What are public domain books? A public domain book is a book with no copyright, a book that was created without a license, or a book where its copyrights expired or have been forfeited. In most countries, the term of protection of copyright expires on the first day of January, 70 years after the death of the latest living author. A notable exception is the United States, where every book published prior to 1926 is in the public domain. For example, the works of Jane Austen, Lewis Carroll, Machado de Assis, Olavo Bilac and Edgar Allan Poe are in the public domain worldwide as they all died over 100 years ago.
As public domain books are no longer under copyright, they become available for public use, and are absolutely free to download. Therefore, the public domain sites could offer great sources to find free ebooks. Here we list the best 15 sites for free ebooks in the public domain that you can quickly download or read online in your browser.
15 Sites for Public Domain Books
| No. | Name | Online/Download | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
1 |
Online/Download |
Project Gutenberg was founded in 1971 and is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of books in the public domain. As of 20 May 2020, Project Gutenberg had reached 62,108 items in its collection of free eBooks. | |
2 |
Online/Download |
Google not only has a paid bookstore that is a part of the Google Play ecosystem, but it also offers millions of free public domain books. It has partnered with academic libraries all over the world to digitize their entire archives. | |
3 |
Online/Download |
Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library offering free universal access to over 29,000,000 books and texts. Over 6,000,000 titles are fully accessible public domain eBooks. | |
4 |
Online/Download |
HathiTrust Digital Library is a large-scale collaborative repository of digital content from over 90 research libraries including content digitized via Google Books and the Internet Archive digitization initiatives, as well as content digitized locally by libraries, offering a collection of over 10 million titles. | |
5 |
Online/Download |
Open Library provides online digital copies in multiple formats, created from images of many public domain, out-of-print, and in-print books. It provides online access to 3,000,000 public domain and out-of-print books. | |
6 |
Download |
Planet eBook is the home of free classic literature. The books Planet eBook publishes in Australia are all in the public domain and out of copyright. It has a good selection of famous classic ebooks in pdf, mobi and epub for downloading. | |
7 |
Download |
Feedbooks is a digital library and cloud publishing service for both public domain and original books founded in June 2007. This site is designed with mobile reading in mind. It’s tailored for mobile browsers, so you can download free ebooks directly to your tablet or smartphone. | |
8 |
Online/Download |
Loyal Books is a great resource for finding both free ebooks and audiobooks. Some ebooks aren’t free, but paid books are separated into their own category. On the website, a variety of file formats are available for download. | |
9 |
Online/Download |
ManyBooks offers more than 50,000 free public domain books for download. The site is well organized so you can find books as easily as possible. You can browse the free books by genre, title, author, or search for any book you want by keywords. | |
10 |
Online |
Authorama is featuring completely free books from a variety of different authors. If you're looking for the classics, this is a good place to start. It brings public domain books from sites like Project Gutenberg into a form easily readable in a web browser. | |
11 |
Download |
Europeana works with thousands of European archives, libraries and museums to share cultural heritage for enjoyment, education and research. This website gives you access to millions of books, music, artworks and more – with sophisticated search and filter tools to help you find what you’re looking for. | |
12 |
Read Print |
Online |
Read Print is one of Time Magazine's 50 best websites. Books, essays, poems, and stories are all available at Read Print. You can also see the site's top five authors and get a list of all of their public domain books. |
13 |
Online |
On Classic Literature, public domain books are extremely well organized into collections: Classic Literature, Children's Picture Books, British Authors, the complete works of William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and lots more. | |
14 |
Online |
The Online Books Page is an index of e-text books available on the Internet, hosted by the library of the University of Pennsylvania. It lists over 3 million books and has several features. | |
15 |
DailyLit |
Online |
DailyLit lets you read literary classics and great new fiction in short installments that you can pick up and put down anytime. You can read an ebook in daily installments, delivered by mail or RSS feed. |
Notice The main format of public domain ebooks is EPUB. If you find a great source of ebooks and they are only available in EPUB, you can use Epubor Ultimate to convert them to PDF or Kindle format without quality loss. With only one click, the ebook format can be converted. What's better, you can also use Epubor Ultimate to help you remove DRM from Kindle, Kobo, Google Play, and Nook ebooks. Just download it for a free trial.
Michelle loves technology & reading very much. She seeks the methods to enjoy eBooks and audiobooks more freely and wants to share everything new she has got with you.
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