free ebooks
May. 5th, 2006 01:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miriam_eI've compiled a list of ebook sites.
Project Gutenberg is the oldest and biggest repository of free ebooks in the world. Begun by Michael Hart in 1971 and now (2006) carries more than 17,000 ebooks.
http://www.gutenberg.org/
The search page:
http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/
The Australian Project Gutenberg makes available books under Australia's (until recently slightly more open) copyright restrictions. It also specialises in Australian books, for example by A. B. 'Banjo' Paterson, or Henry Lawson, or some of the early settlers' writings, as well as much more recent books.
http://gutenberg.net.au
Books for the blind, or so you can listen to a book while gardening or walking or whatever. I think this project is related to Project Gutenberg.
http://www.audiobooksforfree.com/screen_main.asp
http://www.audiobookssource.com/DownloadeBooks.html
Wikipedia is an amazing free encyclopedia, quickly becoming the biggest, most accurate and complete encyclopedia in the world. Anybody can add to Wikipedia, which is its great strength.
http://www.wikipedia.org/
The wikipedia project has spawned several other projects, one of which is WikiBooks, which produces free educational books online.
http://en.wikibooks.org/
The Internet Archive has a lot of books, film, sound, webpages, etc. available. (Their WayBack machine can sometime find old, lost webpages no longer online.)
http://www.archive.org/
Baen Books is a publishing company who have seen how most publishing companies are making a terrible mistake fighting against ebooks. They now publish free ebooks as well as encouraging people to buy them. They also publish and sell paper books.
http://www.baen.com
http://www.baen.com/library/defaultTitles.htm
Many universities keep large repositories of free ebooks online.
http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/colls.html
http://www.ucpress.edu/digpub/
http://ipl.si.umich.edu/
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/ebooks/ebooklist.html
http://history.hanover.edu/texts.htm
An extensive library of free ebooks by Jack London ('Call of the Wild', 'White Fang', etc)
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/London/
Blackmask makes free ebooks available as well as selling some. Most of their books are really repackaged re-releases of Project Gutenberg books though.
http://www.blackmask.com
Copyright lawyer Lawrence Lessig has made his book available for free. It details how the term 'copyright' has been turned upside down from something that ensured all works went into the public domain 14 years after initial publication, to now where works are tied up till an astonishing 75 or 90 years after the author's death!! He details how all the major media that preach so heavily against 'piracy' themselves began as pirate industries, building upon others' work and that until very recently this was how culture always grew.
http://free-culture.org/freecontent/
Cory Doctorow has released all his science fiction books for free online as well as on paper.
http://www.craphound.com/
West Australian author Sue Isle published her wonderful book 'Flying South' as several instalments on her Live Journal blog. The first entry is at:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/ratfan/6896.html?style=mine#cutid1
the Journals of Adelaide Pell is a free online comic which has a complex and very unusual storyline.
http://www.glassgrapes.com/adpel.html
Scott Adams has released his book 'God's Debris' as a free ebook. It is thought-provoking, though at times silly (like where he gets evolution's mechanism completely wrong -- really strange... I don't know why so many people fail to understand the simple fact of evolution: if a change survives, it passes on its genes; if it dies or doesn't breed then it doesn't... incredibly simple, nothing complex, no invisible hand of evolution guiding things).
http://www.andrewsmcmeel.com/godsdebris/
Computer science teacher Marshall Brain (yes that is his real name) shows in this clear, logical, easy to read ebook how there can not possibly be a god... at least not the kind of god that any of the religions preach.
http://whydoesgodhateamputees.com/
The Skeptics Annotated Bible is a complete annotated bible, Koran, and book of Mormon. The annotations point out the inconsistencies and bloopers these 'holy' books are riddled with.
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/
Fictionwise make a small number of free ebooks available, mostly to lure people into buying their heavily locked ebooks.
http://www.fictionwise.com/
Free art and craft books online at KellsCraft Studios
http://www.kellscraft.com/textcontents.html
Bruce Eckel's boks about computer programming are all available for free online... or you can buy them on paper
http://www.mindview.net/Books/DownloadSites
lots of free computer ebooks
http://maththinking.com/boat/computerbooks.html
Computer book publishers O'Reilly make a lot of books and articles available for free
http://oreilly.com/
http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/
(Inter)National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) has been running for several years now and gets bigger each year. It invites thousands of people around the world to give themselves the excuse to write a novel (of 50,000 words) during November. Each year roughly a seventh of the people who start actually complete their novels during the month. And as a friend of mine said, "It's lucky the aim isn't to write a good novel in a month".
http://www.nanowrimo.org/
This is a worldwide group of people who swap paper books
http://www.paperbackswap.com/index.php
Project Gutenberg is the oldest and biggest repository of free ebooks in the world. Begun by Michael Hart in 1971 and now (2006) carries more than 17,000 ebooks.
http://www.gutenberg.org/
The search page:
http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/
The Australian Project Gutenberg makes available books under Australia's (until recently slightly more open) copyright restrictions. It also specialises in Australian books, for example by A. B. 'Banjo' Paterson, or Henry Lawson, or some of the early settlers' writings, as well as much more recent books.
http://gutenberg.net.au
Books for the blind, or so you can listen to a book while gardening or walking or whatever. I think this project is related to Project Gutenberg.
http://www.audiobooksforfree.com/screen_main.asp
http://www.audiobookssource.com/DownloadeBooks.html
Wikipedia is an amazing free encyclopedia, quickly becoming the biggest, most accurate and complete encyclopedia in the world. Anybody can add to Wikipedia, which is its great strength.
http://www.wikipedia.org/
The wikipedia project has spawned several other projects, one of which is WikiBooks, which produces free educational books online.
http://en.wikibooks.org/
The Internet Archive has a lot of books, film, sound, webpages, etc. available. (Their WayBack machine can sometime find old, lost webpages no longer online.)
http://www.archive.org/
Baen Books is a publishing company who have seen how most publishing companies are making a terrible mistake fighting against ebooks. They now publish free ebooks as well as encouraging people to buy them. They also publish and sell paper books.
http://www.baen.com
http://www.baen.com/library/defaultTitles.htm
Many universities keep large repositories of free ebooks online.
http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/colls.html
http://www.ucpress.edu/digpub/
http://ipl.si.umich.edu/
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/ebooks/ebooklist.html
http://history.hanover.edu/texts.htm
An extensive library of free ebooks by Jack London ('Call of the Wild', 'White Fang', etc)
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/London/
Blackmask makes free ebooks available as well as selling some. Most of their books are really repackaged re-releases of Project Gutenberg books though.
http://www.blackmask.com
Copyright lawyer Lawrence Lessig has made his book available for free. It details how the term 'copyright' has been turned upside down from something that ensured all works went into the public domain 14 years after initial publication, to now where works are tied up till an astonishing 75 or 90 years after the author's death!! He details how all the major media that preach so heavily against 'piracy' themselves began as pirate industries, building upon others' work and that until very recently this was how culture always grew.
http://free-culture.org/freecontent/
Cory Doctorow has released all his science fiction books for free online as well as on paper.
http://www.craphound.com/
West Australian author Sue Isle published her wonderful book 'Flying South' as several instalments on her Live Journal blog. The first entry is at:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/ratfan/6896.html?style=mine#cutid1
the Journals of Adelaide Pell is a free online comic which has a complex and very unusual storyline.
http://www.glassgrapes.com/adpel.html
Scott Adams has released his book 'God's Debris' as a free ebook. It is thought-provoking, though at times silly (like where he gets evolution's mechanism completely wrong -- really strange... I don't know why so many people fail to understand the simple fact of evolution: if a change survives, it passes on its genes; if it dies or doesn't breed then it doesn't... incredibly simple, nothing complex, no invisible hand of evolution guiding things).
http://www.andrewsmcmeel.com/godsdebris/
Computer science teacher Marshall Brain (yes that is his real name) shows in this clear, logical, easy to read ebook how there can not possibly be a god... at least not the kind of god that any of the religions preach.
http://whydoesgodhateamputees.com/
The Skeptics Annotated Bible is a complete annotated bible, Koran, and book of Mormon. The annotations point out the inconsistencies and bloopers these 'holy' books are riddled with.
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/
Fictionwise make a small number of free ebooks available, mostly to lure people into buying their heavily locked ebooks.
http://www.fictionwise.com/
Free art and craft books online at KellsCraft Studios
http://www.kellscraft.com/textcontents.html
Bruce Eckel's boks about computer programming are all available for free online... or you can buy them on paper
http://www.mindview.net/Books/DownloadSites
lots of free computer ebooks
http://maththinking.com/boat/computerbooks.html
Computer book publishers O'Reilly make a lot of books and articles available for free
http://oreilly.com/
http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/
Miscellaneous
(Inter)National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) has been running for several years now and gets bigger each year. It invites thousands of people around the world to give themselves the excuse to write a novel (of 50,000 words) during November. Each year roughly a seventh of the people who start actually complete their novels during the month. And as a friend of mine said, "It's lucky the aim isn't to write a good novel in a month".
http://www.nanowrimo.org/
This is a worldwide group of people who swap paper books
http://www.paperbackswap.com/index.php