The rise in popularity of tablets and e-readers has created a huge demand for e-books. However, unlike physical books, the process of buying e-books is constrained because of the limited number of online stores as well the proprietary formats most of them use. If you have an iPad and buy e-books from the iBooks, then access to these books is limited to Apple hardware. Similar is the situation with Amazon's Kindle, although they offer Kindle apps for iOS and Android.
But if you are someone who wants to read some quality literature, fiction or non-fiction, then here are 5 websites from which you can get e-books for free, legally. You can use access these e-books from your smartphones, tablets and your computers.
1. Project Guttenberg
Guttenberg project is one of the largest sources for free e-books. Gutenberg offers over 54,000 free e-books, which includes many of the world's greatest works of literature for which copyright has expired. Project Guttenberg creates its e-books with the help of thousands of volunteers.
To get free e-books from Guttenberg, all you need is to go the website, find the e-book you want and just download. You don't even have to register or subscribe. Most importantly, Guttenberg offers its e-books in multiple formats, so that you can read them with your Kindle, smartphone, or with the iBooks app on iPad.
2. ManyBooks
ManyBooks is another website that offers free e-books. ManyBooks boasts an e-book collection of around 33,000, that span across different genres from adventure, biography, horror, romance to science fiction. Compared to Project Guttenberg, ManyBooks website offers a cleaner and easy to navigate interface. However, unlike Guttenberg, not all the books here is free, although most of them are. And to get free ebooks or discounts, you have to register with the website as well.
3. LibriVox
LibriVox offers audiobooks that are free for anyone to listen. Librivox is a non-commercial, non-profit and ad-free project, with audiobooks created by volunteers. LibriVox volunteers record chapters of books in the public domain, and then we release the audio files back onto the net for free.
All of this audio is in the public domain, so you may use it for whatever purpose you wish. However, LibriVox gives a line of caution to its users. Since the audiobooks they provide are in the public domain, readers and listeners should be aware that many of them are very old. And it may contain language or express notions that are antiquated at best, offending at worst.
4. Scribd
Scribd is a digital library and e-book and audiobook subscription service that includes one million titles. Scribd hosts 60 million documents on its open publishing platform. Scribd's e-book subscription service is available on Android and iOS smartphones and tablets, as well as the Kindle Fire, Nook, and personal computers. Scribd offers all kinds of reading materials: presentations, textbooks, popular reading, and much more, all organized according to the topic.
5. Bookboon
Bookboon is currently the world's largest online source for free textbooks. Its collection is focused on publishing mostly student literature. Bookboon.com has published more than 1,000 free textbooks for students. These textbooks can be downloaded in PDF format without prior registration. Unlike others in this list, Bookboon is backed by advertizing in their e-books.
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