The ebook era is here to stay, and perspectives are endless!
The dynamic technology and mobility affect our everyday life. They even influence our reading habits. Contemporary young people prefer reading books using their e-readers, smart phones, and tablets.
Isn’t it great that you can read anywhere without having your thick book with you all the time?
You can quickly find and easily download almost any book you’d like to read. At no cost.
According to statistics, digital book sales are predicted to account roughly for about a quarter of book sales worldwide. Ebooks are supposed to bring a revenue of about 20 billion US dollars by the year 2018.
Another curious fact:
Will ebooks ever replace paper books?
There is no consensus yet as to whether digital editions will replace paperback.
But here are some benefits of using ebooks.
- Saving space
- Cutting cost
- Convenient reading
- Possibility to change reading settings.
Did you know?
One of the concerns about online reading is that it has enabled the so-called “
F-shaped reading pattern.” The point here is that while reading any digital content, a human eye scans the page in an F-shape. It helps to absorb just a few general key ideas of an article without deeply penetrating into the topic. This issue results in lack of depth in reading and thinking.
No one can be sure about the outcome of this electronic-paper battle. However, combining paper books and ebooks must be the best way to get all the advantages from reading.
Great places to get free ebooks and audio books
Are you looking for a good place to download an ebook?
Or maybe you’re searching for audio recordings to listen to?
Search no more!
We have created a full list of the websites where you will find any media materials to read and to listen online.
Watch out! You may easily get stuck on any of these sites for too long.
Here are the helpful resources you’ll find in this article:
- Free fiction and non-fiction books
- Free education books and textbooks
- Free reference books
- Free audio books
Free fiction and non-fiction books
A website with 100+ free books from different authors. The format of the books: HTML and ASCII. The new books are added each month.
Book Stacks hosts 60+ ebooks written between 400BC and 1955. You can download them from a direct link in PDF format.
Founded in 1988, Bookboon is the world’s biggest ebook publisher now. There are currently 1,000+ textbooks for students, as well as 600+ ebooks for professionals in the
business field in 9 different languages.
Download free books from BookRix collection or read them online. Everyone will find a book to their liking: romance, short story, thriller, etc.
This resource gives an opportunity for users to publish their own books, choose among 21,700+ ebooks to read, and download a special e-reading application.
The Rosetta Project includes illustrated free online books and translations for kids. Volunteers are welcome to help with translation, or contribute materials for the project.
Classic Bookshelf is a good resource to read classic books online. Classic Bookshelf offers its users easy e-reading with the help of a special Java applet. This program allows the readers to choose the best text size, spacing, and color they like.
Classic Reader currently has more than 3,800 classic books, short stories, and plays available online by different classic writers and poets, such as Dickens and Shakespeare.
A curious resource where you can read free books using your email or RSS. All you have to do is select a book and set up the time when you want to have it delivered. This way you’ll get your book just in time and will be spending just 5–15 min. on reading daily.
Ebook Lobby is an online library with free nonfiction books. Choose the book by categories: art, business, law, sports, computing, education, etc.
This site is a great place to find free online novels, bestsellers, short stories, plays, poetry, and picture books. You can use different filters to select the right book for you.
Whatever book you’re looking for, you are likely to find it on FreeBooks.com. Moreover, the users are free to contact the administrators to help them find materials unavailable on the website. All kinds of downloadable
textbooks and ebooks in various topics and genres are available on the site.
Find books from rising authors here. You’ll enjoy reading the entertaining romance and fiction. All kinds of non-fiction literature can also be found here.
This site offers thousands of full-text books of different genres and topics. No payment is required.
This website has thousands of downloadable books available on any topic and in different popular formats. Moreover, you can find trending books and interesting news from the book world.
The Internet Archive, being one of the biggest free media resources, currently counts more than 10,000,000 books and texts.
A great place to find both free and paid books. You can choose from over 5 million, and download Kobo apps to make your reading more convenient. Get recommendations, find top-rated books, and read previews to opt for the best books.
You can find 33,000+ free books all around this site. It offers the users multiple search opportunities: by genres, titles, authors, languages, as well as recommended and popular books.
A big collection of books about computers, programming, software development, web design, IT, AI, computer hardware, networking, etc. Feel free to download them and enjoy reading.
Open Culture invites the users to get acquainted with their catalog, offering 800 free eBooks to be downloaded for an e-reader, iPad, PC, iPhone, smart phone. Their collection includes ever-living works by J.Austin, F.Scott Fitzgerald, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, and many others.
Classic literature lovers will like this place on the Web. There are hundreds of books in the classic genre on Page By Page. You can search books by authors here.
There are already more than 53,000 free books located in this catalog. The readers can choose from epub books or kindle ebooks. You can either download them or read them online. Thousands of volunteers helped to digitize and proofread the published books.
Users can read stories and romance novels free of charge here. Moreover, this resource can become a great stepping-stone for beginners: write a story or a book, and get quick feedback.
This site will offer you a big collection of the finest classics for reading online. You can read them online, download them, or go directly from the site page to Amazon to buy a hardcopy.
ReadAnyBook.com is another great site offering a big collection of books to be added to your library. Track the “Free book of the day” update. You can download your favorite book in any popular format to read it on your e-reader or upload your own book for others to read.
This is a searchable resource currently offering 3500+ full books, 4400+ short stories, and poems by 260+ writers. Moreover, you will find over 8500 quotes in their database, and more than 340 quizzes. Join the discussions with thousands of other members on the forum.
This constantly updated resource presents more than 2 million free books. You can also choose from the collection of banned books and prize winners.
There are in total over 2 million works on the website available in various formats. You can select from a “curated collection” with about 50,000 books, and the rest can be found in the “extended shelves”.
A big directory for free books online and ebooks in different categories, like spirituality, art, entertainment, history, horror, mystery, and many other genres.
Free education books and textbooks
Search throughout your preferred subject areas, and find a fantastic array of free textbooks. The goal of this project is to make OER Open Textbooks open for use by college students and faculty.
Curriki is an open education service and acts primarily in support of K-12 education. You will find a huge amount of books on this website, but even more so, Curriki has a variety of learning and teaching materials.
Enjoy reading free books in exact sciences here: in computers, mathematics, technical books, lecture notes, etc.
This is the storage of open access books in computer science,
textbooks, and lecture notes for free. The collection currently counts 1100+ books, and it keeps on growing.
This resource contains links to helpful free textbooks in mathematics. You can safely download, read, or print them out.
This site contributes to the free and open dissemination of global knowledge. Everyone can find open access textbooks and other educational materials here.
Open Culture includes over 200 open access textbooks written by knowledgeable scholars.
You can find lots of open access materials published on the website. They are divided into several groups for your convenience: subject areas, grade levels, and types of materials. Feel free to use whatever you might need.
The non-profit project OpenStax was created to improve access to education for students. Free educational books and other materials on OpenStax are now used by hundreds of thousands of students. You can easily join them as well.
This online research library offers both free and paid features. You can find more than 83,000 academic books and over 10 million articles from the leading publishers worldwide.
Textbook Revolution is a free book area run by students. The aim of the project is to bring free educational materials into the classrooms. Anyone can find textbook reviews or select free resources for education. The books are available in PDF, can be viewed as ebooks online, or just give the link to a website with the content.
TextBookGo.com is a great source for free ebooks from all sources and for all kinds of courses. Students can quickly download the needed material onto their device and start reading it straight away. Others are free to share the e-texts they have with others.
A variety of textbooks, ebooks, free learning stuff, video lectures, free learning materials, and free courses are presented on this site.
WikiBooks is a big collection of non-fiction books where anyone can contribute. There are currently 2800+ books with 55,700+ pages available at no cost.
Free reference books
Bartleby is one of the leading publishers of content generated by students, researchers, and other creative minds. This website will provide you with any information you might need and on any topic imaginable for free.
The Bibliomania Reference Section is a treasure for all intellectually curious people. In just one place you will find any language reference book, like dictionaries, quotations, synonym books, thesauruses, literary sources, linguistics dictionaries, etc.
You’ll find over 100 credible sources on this website: dictionaries, encyclopedias, and thesauruses with synonyms, facts, definitions, abbreviations, and word origins.
A constantly updated collection of interesting facts from all over the world.
This section contains free reference ebooks and guides. Some of the resources can be viewed online, and some of them are downloadable.
Obooko includes a wide range of reference ebooks open for reading free of charge. Discover guidebooks, almanacs, compendiums, and directories to help you boost your knowledge and become smarter.
A useful website to be bookmarked. You’ll get an extensive range of directories (almanacs, libraries, catalogs), calendars, research guides, encyclopedias, internet research guides, hoaxes, and other helpful data to make your life and studies easier.
The Encyclopedias Section of the site is a useful page for anyone wishing to expand their horizon. You’ll find references to 27 encyclopedias from all around the web. It’s worth bookmarking.
This is the most comprehensive free online dictionary, thesaurus, and encyclopedia of synonyms, abbreviations, definitions, and idioms. It includes specialized dictionaries in various fields, like legal, medical, and financial.
Free audio books online
200+ audio books for children in MP3 format for free. The books available are mostly from the 40s and 50s.
A catalog of audio files with free classics. All audio books are available in MP3 and M4b formats for iTunes and iPods.
The Gutenberg Audio Book Project offers a great selection of audio books. Choose from 2 options: audio texts read by humans or by computer generated voices.
The Internet Archive has placed over 13,000 audio books and poetry online. Download them for free.
Free classic albums for kids counted in hundreds. This online project features classical characters of the Golden Age, Christmas songs and stories, and extended-play recordings.
Learn Out Loud is one of the Web’s biggest directories of audio and video files for education purposes. There are 10,000+ resources available for free download.
Librivox is a storage of free audio format books read by volunteers worldwide. The collection is being regularly updated. You can browse it by an author, title, genre/subject, language.
Find your favorite audio book out of 100,000+ free files on the site. Free and paid offers are both available.
Lit2Go is an online collection of files in MP3 format. It includes stories and poems. What makes it even more convenient is that you can also download the file in PDF and print it out so that you can read it as you listen to the audio.
Loyal Books is a good place to find audiobooks and ebooks. Choose files by popularity, genres, or languages, and download your favorite ones.
The Naropa University Archive has more than 5,000 hours of poetry recordings. These include lectures, seminars, workshops, panels, readings, etc. They are carried out by the eminent U.S. literary Avant-garde representatives.
Podiobooks includes hundreds of free audio books. It is one of a kind, and the biggest library presenting serialized audio books free for anyone’s use on the web.
Spoken Alexandria Project is a massive collection of spoken word audios that include public domain classics and modern works (with permission). You can download and redistribute MP3, AAC, and Ogg Vorbis audio books available here for free.
Storynory is a fabulous site containing audio files with actors reading fairy tales, myths, and original series. You can also read the text as you listen to it. You can play all the stories online, on tablets and on mobiles.
The Voices of the Poets is a great digital art project where spoken word artists read their poems. Find MP3 recordings and videos of poets declaiming their poems.
A web storage of free audio ebooks in classic literature and philosophy. You can access both audio and PDF files.
Use this list to entertain yourself and expand your horizons.
