How to read many books online (legally) for free (2024)

The past few years, I’ve found myself reading a lot more. It’s been a healthy, deeply enriching habit. It could also, potentially, be expensive.

Luckily for me, a lot of the books I’m interested in tend to be pretty old. This usually makes them easy to find at the local library, or cheap to buy used. I’m admittedly pretty spoiled with the Los Angeles Public Library system, which is the fourth-largest in the US.

That said, sometimes I still can’t find the particular item I want. Or I can, but I’m just lazy — and I don’t want to go through the minor inconvenience of placing a hold on a book, waiting for it, and then going to pick it up. Often this is the case for books where I’m just trying to find a specific excerpt, or maybe a short story from a collection.

Fortunately, there’s actually a pretty good number of online resources where you can find many books and either read them on the web, or download them to your Kindle account. (From there, you can read them on your platform of choice, which doesn’t need to be an actual Kindle device).

Here are some of those places!

My first stop — and often the only stop I need — is to The Internet Archive. Specifically to their “Texts to Borrow” section, which is confusingly also called “Books to Borrow” in their navigation menu.

Whatever you call it, it’s a collection of three million texts that have been donated to The Internet Archive, scanned, and made available for reading on the website by one-person-at-a-time, for one-hour-at-a-time.

They do this under an (admittedly controversial) program called “Controlled Digital Lending”. The Internet Archive’s argument is that if a physical library has physical books and can lend them out to one-person-at-a-time, then The Internet Archive should be allowed to make their physical books available to be read digitally and lend them to one-person-at-a-time.

Frankly, their argument makes sense to me (and to The Electronic Frontier Foundation), but some book publishers are Very Mad about this program and are suing The Internet Archive to shut the whole thing down. Personally I hope The IA wins, but in the meantime you should take advantage of “Texts to Borrow” while you can.

Pro tip: reading scanned pages of books in a web browser is not always the best reading experience, but they do at least offer some (hard-to-discover) visual adjustment options that can make things quite a bit better. Just press the “…” ellipses button in the upper-left corner of the reading view to open the menu:

Then press “Visual Adjustments”.

For what it’s worth: The Internet Archive also, confusingly, has a separate — possibly less legally controversial — section called “Open Library”. As far as I can tell, it’s much worse. I don’t think I’ve found a single thing I’m actually looking for in the Open Library, but maybe you’ll have better luck.

Many, many public libraries (at least in the US) allow access to a collection of “free ebooks, audiobooks & magazines” through a terribly named company called “OverDrive” — and more specifically through their (slightly less terribly named) app called Libby.

You can use Libby on the web — or download the Libby iOS or Android app. Then you just need to walk through the clunky process of connecting your public library account, and navigate around their idiosyncratic web or app UI to find what you want. They have quite a lot on there! It’s amazing what you can find for free, as long as you’re willing to tolerate the process.

When you check out an ebook on Libby, it also (usually?) gives you the option of sending it to your Kindle account, where your reading experience might be better.

Also — and you might want to sit down for this — OverDrive also has a separate app called “Kanopy” that lets you stream lots of movies for free (again, as long as you connect your public library account). You can watch them on the web or download the Kanopy app on your AppleTV or Roku, etc. Their collection is pretty amazing in terms of indie films, foreign films, and documentaries. (And the UI, surprisingly, is fine.)

I regret to inform you that there is also another (also questionably named) digital library service called “Hoopla”. Once again, you’ll need to create an account and go through a clunky process to connect your public library card — and then you’ll have access to Hoopla’s over one million titles (ebooks, audiobooks, movies, music). Like with Libby, you can use Hoopla on the web or download the app.

Why are Hoopla and Libby and Kanopy all different things? God knows. All I know is that if you’re very stubborn and willing to tolerate a lot of apps, account sign-ups, and maddening interfaces, you can find quite a lot, actually.

If you’re a sicko like me and sometimes scrounge for books from our meager public domain, there’s Project Gutenberg. The name… it’s fine. The interface: ehhh.

But! They do let you download texts in various ebook formats, which you can then Send-to-Kindle and read with better formatting on your device of choice.

If you’re looking for a public domain book that’s actually pretty well known — Moby Dick, Frankenstein, Charles Dickens, etc. — you should check Standard EBooks. They offer, as the name suggests, public domain ebooks that have been standardized to a very high level of quality. You can then send them to your Kindle, or read them on the web reading experience.

Why does Standard Ebooks exist? Well, as they explain:

[W]e aim to make free public domain ebooks that are carefully typeset, cleaned of ancient and irrelevant ephemera, take full advantage of modern ereading technology, are formatted according to a detailed style guide, and that are each held to a standard of quality and internal consistency.

They note that ebooks on Project Gutenberg “sometimes lack basic typographic necessities” and that “the quality of individual ebook productions varies greatly”. And with The Internet Archive: “Sometimes all you get is a scan of the actual book pages. That’s great for researchers, archivists, and special-interest readers, but not that great for casual, modern readers”. Wow, shade! Anyway, I’m glad they exist.

Clearly everything above is mostly relevant to people in the US (or at least people with a US library card, wink wink), and mostly to English language readers (or listeners).

And again, it’s hard to overstate how annoying it can be to trawl through all these different sites and apps and accounts and interfaces. But if you want the instant gratification — or are very stubborn or cheap — you have options.

Also! Your own local library might have their own weird licensing arrangements with even more badly named, frustratingly designed online resources (not named above) where you can find stuff for free. It’s worth checking! Or you might have some kind of alumni access to your alma mater’s libraries or online resources, you never know.

I would love to imagine that some kind of consolidation of all these various services might take place in the future. Or that the byzantine interfaces might improve. But I’m a realist, and it’s hard to complain when they’re free.

Anyway, I wish you luck finding the books you’re looking for — they’re probably out there, somewhere! All it takes is gumption and a high tolerance for bad UIs. Enjoy!