Free eBooks and eAudiobooks
There are now thousands of mainly out-of-copyright novels
and non-fiction works available online free to the end user.
As with anything on the Internet a lot of them have been
upload with little care as to their accuracy and
reproduction quality. This page aims to signpost you to some of the
better sources.
Please note: Facilities for reading online,
downloading and formats titles are available in vary
widely and the copyright legislation in application is that
of the country from which the service originates applies.
24symbols enables users to read and share digital
books via streaming to any reading device with internet
connection from an international catalogue of a huge variety
of publishing companies. Free provision is achieved by
showing users non-intrusive contextual advertising; a premium
model allows access to advanced functionalities and downloads,
but is subject to a subscription fee.
"The preeminent publisher of Internet literature, reference and
verse providing students, researchers and the intellectually
curious with unlimited access to books and information on the web,
free of charge".
"Bookboon.com is an online publisher of free books. You can
download the books for free and without providing any personal
details. The books are provided in PDF so that you can print the
books and/or read them offline". The books are financed via the
insertion of advertisements "on every third page on
average".
Currently covered are travel guides, business and textbooks
giving a "concise and precise overview of a given subject".
"Feedbooks is a top destination for eBooks with over 3,000,000
downloads every month. Buy eBooks with a single click, get free
public domain and original books".
"We preserve the best of the old - books by leading experts,
peer‑reviewed and developed to high editorial standards
- fully supported by review copies, teaching supplements and
great service. Then we change everything. Our textbooks are free
online, affordable offline, open–licensed and customisable by
educators."
Project Gutenberg is the oldest producer of free electronic
books (eBooks or etexts) on the Internet. The European
collection has more than 17,000 eBooks to download and
read on your PC, iPhone, Kindle, Sony Reader or other portable
device. Most of the Project Gutenberg
eBooks are older literary works (classics) that are in the
public domain (out-of-copyright) in the United States; the
European site is a follower of Project Gutenberg's philosophy and
focuses primarily on digitising European works, under European
copyright laws. It holds high quality items: books that were
previously published on paper by bona fide publishers and digitised
by the project with the help of thousands of volunteers.
All eBooks can be downloaded in EPUB, Mobipocket, HTML or
simple text formats.
The ICDL Foundation's goal is to build a collection
of books from around the world, representing the
best in children's literature, available online free of
charge. Ultimately, it aspires to have every culture and language
represented so that every child can know and appreciate the riches
of children's literature from the world community.
Its 'simple search' interface makes it suitable for use by young
children and users with learning difficulties. Books can online be
read online (not downloaded, printed or distributed).
The Archive's purposes is to offer permanent access
for researchers, historians, scholars, people with disabilities,
and the general public to historical collections that exist in
digital format. It includes texts, audio, moving images, and
software as well as archived web pages, and provides specialised
services for adaptive reading and information access for the blind
and other persons with disabilities.
Librivox is a non-commercial, non-profit and ad-free project.
LibriVox volunteers record chapters of books in the public domain,
and then release the audio files back onto the net for free.
All recordings are in the public domain in the USA, but some
remain protected by copyright law in Europe, until 70 years
after the author's death. To enable listeners to determine the
copyright status of a particular work, the author's date of
death are being added on the LibriVox catalogue.
Please note the quality of recordings may vary, as all
the readers are volunteers. Over 5,000 unabridged titles are
available so far.
Mobile apps providing access to the collection are available
from Ambling
Books and Traveling
Classics.
