How to Get Free Books

There are actually plenty of ways to access free books and stories online, but not all of them are safe (or legal!). Let’s start with the ones that aren’t:

PDF downloads

You know that old saying: ‘if it seems too good to be true, it probably is?’. If you see websites offering pdf’s of recently published books, they are almost definitely illegal. While you aren’t going to find the police banging on your door for downloading a pdf, you also don’t know what else you might be downloading from websites like these. Downloadable files can carry viruses, putting your device (and your online security!) at risk. If that isn’t enough reason to stay away from sites like these, they also steal income from the authors of the books themselves. If we want to keep getting great books, we need to support great authors.

So how about the ones that are safe…

The Library

The most obvious option and the one most people think of when you say ‘free books’. If you are in the UK, checking books out from the library even adds to an author’s income, so you’re still helping to support them! What does this have to do with online books? Well, most libraries also have eBooks (and audiobooks) available to borrow. For UK residents, you just need your library card and either libbyapp or borrowbox. Both of these are available on apple and android devices, but you can simply use them in a web browser too! Other countries have their own dedicated platforms for eBooks, which you can find by speaking to your librarian.

Archive.org

Archive.org is an online library which allows you to borrow books for up to an hour (although you can renew it as many times as you want to after that, if you haven’t finished!). You do not need a library card, just an email address to set up an account, which is completely free of charge. Unfortunately, due to recent legal action by a group of large publishing houses, many modern books are currently unavailable on Archive.org and will display a ‘borrow unavailable’ message when selected. However, there are still some great titles to find!

Project Gutenberg

If you’re looking for a classic, Project Gutenberg is an excellent platform. They also have children’s classics, featuring original illustrations (such as the Peter Rabbit books!). This particular site does only feature books which are old enough to be out of copyright and the method of getting the text online does sometimes lead to errors (e.g. the occasional incorrect letter). In my experience, however, this usually only happens with much older (pre nineteenth century) texts and even then, they are rare enough to make very little difference.

Author Websites

Have a favourite author? Sometimes, you can find extracts of books (so you can see what you think before setting out to find the whole thing!) or even entire short stories on an author’s website. For example, the author of the award-winning Girl Missing has plenty of extracts, plus a short story!

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If you are a student with Lantern and Vine, your tutor will be happy to provide personalised recommendations for free access books!