12 sources for free, public domain books
Need some new reading material?
Alphabetized list of books.
Includes modern texts and speech transcripts.
Selection is rather limited.
Few books by authors outside Europe and the U.S.
Search tool is too simple.
LibriVox
Listen before you download.
Record and share audiobooks.
No alphabetized list of books.
Limited to pre-1930s texts.
There’s a LibriVox mobile app that lets you listen to all your favorite titles on the go.
Google Books
Powered by the largest search engine.
Mobile app optimized for e-readers.
Searches the book text, too.
Must search; can’t just browse for free books.
Google Books has a nice selection of public domain eBooks mostly in the classical literature genre.
Search Google Books or use the main Google search engine to find all manner of public domain books.
you’ve got the option to also useGoogle Scholarto find public domain works.
From there, grab the hamburger menu in the upper left corner and chooseAdvanced Search.
Double-check each piece of content to double-check that it does indeed fall under public domain.
you could read these books in your internet tool or through the mobile app.
Project Gutenberg
Includes thousands of non-English books.
Easy to browse alphabetically and by subject.
Search feature has a learning curve.
Project Gutenberg is one of the oldest sources for public domain books on the web.
It has one of the widest selections you’ll find of freely available books on the web.
There are handyTop 100pages if you’re not sure where to start.
Most books can be read online or downloaded.
Feedbooks
Download in the popular EPUB format.
Offers obscure science fiction.
Several categories to look through.
Mostly European and American literature.
A mobile app is available if you want to read from your phone or tablet.
Internet Archive
Very thorough search filter.
Borrow newer books for free.
Challenging to navigate; interface is overwhelming.
Mostly academic and educational texts.
ManyBooks
Attractive and easy to browse.
Huge collection of genres.
Read online or download.
Books may be inappropriate for some.
Small selection of non-English books.
Must enter to download.
ManyBooks offers more than 50,000 free public domain books for download.
The site is organized so you could find books as easily as possible.
Browse by author, language, genre, and more.
This is one of the most user-friendly sites on the web for finding and downloading free books.
LoudLit
Powerful readings of classic poems and short stories.
A great resource for English teachers.
Easy to read along as you listen.
Small collection compared to similar sites.
Very bare-bones home page.
Can’t download the whole book at once.
Online Library of Liberty
Material you won’t find anywhere else.
A treasure trove of political history.
Several format options when downloading.
Selection has a narrow focus.
An unabashed political agenda.
Categories include history, economics, art, law, religion, and more.
Classic Literature Library
Partners with Project Gutenburg.
Impressive author biographies and bibliographies.
Site is cluttered with ads.
Only features British and American authors.
Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL)
Excellent resource for seminary students.
Includes biblical commentary you won’t find elsewhere.
Read classic Christian writings from hundreds of years of church history.
You’ll find everything from research materials to Bible studies.
There are alsoMP3versions of some books, as well asPDF,ePub, andPNGformatted publications.
Read in your surfing app.
Scanned pages make some books hard to read.
