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Free public domain ebooks in PDf, ePub, mobi formats
- WalterBright 5y agoI've done some books myself. The proofreading of the OCR'd text takes a great deal of time.
- proteal 5y agohttps://standardebooks.org/ https://standardebooks.org/ Another great source of well formatted, public domain books.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Booktrope 5y agolibravox.org A great source of free (public domain) audiobooks, mostly read very well.
- mynameisash 5y ago* https://librivox.org/ https://librivox.org/
- mrtranscendence 5y agoWell, it's definitely a great source of free audiobooks. (I kid.)
- TheFreim 5y agoListened to some of G.K. Chesterton's work through libravox, quality was great. I suggest that people check it out.
- sundarurfriend 5y agoI find the https://librivox.app/ https://librivox.app/ interface to be much better (same content, afaik, just a different - better - frontend).
- Booktrope 5y agoStill the supreme source of free public domain ebooks https://www.gutenberg.org/ https://www.gutenberg.org/
- mmastrac 5y agoThe quality of transcription on Gutenberg is rough, especially for older transcriptions. Standard eBooks are much higher quality, but selection is limited because of the effort gap. I processed two books from Gutenberg for SE (Devil's Dictionary and a smaller scifi novel) and both were quite a bit of work to bang the books into shape (half the work was metadata enhancement, half was proofreading and correcting) EDIT: After comparing, it's definitely just the raw Gutenburg scan w/formatting. You can see a big batch of fixed typos that weren't applied here: https://github.com/standardebooks/ambrose-bierce_the-devils-dictionary/commit/29ad2c4feb90d579b190a9a2898116db4259dcd3 https://github.com/standardebooks/ambrose-bierce_the-devils-...
- zozbot234 5y agoPerhaps, but Gutenberg is adding a huge amount of good quality content as of late, thanks to their Distributed Proofreaders community. Older content will soon be a small fraction of the total, and much of it will be picked up and updated to current standards.
- mmastrac 5y agoThe DP stuff is better, for sure. The first book I did was DP and it was far less 'buggy' than the older one. The issues were mostly formatting.
- adhesive_wombat 5y agoWikisource provides ebooks too, though the formatting can be patchy for complex formatting like tables and parallel texts. https://en.wikisource.org https://en.wikisource.org
- bryanrasmussen 5y agoThe page said only 15 people donated, I think some people may have been put off by the requirement of providing an email. I nearly was. on edit: 15 out of a larger amount downloading I mean
- GeorgeTirebiter 5y agoShe wants the email address to send you a robo-Thank-You note. (so far....)
- bryanrasmussen 5y agoright, so I mean if she wants more people donating probably don't need the email. Should at least set up some rudimentary analytics to see if people nope out at the donation step when email is required. Since I downloaded a bunch of books I donated but it was sort of iffy when the email field turned red.
- notanexpert 5y agoI didn't even know I could set up PayPal or Stripe to work without getting an email. I will look into this. For what it's worth, the emails I send are never automated, and I literally send a thank you email, but no more (unless people reply back to me that is)
- AdmiralAsshat 5y agoQuite a bit of overlap with Standard EBooks, but it looks like Global Grey has some in categories that SE typically shies away from, so that's a plus.
- pyreal 5y agoI'm doing a test of IPFS and just started uploading a library of public-domain books on a variety of topics that would be useful in a post-EMP or massive technical disruption scenario. The books are mostly pre-electrical age - mid-1800s to early 1900s. Check out the survivor-library here: https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmcigXPHKoWg1g1J4zK5cvexQ5tEBS9VDUpyuhSQxAQ18G https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmcigXPHKoWg1g1J4zK5cvexQ5tEBS9VDUpyuhS...
- electricant 5y agoCool idea. You should consider adding also some relevant patents. There's plenty of knowledge in there not captured by books. This knowledge may be useful if we were to rebuild for example an airship (just naming one of your categories for example).
- pyreal 5y agoThat's a great idea!
- alin23 5y agoWait.. how are you going to read those ebooks in a post-EMP scenario?
- pyreal 5y agoUsing an old technology called paper to print the books before trouble hits.
- Sunspark 5y agoYou won't live long enough to read them. If a strong-enough EMP hits in orbit, it will immediately take out all vehicles and electricity. With that, refrigerated food expires and transport of new food ends as all vehicles and trains have computer chips and should you have a classic car with no chips, the fuel pumps need electricity to operate. Horses and gauge-compatible steam engines are scarce these days, so you'll be left with cans and dry goods like rice, all the while fighting everyone else for access to the diminishing stocks of their personal food supply. The stores will be looted/empty in short order. Basically, almost everyone in an urban population is going to die after cannibalization runs out. Only remote rural farmers might survive.
- vymague 5y agoAny good database for creative commons/free textbooks or technical books?
- Qem 5y agoI wonder what is the best calculus textbook that can be found in Project Gutemberg today. The essence of the subject surely didn't change much in the last 100 years, and publishers today care mostly about sabotaging second hand market by constantly changing exercises and order of subject from one edition to another. Why just not break the museum piece and learn from old books?
- db65edfc7996 5y agoWithout a doubt, Calculus Made Easy[0]. Though, I find the PG layout to be atrocious, thankfully, someone has put the material onto a much nicer website [1]. [0]: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33283 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33283 [1]: https://www.calculusmadeeasy.org/ https://www.calculusmadeeasy.org/
- salamandersauce 5y agoThere's already open calculus textbooks (see link below for example) that can mention stuff like calculators and computers while also taking advantage of modern typesetting and modern writing styles. Notation has also changed over time, for example using a double struck Z to represent the set of integers only dates to the 1930s but is widely used and understood now. https://openstax.org/details/books/calculus-volume-1 https://openstax.org/details/books/calculus-volume-1
- ivansavz 5y ago> publishers today care mostly about sabotaging second hand market by constantly changing exercises and order of subject from one edition to another Yeah I know what you mean! Eight edition is the same as seventh, but with random permutation of problem sets, just enough so you can't use for class assignment. I once had a teacher who would give us the inverse permutation to make it easy for students to use the older edition, but he was the exception... Why do you want to learn calculus? If it's for review/fun, I'd like to recomment the MECH+CALC book that I wrote. It's not free, but very cheap. See preview here https://minireference.com/static/excerpts/noBSmathphys_v5_preview.pdf https://minireference.com/static/excerpts/noBSmathphys_v5_pr... Currently v5.4. I've been treating the problem sets as an append-only list so numbers are "backward compatible" with older versions.
- FrenchDevRemote 5y ago
- wolverine876 5y agoPerhaps the proprieter - who is doing all the work themself, for free, giving it all away - is trying to cover expenses? All books on this site are free. ... a one-woman operation that has been running for over eight years. I format every single ebook myself, as well as maintaining the website. This is a passion project that was born from a love for reading and a commitment to make free ebooks that look good and feel enjoyable to read.
- austhrow743 5y agoThis argument could be applied to the majority of media platforms and plenty of people pay a lot more than £40 once off for those.
- amatecha 5y agoI literally just spent $25 on a bunch of bandcamp albums that are "pay what you want" (I could have put $0) just to support the artist. Sometimes supporting people is just a cool/good thing to do.
- BossingAround 5y agoYour argument in a nutshell: "But I can steal it easily, why do I pay?" I think that's one of the reasons I won't be writing a technical book.
- FrenchDevRemote 5y agoI think all books should be free for everyone. You'd get less moron and criminals that way.
- wolverine876 5y agoThere are fewer morons and criminals on the free internet? Hmmm ...
- wolverine876 5y agoThis is fantastic. Projects like this lift me up: a one-woman operation that has been running for over eight years. I format every single ebook myself, as well as maintaining the website. This is a passion project that was born from a love for reading and a commitment to make free ebooks that look good and feel enjoyable to read. I use sources such as Project Gutenberg, Archive.org, and sometimes my own book collections. These texts serve as a foundation, and then public domain artwork is added to create a cover. Next comes editing and formatting for digital devices - either PDF, epub, or Kindle format. And voila, the process is complete. They don't even have ads!
- notanexpert 5y agoI'm glad you like the site! I really do love doing it. Also, I just updated the about page and index page that had 8 years - it's actually been closer to 10 now :)
- cercatrova 5y agoAnd who can forget libgen as well?
- auraham 5y agoWonder if there is something similar in spanish
- teleforce 5y agoFree ebooks from eBooks.com: https://www.ebooks.com/en-my/free https://www.ebooks.com/en-my/free
- notanexpert 5y agoI just wanted to say thank you for the love shown to the site in the past few hours. I've never had so many sales and donations in one day! I was so scared to post a link here. Someone suggested I should a few weeks ago, but although I read this site quite a lot, I never thought to post my site. I am not really tech minded, and my site is quite simple. But last night, I thought - ok, just do it. So I posted this, and went off to bed (in the UK). Woke up at 2.30am and saw many notifications for sales, and just ended up getting up. So thank you. I love doing the site, and I hope you all find it useful :)
- vorpalhex 5y agoThank you for running the site!
- notanexpert 5y agoIt really is a pleasure :)
- granneman 5y agoI appreciate all that you’re doing, but you really should include a license in your books. Since they’re all public domain, something like the Creative Commons Public Domain Mark 1.0: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/ https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/ would suit. That makes the licensing situation completely clear to anyone who comes across the books. However, I also noticed a complication. In your FAQ, you state “However, I DO take issue with people just taking all my ebooks, and offering them on their own site, as is, and not taking out my logo and website name first. Please don't do this. If you take out my logo and website name - fair enough - but if you don't, please bear in mind this is then copyright infringement.” That should also be made clear in each book. Further, I’m not sure if you can really say that your website name is copyrighted. You can trademark a website name, but I’m pretty sure you can’t say it is copyrighted. I could be wrong — IANAL — & will happily stand correction. In the footer of Standard Ebooks, it says: “Content produced by or for Standard Ebooks L3C is dedicated to the public domain via the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. Content not produced by or for Standard Ebooks L3C but displayed on this website may be subject to copyright.” (https://standardebooks.org/ https://standardebooks.org/) Perhaps that sort of contrast would be a guide (not necessarily about your website’s content, but as a guide to separating things out). While there, you might want to take a look at https://standardebooks.org/about/standard-ebooks-and-the-public-domain https://standardebooks.org/about/standard-ebooks-and-the-pub... as well. Great project! I hope some of these points are helpful to you in your endeavors.
- mukundesh 5y agohttps://archive.org/details/books?sort=titleSorter https://archive.org/details/books?sort=titleSorter another great source, sadly not well formatted.
- ZeroGravitas 5y agoOpenlibrary.org is a slightly better frontend to this collection, from the same organisation. It'll link to external sites when that's a better option, including libraries, but also offer links to these scans. https://openlibrary.org/help/faq/reading#which https://openlibrary.org/help/faq/reading#which
- gyulai 5y agoThis is great! Thank you so much for putting in that work. Suggestion: It would be really great to have PDFs formatted for smaller paper sizes. With these PDFs, the font is going to get really small when reading on a remarkable or similar tablets and ebook readers. (Though one can always download the EPUBs and format them into PDF with optimized screen sizes using Calibre).
- notanexpert 5y agoI'm glad you like it! Regarding the PDFs - I will look into that. I think I always assumed if someone was reading on a smaller screen, an epub would suffice, but I shall see what I can do with the PDFs.
- gyulai 5y agoI have the old remarkable and use it without its cloud features. Even though, according to its documentation, it's supposed to be able to handle EPUBs, I have, for some reason, never gotten them to work. I have also kind of "standardized" on PDF for the way I manage my own collection, because you can always make EPUBs into PDFs, but not the other way around.
- wolverine876 5y ago> I think I always assumed if someone was reading on a smaller screen, an epub would suffice If it helps to understand why someone would stick to PDFs: I want to both preserve my ebooks over the long term (decades) and annotate them - comments, highlighting, etc. ePub's format is less stable for the long term, but most of all it lacks standardized annotation (afaict, after some detailed research). Also, if I annotate a book on my computer, I want the same copy on my small screen. I hope that's helpful!
- notanexpert 5y agoIt is - thank you for the explanation :)
- gyulai 5y agoCan you provide some pointers on the tech stack you use for producing these? Do you have something similar to https://github.com/standardebooks/tools https://github.com/standardebooks/tools ?
- notanexpert 5y agoMy process is very simple. They are way more technical than me. I start off by entering everything into Word and get the text nicely formatted, then I work from that to create the PDF, epub, and Kindle versions. The ebooks I put out have definitely improved since I began the site though. My abilities only run as far as HTML and CSS - although I did just start learning programming recently (so I have a fallback career in my fast approaching old age!)
- tomcam 5y agoSince you're getting more tech oriented, I'd like to propose that you consider rehosting this on a site like Netlify or Cloudflare. They host static sites for free. You could use something like algolia for search. Poof, hosting costs go away completely.
- notanexpert 5y agoI've heard of Netlify and Cloudfare, but only vaguely know what they are. I think this is about the third time I've said this in these posts but - I will look into this too! Thank you for the suggestions :)
- hnreader17 5y agoI always search for books at https://ca1lib.org/ https://ca1lib.org/. It has has almost 10 million books in a high quality, with no ads and easy downloads
- russellbeattie 5y agoIf you're looking to read a classic, and have tried a few and were put off by language or pace, I totally recommend Treasure Island. Written in 1881 for a children's magazine, it's more than accessible and still super enjoyable. It's like a fun parody of a pirate adventure, until you realize it's the OG of pirate adventures, and that somehow makes it better. Like seeing the Mona Lisa in person, just to see what the fuss is about. https://www.globalgreyebooks.com/treasure-island-ebook.html https://www.globalgreyebooks.com/treasure-island-ebook.html
- tomcam 5y agoI LOVE the business model (free to download individually, but download them all for a free not much greater than standard book prices in the US). And it's worth it just for the Charles Fort books, which would appeal to many HN readers. Think X-Files, but with a sublime sense of humor and all culled from newspapers and books of the time.
- UncleSlacky 5y ago"Mr X" has added useful footnotes to Fort's books here: http://resologist.net/ http://resologist.net/
- B1FF_PSUVM 5y agoAnother curated free library: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/ebooks.php https://www.mobileread.com/forums/ebooks.php It's an open forum, there's a bunch of different contributors, with a lot of German contributions.
- SahAssar 5y agoOne request/suggestion to the author: add wikidata links to the books that have wikidata entries, that way people can cross-reference public domain status for their area, look up the book in other places linked via that (be it wikipedia, gutenberg, etc). I think for people interested in learning more about the books it would be a great way to see more info about them. You could also pull that data into the site directly if you wanted to. For example: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q768792 https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q768792
- zozbot234 5y agoWikidata modeling for books is quite non trivial, there is a distinction between the "underlying work" and its "editions and translations" that adds complexity for typical use, and isn't even totally clear at times (e.g. is X an "edition/translation" or a new creative work that's merely "based" on a previous one? It depends - different people can answer the question differently! Is manifestation A the "same edition" as manifestation B?). Even Wikisource.org, which is a Wiki project, hasn't managed a comprehensive integration with Wikidata as of yet! Regardless, the OP is doing some great editorial and curation work, and this is something that many other ebook resources don't have. It's great stuff.
- SahAssar 5y agoAgreed, it's incomplete and imperfect, but I still think that it would be a good addition. And I also definitely agree that the OP does great work, I bought the full collection just before writing my last comment.
- irthomasthomas 5y agoI would add Ushers History of Mechanical Inventions https://archive.org/details/historyofmechani00ushe https://archive.org/details/historyofmechani00ushe And something I want to read but haven't found a copy: Secret Book of Secrets by Ibn Khalaf Al-Muradi When I looked at the science of engineering and saw that it had disappeared after it's ancient heritage, that it's masters had perished, and that their memories are now forgotten, I worked my wits and thoughts in secrecy about philosophical shapes and figures, which could move the mind, with effort, from nothingness to being and from idleness to motion. And I arranged these shapes one by one in drawings and explained them. ~AD 1000
- gymshoes 5y agoLove the way the books are available to be browsed. Sorted by downloads, viewable as collections and by series. It's a great experience for someone new to the classics. Nice work