ReadInShort
ReadinShort is a website where you can read free books online in a nutshell. You can discover your favourites from a wide range of books from every genre: creativity, to health and nutrition, to biographies, to historical as well as modern romantic literature. You can skim through separate sections of Top Rates Books, Popular Books, and Best Authors, and also search on your own with the help of filters or search tags in the search bar.
Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg marks the birth of all the modern day ebook sites. It was launched back in 1971 when the world’s first ebook, “Declaration of Independence of the United States of America,” was created by Michael S. Hart. Multiple websites offering free digital books from the public domain borrow from the archive of titles uploaded to Project Gutenberg.
The current catalogue contains over 60,000 public domain books. Whether you are seeking a great classical adventure or a timeless romance, Project Gutenberg will have a whole list of options for you.
On Project Gutenberg, you can read entire books online. The site features all the elements that the original physical copy would have, including the original cover and all the illustrations. Navigation is made simple by the table of contents and the hyperlinks inside the uploaded book. Another benefit of this site is that you can search for words inside the book using the browser’s find tool. You can also download full books or free as pdf, mobi or epub.
Open Library
Open Library collects records from libraries all over the world, working towards its goal of creating a webpage that contains every book ever published.
Open Library is a simple and user-friendly website which helps you to quickly find the books you need. For example, if you were to click on the ‘Classic Books’, you would discover millions of free, downloadable books from every corner of Classic Literature. You would even find options to listen to the audio versions of the books.
Moreover, Open Library gives you the opportunity to borrow contemporary books online! After a brief registration process, you can borrow a book from the website, or find a hard copy of the book at a local library using WorldCat or Library Link.
Google Books
Google Books contains the most extensive collection of free online books. If you look well, you are bound to find a book that truly touches and inspires you. There are a lot of books you can read for free, and Google Books also lets you preview books that are not available for free so you can read a sample. This preview need not be a section at the beginning of the book. If a publisher has set the free preview to be 10% of the book, you will be allowed to read any 10%, switching between pages until your limited free pages run out.
Smashwords
Smashwords is one of the leading online reading platforms today with tons of ebooks from independent authors and publishers. Currently, you can find over 500,000 self-published authors on the platform.
Dozens of books are available for free download with a usual number of 100,000 titles. All its authors have the option to set up a free preview, but many choose to let its readers preview the entire book, however.
It’s easy to find which books are free to read. Just go to Smashwords’ catalogue of free ebooks and change the way entries are being displayed from stacks to list by clicking the bullet list icon at the top.
You can even personalize your reading by changing the colours of the font and the background, size and font face included. It’s easy to see why it’s so popular!
Authorama
Authorama, the incredible ebook site created and maintained by Philipp Lenssen, allows you to access and load its contents quickly even with a slow internet connection: The perfect dream of a booklover.
This amazingly simple website includes several thousand popular books from Project Gutenberg. The front page is a simple table of content, sorted by the name of the authors.
You can even find popular books by people like Mary Shelley, Francis Bacon, Charles Dickens and so, so much more.
By clicking on a book title, a link will open a simple html viewer in your browser and the content of the books on Authorama is divided into various parts to allow the data to load quickly, even on your phone!
Wattpad
Wattpad, the incredible e-reading website for both amateurs and established writers alike, offers both paid stories, and plenty of free books to read online and download.
With over 80 million readers and writers who spend over 23 billion minutes a month engaged in original exciting stories, it’s not hard to see why it’s called one of the most popular.
On the browse tab next to the logo you can choose between anything ranging from fan fiction, romance, short stories, LGBT+ and so much more. All your favourite genres, in one click. Just select the book from a list and click on its cover, and a pop-up window will lead you directly to the story for you to enjoy to your heart’s content!
24Symbols
This website follows a subscription model and also allows you to read free books online. To read books on 24Symbols, you need to create a free account. Once you have connected your account to your Facebook account and your device, you will be able to read books for free on various platforms.
