Buy a Kindle, fill it up with free books
How do I get free books for my Kindle?
I’ve had my Kindle for about 40 hours now and I haven’t been able to find a great list of free Kindle books online, so I’m going to start one.
Update: Down in the comments, readers have pointed out a lot of different ways to find free Amazon Kindle books, so I’ll be changing the list I start below so anything I add from now on will be free books I have actually read and enjoyed on the device.
I’m also going to continue adding classics that I think everyone should check out, just in case you want some quick suggestions and don’t want to run off to search the Kindle store.
If you haven’t heard, the Amazon Kindle is a gadget that you can read electronic books on. You download the books directly into your machine. Some of the books are free, most aren’t, and prices vary on those that you do have to pay for.
There’s not currently a good way to browse for free books only, unless I’m missing something, which is possible.
So this list of free books for the Kindle is based on my own hunting and pecking. Basically I’ve been typing in anything old that comes to mind, checking the price, and downloading whatever is free.
Some of these are wonderful and worth reading, but I’m not necessarily vouching for all of them.
The comments on the Kindle review yesterday showed me that there are plenty of readers here using it. Please help me create this list as you find more free books. I’ll come back as often as I find something new to update the list.
Free books you can download into the Kindle
These are currently sitting in my e-library:
- Plato’s Republic
- Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
- Emma by Jane Austen
- Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais (nobody seems to read this, please do it! I don’t have anyone to talk about these books with)
- The Life And Opinions of Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
- The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain
- A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
- The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism by Arthur Schopenhauer
- Beyond Good and Evil by Frederich Nietzsche
- Thus Spake Zarathustra by Nietzsche
- Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
- Notes From The Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky
- The Man Who Was Thursday by GK Chesterton
- Great Expectations by Dickens
- Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
- Life On The Mississippi by Mark Twain
- Essays – First Series by Ralph Waldo Emerson
- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
- Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
- Candide by Voltaire
- The Live Corpse by Leo Tolstoy
- The Power of Darkness - Tolstoy
- The Lights Shines In Darkness – Tolstoy
- Anna Karenina by Tolstoy
- Don Quixote by Cervantes
- The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton
- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
- Zadig Or, The Book of Fate by Voltaire
- Middlemarch by George Eliot
- Taras Bulba and Other Stories by Nikolai Gogol
- The Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus
That’s all I’ve got time for right now. I’ll be back.
Josh
PS: for you booklovers, I also run an online book club via newsletter. If you want to get this month’s selection, please subscribe. During the first week of each month I will send you an email with the next month’s selection, and a subscribers-only link to a discussion/review here on the blog.
{ 73 comments… read them below or add one }
Have you seen this Josh?http://kindleworld.blogspot.com/2009/08/million-free-google-books-in-epub-for.html
I hadn’t, thank you.
Free books can be downloaded via Amazon in their Kindle Ebook section by typing in – Free in the large search area.
Usual stuff – Alice in Wonderland, Dracula, war and Peace etc.
If you sort by Price: lo to hi then you see all the free books first !
Hi John,
Thanks very much for that info. I’ve bought my 8year old a kindle for xmas as he’s an avid book reader. I have no problem buying e-books at all but if we can add a few cheapies or freebies it makes it easier on the pocket.
My favorite site for free ebooks is:
http://www.ereaderiq.com/free/
They get their list from Amazon, I think, but the cool factor is that you can sort so many ways. If you’re looking for children’s books, for example, scroll down until you find a book in that category, then just click on the link “children’s books”. However if you wanted to eliminate children’s books, click on the grey symbol of a circle with a diagonal line through it.
Nikki
http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Kindle-Store-eBooks/zgbs/digital-text/154606011/ref=zg_bs_nav_kstore_1_kstore
use this link to find hundreds of free amazon books, contemporary ones. Updated hourly and the $0.00 ones change so keep going back. Its brilliant. I have downloaded so many fiction and non fiction for zero dollars
eBook Download Center
http://bookdownload-center.blogspot.com/2011/10/ebook-download-center.html
Compatible with:
Kindle, Nook, Alex, Sony, ILiad, iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, PC, Mac & more!
This site lets you search the free kindle books for any subject:
http://zenbeast.com/kindle
It is easier than finding free books on Amazon’s own site.
Thanks Bruce.
If that list gets big enough I might be able to justify buying a kindle. I see several on that list that I’d like to read. By the way, your powers of The Secret haven’t manifested yet, still no kindle magically appearing. I do see some pretty good deals on craigslist, but then I also read some horror stories about people buying stolen kindles, which end up getting remote wiped (aka “bricked.”)
Did you get the 3G version or the wireless version. I’m wondering if it’s worth the extra cost to be able to download books from anywhere.
I have the 3g and love it.. Not only can you download books anywhere you can check up on facebook… I love my Kindle!
How do you use the facebook portion? i have one but im lost on that?
You go to the menu and click on the section named experimental at the bottom. There will then be a section labeled web browser. Click on launch browser and type in facebook.com at the top. It actually works for tons of websites. I love using mine for that as well.
When I click on launch browser the box already has http://www.amazon.com in it. I can’t seem to delete this to put facebook in instead. How do I do this please?
Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page) is a good source for older out of copyright books.
You can probably get tons of books on BitTorrent sites, but that would be of questionable legality.
Just sort your search by price, low to high, which will list any free books first.
Brilliant Blaine, thank you. List aborted.
Sorting by price – I haven’t figured that out yet. My kindle is also brand new, out of the box, and I’d like to store a few good (free) classics on it.
TRY AMAZONE FREE KINDLE BOOKS, I HAVE GOT LOADS, ONLY GOT MY KINDLE FOR CHRISTMAS. HAPPY READING
I shouldn’t do this. I shouldn’t. You “philanderer” you. ;P
However….
http://openlibrary.org/
1,000,000 books and a lending e-library.
(Funny thing, I have that rocks and minerals book in the second row).
I just bought my kindle, too! Next step: download!
Dear Josh,
I have the Kindle app for PC and have no intention of buying a Kindle. I bought Seth Godin’s Poke the Box, but all the other Kindle books I have I got them for free. Here is a site where you can download free Kindle books http://www.freekindlebooks.org/.
Iain beat me to the punch…I go to http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
for free downloads.
Thanks for Josh for allowing me to swipe this way cool list. I’ve been looking for this same bit of info. I’ll try the “sort by price” feature too. THANKS!
Josh!
I never expected this from you!
Books are good; books are loyal; they make us company; they let themselves be read, written on, and drabbled sometimes, case merits. I even heard once (don´t quote me on this) that one book saved a soldiers life by receiving a bullet in his place. DID YA KNOW THAT?
Thanks for the list, anyway. I’ll download those with disdain.
Here’s a list I just came across in my RSS feed: http://www.ereaderiq.com/free/
I just haven’t been able to feel the appeal of e-readers, personally – but every reader his book and every book its reader, right?
I can’t speak for Kindle, but I just bought a Nook…and for anyone who is a Barnes and Noble member they just offered a deal where they included 100 free classics with your purchase. I checked the list and most of them I hadn’t read before, so it was a great deal for me.
The Kindle is great, but I prefer the Nook because I can check out books from the public library on it. If you review books at all, look into NetGalley.com for PDF versions of ARCs.
I LOVE my Kindle and I have the wireless version (bought it on Black Friday on Amazon for $100 off!) and I love being able to download books without being “plugged in”. I have over 400 books but have paid for only about 10 of them! You have to be on the look out for free books though, the list of free offerings changes a lot I think.
I found this..
http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&node=154606011&p_15=public%20domain&p_36=0-0&kc=AG56TWVU5XWC2&redirect=true#/ref=sr_st?qid=1309214751&rh=n%3A133140011%2Cn%3A!133141011%2Cn%3A154606011%2Cp_15%3Apublic+domain%2Cp_36%3A0-0&sort=daterank
it leads you to the 15,000 free books on amazon.
hey can u add So B. It by Sarah Weeks for mw please this webste is great it just doesnte have new books
http://www.amazon.com/s/?node=2245146011#/ref=sr_pg_1?rh=n%3A133140011%2Cn%3A%21133143011%2Cn%3A2245146011&ie=UTF8&qid=1309786637
I just got a kindle. After 2 weeks, I still only have around 10 books. Still looking for more!
Reading some of the posts from above, and I have a Kindle 3G and it is all I have ever known, I am one to always have a book in my hand and my nose in a book. My boss got me the 3G Kindle last Christmas as I have over 200 books on my Kindle right now and I am continously still reading. I love it I never run out of books, and end up waiting in line at a store and start to download books so when I get a free moment its there. I even play a few games on there with my kids!
You can also search for free kindle books at http://searchkb.appspot.com!
Enjoy!
also there is a great free book place for kindle called
MANYBOOKS on the net
punch in 0.00 in your kindle under search u should pull up 132 pages of free books and even mor once you get done under your recomended
Thanks Kerye.
i downloaded “Victorian Broadmoor”, completely free and i was captivated immediately, well worth a read
Thanks for sharing kindle books which are totally free and helpful.
i maybe getting a 6
6″ kindle for my december2 bday quick question are those al the free books or what
This odd but I just had to comment. surfing around the internet and I was reading all these comments and coincidentally you have the same BD as me!!!!!!!!!!!!!
There are a couple of pages on FB that I check everyday and have gotten countless free books. “Pixel of Ink” & “Free Books for Kindle” are great pages. Some days it is a list full of books I have no interest in but more often than not I find two or three books that look interesting and I have found some authors that I enjoyed enough to go and buy another of their books.
Fantastic, thank you.
I get free ebooks for my Kindle from Pixel of Ink every day, have over 400 stored on my Kindle (started with the app on my computer, then won a Kindle in a drawing). I also joined my local library and can download ebooks from there.
I regularly do a search on Amazon and sort by price,as well.
If I were to start from scratch and purchase one, I would get the Kindle Fire. I do use FaceBook on my Kindle, but I’d love to be able to read in bed without a light on, as well as doing more online.
I love to read but can’t always afford to buy books. Recently received a kindle and would like to know how I can get the free books on the list. I love mysteries. can you help?
hi diane, you need to go on a computer, to manybooks.com
then look with Genre to mysteries, then when you find a book
click on it and it will save to the format you ask. then you hook up your computer via the supplied usb cable find the kindle in “my computer” then load the book into the documants file on the kindle.
done! sounds complicated but its easy once you get the hang of it then you can find other sites and do the same.
such as project guttenburg etc.
Here is a limited time (12/20/2011)
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0040GJGQO
I just started a list with free kindle Christmas Books . You should check it out .
Here is a link to it , if you want.
http://thedaydreamer3.blogspot.com/2011/12/santa-brings-free-books-kindle.html
I just wanted to thank you all for the help you have given me. My daughter just got a Kindle for Christmas and we were trying to find some free books for her and came across this website. I’m so glad that we did! Thank you all so much!
Hey!
If you are looking for free kindle books to download you can find them at http://kindlebooksonline.org
Awesome site! Loads of old and new kindle books – for free!
Check it out!
What a wonderful site, thank you so much for all the links for free Kindle books. I got one for Christmas and now cant wait to start downloading :O))
http://calibre-ebook.com/
a site that has epubs for free downloads
Joy I’m soo happy for you how did you get it
Thanks for your curated list – there are definitely some books on there I have yet to read.
I use Freebooksy (http://www.freebooksy.com) to find contemporary free Kindle books. They post at least once a day and I like how clean and easy to use their site is. They also sometimes provide additional information on the author which I find useful. Thought I would share
Thanks Tiffany. The more the merrier.
This site is pretty good for searching for free Kindle books available from Amazon:
http://zenbeast.com/kindle
The good thing is that you can search based on a category (like “Fantasy”) and just find the free book in that category.
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/ I was using this before my kindle fire. In addition to all the classics, it has some fascinating 100s of years old cookbooks and things like that. check it out. =)
Thanks Autumn.
I just went out and picked up the Kindle Fire, I have to say I’m loving it. I’m also looking into some free good books to read. I have to say the ones on amazon for free are really good but I’m always open to new sites. Thanks for this Josh now I can find some good books to read.
Did anyone mention ereaderlove.com? Awesome free kindle books to your email every day.
Thank you Ka.
Hey Josh I guess you love to read so do i
Hey guys I love books spool much
thank you josh.the list is great
http://www.amazon.com/Smitten-Part-I-Zerrin-ebook/dp/B006QH61QI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331253134&sr=8-1
Amazon.com, pixelofink.com, ereadernewstoday.com, heavenlysteals.com, inspiredreads.com all have lists of free books that come out each day. I have over 3,000 books on my computer right now. I read 2 to 3 books a day. I am always on the look out for free books to read on my kindle. Keep searching…you can find books for all ages in every genre.
Hi guys,
With the Kindle Select program authors can now give out their books for free during a selected number of days. It’s a great tool to get your book out and also for people looking for free books. Amazon has a free books bestseller list and you can of course also sort the price list from low to high.
If you’re an Amazon Prime member you can of course also borrow books for free from the Kindle library (one book at a time).
I’m running a free promotion on my novel The Wake-Up Call tomorrow so if you want to download it for free I suggest you check it out at http://goo.gl/t4JkW or the official website thewakeupcallbook.com
It’s contemporary fiction with lots of humour and a touch of romance and has an average of 5/5 stars on Amazon and Goodreads.
Thanks and happy “freebook” browsing!
Cheers / Jonas
Read free eBook at – http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007HFGEEM A disgraceful picture of a Indian village on event of a temple opening ceremony (pran prathista mahotsav). Ironic thing about this event was straying dogs have permit to enter in their ceremony but the common public & small kids who is actually dweller of that village can’t permit inside to see the event. Read my book for more pictures & detail story about Indian village. Indian public can change India if they change their philosophy. Look these small kids of a village what do you think a best place for them? Outside a temple as a beggar or inside a world class school for education? Decide yourself. I think Building 100 temples in village will not make difference but if they build one world-class school,collage,hospital or institute that will make difference in the whole area. Why can’t we leave religions behind & spend money on human beings? Read my book at least one time – http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007HFGEEM
The BEST site I’ve found that lists free Kindle books is http://www.books4kindlefree.com – which automatically links to the Amazon database. All the free kindle books are organized by category.
They also have an Android app – just search for “Free Kindle Books” on Android Market which does the same thing.
Searching for free kindle books has become a lot easier!
Jane Franklin
Great app love it!
the BEST site i have found is http://www.freebookspot.es It has almost any book you can think of, then you just put them on your kindle!
My favorite place for free Kindle eBooks is Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Kindle-Store-eBooks/zgbs/digital-text/154606011
They keep a list of their top 100 free “best sellers” that is updated hourly, which means new books are always popping up. Using the links on the left side of the page, you can also sort the books according to genre. A few are public domain, but most are indie published or traditionally published. Sure, I don’t find free ebooks of the authors I usually read, but these free books mean I’m discovering authors I may never have discovered otherwise. It’s a win-win.
Thanks Larry.