Free Online Book Reading

Free Books and Copyright Law

If you’ve been following the controversy associated with free music downloads, you may be wondering if it’s legal to read free books online. Fortunately, the majority of websites that offer free online book reading are simply publishing material that no longer has copyright protection in the United States. Generally, the default length of copyright is the life of the author plus either 50 or 70 years. After this time, the book in question is considered “public domain” and free for anyone to distribute.

With public domain material, there are no restrictions on how you may use the content. If you are a teacher, these books are free to use in class lessons. Writers are even welcome to adapt the material for use in their own personal projects. However, if you have any questions about copyright protection for a particular book, it is best to consult the website’s terms of use for additional information. Do not simply assume the book qualifies as public domain material.

Resources for Free Online Book Reading

Although there are many websites that let you read free books online, Project Gutenberg, Classic Bookshelf, and the International Children’s Digital Library are the most popular.

Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg offers over 20,000 free books for you to enjoy, produced through the work of several thousand volunteers. Unlike other popular websites offering free book collections, Project Gutenberg also has foreign language titles and free audio books. The site can be somewhat hard to navigate, but the variety of resources offered makes Project Gutenberg well worth the effort.

Top titles available for download on the Project Gutenberg website include:

• Eve's Diary by Mark Twain
• The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 by J. Arthur Thomson
• Manual of Surgery by Alexander Miles and Alexis Thomson
• Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period by Paul Lacroix
• Searchlights on Health by B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

Classic Bookshelf

Classic Bookshelf attempts to make online book reading a more comfortable experience by allowing you to customize the font size, screen color, and background appearance of the page to fit your own unique preferences. Books are offered through a simple Java applet and a free bookmarking feature lets you save your screen preferences as well as your place in the book.

The titles available for reading on the Classic Bookshelf website include many books you may remember from your high school and college English classes. For example:

• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
• Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

International Children’s Digital Library

While most websites offering free online book reading focus on the needs of adult readers, the International Children’s Digital Library aims to provide quality reading material to children from around the world while promoting an enhanced understanding of other cultures.

The site currently offers almost 2,000 children’s books in 39 different languages. Unlike other websites offering free books online, however, the International Children’s Library provides relatively current titles that are made available with permission of the publisher.

Popular titles on the International Children’s Digital Library website include:

• Apple Pie by Kate Greenaway
• Axle the Freeway Cat by Thacher Hurd
• The Legend of the Bitter Gourd by Augie D. Rivera, Jr.
• The Adventure of Ahmad and the Clock by Feresteh Ta'erpoor
• The Beautiful Pond by Kambiz Kakavand