Resources for Cheap and Free Books, Pt. 2: Something Old and Something NewChecking out the public domain
Works in the public domain are those things that belong to the public and thus are free for people to access and use in whatever way they want. Though public domain works include movies, music, works of art, government documents, and numerous other things, the works I’ll be talking about in this article are books. United States copyright law is complicated, but for the most part, books enter the public domain ninety-five years after their initial publication. The works that entered the public domain on January 1, 2026, were first published in the US in 1931 and include works such as Agatha Christie’s first Miss Marple mystery Murder at the Vicarage, Carolyn Keene’s first Nancy Drew mystery The Secret of the Old Clock, and The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper. Though classic novels like Pride and Prejudice or Huckleberry Finn are constantly being reprinted in new editions with annotations, essays about the work, illustrations, and beautiful covers, they are free to access and finding them for no cost these days is fairly easy– assuming you don’t mind reading them in a digital format– as there are many websites devoted to providing downloadable books for you to read on a phone, tablet, or computer.
Here are a handful of the options: Project Gutenberg was the first site that provided online access to public domain ebooks. It was founded by Michael Hart, who is credited with developing ebooks in the first place back in 1971 after a got a user account at the University of Illinois. Though the computers at the university were generally used for data processing, Hart saw how they could be used for data distribution. He began by typing the US Declaration of Independence into a text file he could share with other users. By 1987, Hart had typed up 313 public domain works into his digital library, and as networking grew the library expanded further. Eventually, other people got involved and scanning technology allowed books to be copied into Project Gutenberg’s library much faster. Now, the site has a collection of 75,000 works freely available to the public. It does not require making an account or installing an app. You just need an internet connection and a device that can open ebook files. The books are searchable, so you can look for them via author or title, but Project Gutenberg also offers reading lists based on a topic (e.g. ‘Architecture‘, ‘Gothic Fiction‘, ‘Physics‘) general categories like ‘History’ or ‘Arts & Culture’, and the Top 100 list that, unsurprisingly, includes books like Pride and Prejudice and The Count of Monte Cristo. Available file types will vary from one book to another, but include various epub formats for new and older e-readers, Kindle files you can send to the Kindle app, plain text files, html, and a ‘read now’ option that opens the book without you having to download a file. The quality of the files can vary based on the importing method, and while I’ve had a few books that had formatting issues, the majority of the books I’ve gotten from Project Gutenberg showed up just fine and were perfectly readable. Do be aware that translations are copyrighted, so if you’re looking for a newer translation, it won’t be available here. You’ll have to check with Penguin Classics and other classic book imprints for the latest translations. There is an Australian version of Project Gutenberg, too, and you can find it here: Project Gutenberg Australia Alex Cabal founded Standard Ebooks in 2015 after having trouble accessing well-formatted ebooks while he was living in Germany. As I mentioned above, the books available from sites like Project Gutenberg can have formatting issues depending on how they were imported. The volunteers who work on the Standard Ebooks project pull files from public domain sites like Project Gutenberg and reset the formatting, file format, typefaces, and correct mistakes before saving the work to a standardized EPUB file available for free without DRM technology. The books in the Standard Ebooks catalog have covers made with public domain paintings, kind of like the black cover Penguin Classics books. I couldn’t find anything listing how many books are currently available on Standard Ebooks’ website, but they added their 1,000th book to the collection in 2024. The search option allows you to find books by title or author name, or browse collections like adventure or science fiction. The Public Domain Library is a newer collection of public domain ebooks freely available for download. It has a small collection– only about thirty titles as of this writing– but the people behind the project want to continue expanding the collection, especially when it comes to foreign language books. Faded Page is a website focused on works in the public domain in Canada, but it does include public domain works from other countries, too. It was founded in 2007 by David Jones and Michael Shepard who helped found Distributed Proofreaders Canada, which is a group of volunteers seeking to make books accessible to the general public. They have nearly 8,900 books available for download in multiple file formats with a ‘send to Kindle’ option available on the download page. The Serial Reader App was launched in 2016 by Michael Schmitt, and is available for free on iOS and Android devices. It delivers a section of a classic book (about twenty minutes’ reading time) every day at an hour of your choosing. This is a great way to get into a book that might otherwise be intimidating due to its size, since it’s only about twenty minutes’ reading at a time. The books are unabridged, so you’re not losing anything by going with this route. There is a variety of genres to choose from, as well as Russian, French, and English literature. If you’ve been wanting to get back into reading but you don’t have much free time in the day, give the Serial Reader app a try. Over time, you can get through a lot of books by reading them for just twenty minutes each day. If you need resources for public images, newspapers, old magazines, recipes, census records, or whatever else you can think of, there are plenty of places to access them. The following are only a handful of sources I could think of off the top of my head:
These are all resources for old books. It’s harder to find new books for free, but there are some legal options out there. NetGalley was founded in 2008 to connect readers with digital advance copies of books for review. Initially, it was designed to help publishers get early copies of books out to reviewers, industry professionals, and librarians without having the expense of paper galleys, but it has since expanded and now it’s a popular site for influencers who review books on social media. NetGalley works with a wide variety of publishers from the Big 5 in the US to independent imprints. Readers from the US, UK, Australia, Canada, Germany, France, and Japan can create accounts and start reading for free. The point of Advance Review Copies or ARCs is to help build hype for upcoming releases, so NetGalley users are encouraged to review the books on whatever medium they prefer, whether they’re booksellers hand selling in their shops, or influencers talking about the books on their various social media platforms. If you don’t want to build a blog/YouTube channel/TikTok/Instagram or whatever, you can just write a review on a site like GoodReads, The StoryGraph, Amazon, or Barnes & Noble. You don’t have to write reviews, but publishers do look at your feedback ratio (the number of books you’re given vs the number of books you’ve reviewed). In many cases, if your feedback ratio is low you might not be approved for a title you’ve requested– especially if it’s a major release. There is a selection of ‘Read Now’ titles available to any user who signs up. These are usually lesser-known books from independent imprints or by debut authors, though sometimes publishers will grant ‘Read Now’ access for highly anticipated books for twenty-hour hours. It’s a great way to find new books by authors you’ve never heard of. You do need to have an account, but it’s free to sign up and start reading. Do be aware that, when you review a book you’ve gotten from NetGalley, you need to acknowledge that it was a free book provided by NetGalley and the publisher. There are other places to request advance copies, like Edelweiss, but I’ve only used NetGalley, which has provided plenty of books for me. If you know of any sites to find free and legal books to download, please feel free to share them in the comments. Traveling in Books is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can tell Traveling in Books that their writing is valuable by pledging a future subscription. You won't be charged unless they enable payments.
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