Free Ebooks! Learn To Do Something
There have been a lot of different formats for ebooks over the last few years. Originally, people tried selling them online, with the books in proprietary formats and special software (or even hardware) required to read them. I always thought that ebooks were a great idea, but I'm not about to pay anybody for a book I can't put on my shelf, or for one that requires hardware to read.
Now, though, some websites have started disseminating ebooks for free. That changes my whole view on the matter. If I can put it on my thumb drive, I can read it anywhere. Those who know me know that I am always reading something; those who know me well know that I am usually reading several things. Here is a short list of sites with free ebooks. I find these sites pretty often, so this post will be updated in the future. Check back.
Scribd is relatively new ebook service. My favorite two features: the ability to view documents right in your browser window, and the fact that you can also download them as PDFs. They have lots of topics in over 50,000 books already, and some venture capitalists just gave them a bunch of money. Must be nice. You can search for books, browse titles or use a tag cloud to select tags relevant to you. The very first thing I found yesterday was a book about designing webpages using XHTML and CSS. But Dating and Seduction for Dummies was on the front page too.
O'Reilly has a nice selection of free ebooks as well. These are technical guides for Java, Perl, Apache, Linux and more. If you have any desire to learn how to do anything on the web, even HTML, then O'Reilly has a book for you.
FullBooks.com has tons of books available, but they are not PDFs. They are just regular web pages, and each book is on multiple pages. If you have a Mac, you can use Print to PDF to turn these books (or any other document) into PDFs that you can use anywhere.
Update: Now there is a good way to do this in Windows too (there were other methods before, but none as good as this apparently is). DoPDF is new free software that lets you print directly to PDF in Windows. Install, then File, Print and use DoPDF as the printer.
Floodle buys ebooks from eBay sellers, work-from-home companies, and others and then republishes them online for free. They have some hilarious books, some unbelievably crappy ones, and some that are extremely useful.
This list is by no means comprehensive. Check back in the future for new finds and more info.
Like ebooks? Hate 'em? Leave a comment below.
Now, though, some websites have started disseminating ebooks for free. That changes my whole view on the matter. If I can put it on my thumb drive, I can read it anywhere. Those who know me know that I am always reading something; those who know me well know that I am usually reading several things. Here is a short list of sites with free ebooks. I find these sites pretty often, so this post will be updated in the future. Check back.
Scribd is relatively new ebook service. My favorite two features: the ability to view documents right in your browser window, and the fact that you can also download them as PDFs. They have lots of topics in over 50,000 books already, and some venture capitalists just gave them a bunch of money. Must be nice. You can search for books, browse titles or use a tag cloud to select tags relevant to you. The very first thing I found yesterday was a book about designing webpages using XHTML and CSS. But Dating and Seduction for Dummies was on the front page too.
O'Reilly has a nice selection of free ebooks as well. These are technical guides for Java, Perl, Apache, Linux and more. If you have any desire to learn how to do anything on the web, even HTML, then O'Reilly has a book for you.
FullBooks.com has tons of books available, but they are not PDFs. They are just regular web pages, and each book is on multiple pages. If you have a Mac, you can use Print to PDF to turn these books (or any other document) into PDFs that you can use anywhere.
Update: Now there is a good way to do this in Windows too (there were other methods before, but none as good as this apparently is). DoPDF is new free software that lets you print directly to PDF in Windows. Install, then File, Print and use DoPDF as the printer.
Floodle buys ebooks from eBay sellers, work-from-home companies, and others and then republishes them online for free. They have some hilarious books, some unbelievably crappy ones, and some that are extremely useful.
This list is by no means comprehensive. Check back in the future for new finds and more info.
Like ebooks? Hate 'em? Leave a comment below.
Labels: Books, eBooks, Reference
This entry was posted by Power Rambling, on
Thursday, March 8, 2007.
You can leave your response.
March 10, 2007 at 5:26 AM
I wouldn't consider Scribd an ebook website as much as it is a service that makes it easier to share documents online. However, we have collected a lot of ebooks and it seems to have become a great place to find them. Thanks for the blog post!