The growth in popularity of eReaders such as the Kindle, Sony eReader and even the iPhone has seen a matching growth in interest for digital books (ebooks). Hey – even my 11-year old son wants an eReader (or an iPhone!). The trend has not gone unnoticed and new websites offering free ebooks seem to be springing up weekly. However, ebooks are relatively old (when you think in internet years) and here is a collection of the different types of free ebooks sites currently available.
Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg is the first and largest single collection of free electronic books, or eBooks. They have an extensive collection with more than 28,000 books currently available. Good search facility, with a books in a range of digital formats. They tend to focus on old out-of-print books.
Google Book Search
Regardless of your thoughts about this project it has collected an impressive list of out-of-print books. In recent years Google has set about digitalising as many books as possible. A recent agreement with writers regarding copyright and royalties now looks to have set this project free and it is expected to grow even faster in the coming years.
Scribd
These are a more recent addition to the free ebook crowd but growing quickly. They describe themselves as:
…the largest social publishing company in the world — the website where more than 60 million people each month discover and share original writings and documents.
Writers can upload their work and share it with anyone visiting the site. Worth a look since they focus on much more modern material than Google or Gutenburg.
FreeEbooks.net
There is nothing much to set this site aside from the many other ‘free-ebook’ sites. They all follow pretty much the same format with Amazon style categories and good search facilities. I often think the ‘quality’ of the books on offer tends to vary, though they do have a focus on more modern titles.
Globusz
This company describe themselves as a digital publisher. They say:
We have two primary goals: the first is to be the best e-book publishing house on the internet. The second is, to deliver great service to authors and readers.
I liked this site and the concept. However, I think the fact that they don’t seem to offer any filter as to which books are published. Then, for me, they fall out of the publisher model of only the ‘best’ books. This said they are still worth a look.