they are looking for. First, check with the local library to get a library card then go online to the Wilbor or NetLibrary site and find the title desired. If reading the book in plain text is more important, check with Project Guttenberg and lastly Google Docs to see if the book might possibly be available through them.
BNC101
Reading Books By Candlelight
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