read online free websites

Books to read online free

There are lots of read online free websites which collect free books. If you are here it is because you want to read online for free, but you don’t know how to do it. Sometimes we want to read a book online and we don’t know where to search for it. The Internet allows us to read a lot of wonderful stories for free, just at the click of a mouse. In this post, I will suggest you free online book reading websites.

 Why people want to read books online

For a few years now, people use the internet for everything and reading couldn’t be less. Many people prefer to read online or using ebooks to avoid piling up books and books at home. Being on the web, they do not occupy a physical space in our homes after our reading. A respectful approach of course.

Even so, reading books online is still something more situational. Maybe you are waiting for that delayed train and you might want to read something meanwhile? or maybe you have a free reading life philosophy? Or you are just curious about websites to read books for free? Whatever, let me satisfy your curiosity.

Now, don’t get this post wrong, this post is about reading books online legally. It is important to respect the copyright, there is a lot of work in every book, too much effort, hope, and money invested.  This is why I recommend visiting only websites that take into account and respect the writer.

Read online free websites

Below you will find free reading websites which I hope you will find useful:

Project Gutenberg: a website with lots of books to read online for free

This is an American website, here you can find about 60,000 copies completely free, that is a lof of free online books. Its creator was Michael Hart, who also invented eBooks in the 1970s. In this webpage, you can either read the books online or download them (epub, Kindle formats), so it is also a way to get free book downloads.

Project Gutenberg does not charge any fee, without any cost to readers.  You don’t even need a special app, your Website browser will be more than enough. As I stated before every book here is free, the webpage encourages you to make a small donation for their project through Paypal to keep it running, donating or not is of your choice, of course.

Wikisource

Wikisource – The Free Library is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation, an American-non-profit and charitable organization which you may know by its most relevant project: Wikipedia. While Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and therefore, contains articles, Wikisource contains the books themselves.

Right now, this project contains 417,491 texts in English, and their webpage is easy to handle since it’s pretty similar to Wikipedia a web design we are all used to.

This is a project to create a free content library and includes the following (as they state in their webpage)

  1.  Source text previously published by any author
  2. Translations of original texts
  3. Historical documents of national or international interest
  4. Bibliographies of authors whose works are in Wikisource

The best thing about this website is the simplicity to explore the available texts, also always free. Whether by genre, by country of origin, by period… you will find tons of books on each subject. If you’re looking for texts in lesser-known languages, don’t worry, Wikisource is sure to find it.

Another useful thing about this webpage,  if the book you want does not exist in your language, you might be able to find it translated in this website.

Internet Archive

This organization is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form.  Right now their archive contains more than 20 million books and texts. You can either download these books or use their open library website in order to read these books online.

Openlibrary.org has a fine browser while books are categorized by genre. If you are willing to read a book it is as simple as right-clicking the “Read button” and just start enjoying a new book!

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This website is a Spanish platform with a somewhat limited free library. They also offer a premium service for a small monthly fee allowing you to download and read without limits. You only have to sign up (you can log in using Facebook and Google accounts too) in order to create an account and start reading. Right now their catalog contains more than 1 million titles in multiple languages.

read online free websites

As stated before their free library is limited, some titles are free, many others, more than 1 million, do not allow their download if you do not contract the Premium service. The cost is 8.99 euros per month but if you really love reading, it will be a very useful service for you.

I hope you enjoyed these free reading sites. Let me end encouraging you donating for free book authors, why? If you loved a book, if it made you feel so much, why not make a donation to the author, so he can keep creating such lovable stories? Think about it 😊

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