eBook Buying Guide

If you search Google for “free ebooks,” you’ll get over 100,000,000 hits. Pretty amazing, since there is only a fraction of that number of eBook titles in existence. That search will provide you with a very long list of sites that claim to provide free eBooks, long enough to keep you busy browsing for many, many hours. I should know. I did exactly that while researching the eBook Buying Guide.

Let me save you a whole lot of time. Most of these sites are worthless. Many are simply collections of links to other sites who claim to deliver free eBooks, which link you to more sites that claim to deliver free eBooks, etc. Many others are simply retailers in disguise. You get to the site only to find that you must pay for a “membership” or buy their eBooks outright. Could that be false advertising? Another type of site is the online-reading site, which provides books for in-browser reading on your computer, smartphone, etc. I do not include online-reading sites because this article is a resource for eReaders.

Fortunately, there are some very reputable sites that have been creating and acquiring free eBooks for years, so have built impressive collections. Among these are Project Gutenberg, Free-eBooks.net, BeBook, Google Books, the Internet Archive, the Open Library and ManyBooks.net. However, these sites vary dramatically in selection, difficulty of use, book quality and format. Let’s cut to the chase: Which ones are the best? Well, after many hours of research and looking at many downloaded books (on a Kindle, my weapon of choice), I have found three that I will visit again:

• Project Gutenberg is the poster site for free eBooks. It has over 33,000 free books, plus affiliates with more. It provides a good array of file types to work with almost all readers. The search function is a little clumsy and sometimes the search results are a little hard to decipher, but with a little effort, you will be pleased with the result.
• BeBook is a line of Android-based tablets with an emphasis on readability. Check out the BeBook eReaders here. In addition to the eReaders, BeBook provides a large selection of free eBooks, some of which are Project Gutenberg products. The books are available in plain text and PDF and are of very good quality.
• ManyBooks.net is an affiliate of Project Gutenberg, but it has its own collection of eBooks. ManyBooks has a wonderfully easy search system, the books are a breeze to find, and the number of available file formats is incredible. ManyBooks definitely deserves 5 stars for doing everything right.

Perhaps the easiest source of free eBooks is the store from which you purchased your eReader. While I give BeBook highest marks for providing a totally-free library with universal file formats so all eReaders can play, you might also consider these:

• Amazon.com, maker of the Kindle, has a huge selection of eBooks, but only for the Kindle. Cruise to the Free eBook Collections page or the Kindle Popular Classics section for a terrific collection of free Kindle eBooks.
• Barnes & Noble, maker of the NOOK, also has a Free NOOKbooks section. The Barnes & Noble offering is not as extensive as the Amazon one, but seems to have more recent releases.
• Not to be outdone, Borders, maker of the Kobo eReader, claims to have over a million free eBooks available through their Free eBooks section. The books are easily searchable and available in PDF and ePub formats. On the downside, there are many duplicates and referential volumes of popular books (I got 32 results for “Huckleberry Finn”, 13 of which appear to be the real thing). Also, the eBooks are from a variety of publishers and the quality varies wildly. Some are converted to text, while others are scanned documents (each page is an image). Still, with a selection such as this, you can find a lot of good stuff.

If you don’t find what you want in the above sites, you have still another good option – the “meta-search” sites. These are Web sites that provide links to many free eBook sites or better yet, allow you to search many sites with a single click. Some of the better meta-search sites are:

• Bookyards is somewhat confusing, but allows you to search several sites at once.
• The Online Books Page lists over a million books.
• Digital Book Index searches an impressive number of Universities as well as eBook publishers.
• e-book.com.au links to a good number of overseas sites with worthwhile free eBooks.
• MobileRead has an extensive list of sites that offer free eBooks, in English and 12 other languages.

I had to wade through an incredible number of fertilizer merchants before I was done. I hope all of my work is of help to you. When you’re done reading, come back and visit us at Buying Guide.