Best Places To Download Free eBooks
A person who doesn’t read doesn’t live. It is true because one can only truly experience the joy of this beautiful world when one reads. Reading is one of life’s simple pleasures and something everyone should do.
Unless you join a library, buying books can be an expensive affair. While eBooks are mostly priced lower than their paper counterparts they can still be expensive. So how can we get books without having to pay over the odds for them? Luckily, the internet has proven to be a huge boon for readers. And if you know where and how to look, then you will come across not thousands but millions of books that can be read for free. That’s what this post is all about. I’m going to show you where to find legal eBook and PDF book downloads for free.
The downside of being free and legal is that you won’t get the latest best sellers or blockbusters. Author deserves to get paid for their work. Therefore all links on this page are to legal sources of eBook and PDF book downloads.
So here is the best 5 places to download legally free ebooks.
The Project Gutenberg came into being as a result of a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural books.
Founded by an American writer named Michael S. Hart in the year 1971, it is also known to be the world’s oldest digital library.
The sole objective of the website is to create and encourage the distribution of eBooks. Out of more than 60,000 books currently available on its platform, most of the books are free.
The project focuses on public domain books on which no exclusive claim to copyrights applies. While most books are in English, there are books available in other languages as well.
Popularly known as the internet archive, the platform is an American digital library whose mission is to ensure universal access of all knowledge.
Its focus areas include music, websites, apps, software, movies, and books amongst other things. It is known to be one of the world’s largest book digitization project.
The platform has a collection of over 2.5 crore books and its main focus is on public domain books especially American books.
LibriVox is an audiobook app that is quite popular. The advantage of this app is that all the audiobooks are available for free.
The project is run by volunteers from all over the world who volunteer to serve as recording artists for the various books available on the app.
The main focus of the app is on public domain books that have no exclusive copyright claim.
These mostly include classics and many academic and research-oriented books that are difficult to come across on many paid audiobook platforms.
Another factor that differentiates LibriVox from other audiobook apps is that there are often multiple narrators for a single book. Thus giving the listener a wide variety of voices to choose from.
The Kindle reading app is probably the best in the market when it comes to eBook reading. The reading comfort and ease of use are just unbeatable.
If you do not have a Kindle eReader, you can download the free version of the app on their mobiles from Google Play Store or Apple’s App Store.
It is usually assumed that Kindle eBooks mean paid books but that is often not the case. Just type in search box ‘free Kindle eBooks’ or ‘Kindle eBooks for free’. And Viola! You can download hundreds of books for free.
National Digital Library – India
The National Digital library of India (NDLI) is a project under Ministry of Human Resource Development, India. The objective is to integrate several national and international digital libraries in one single web-portal. The NDLI provides free of cost access to many books in English and the Indian languages.
The library content includes a wide range of materials in the form of e-books, audio books, lecture materials, thesis, reports, articles, journal papers, questions papers, solutions, data and simulation tools in addition to otherwise popular formats of video lectures and courses. It is a great resource for Students especially for examination preparation.
