Often in conversation or on social media, I’ll end up pointing out places where you can get books legally and at no cost. Today’s as good a day as any to point people at them.

First and foremost, I have to point to Project Gutenberg, which has been around over 50 years (before the Internet), and provides books in the public domain. You can read the books online (HTML), or in readers (Kindle & EPUB versions). I’ve been using Project Gutenberg since the early 2000s, and have found some great books in there for research or fun (which admittedly are the same for me).

To get an idea of what Gutenberg has – it can be intimidating – take a look at what has been downloaded most in a day.

Next – Wikibooks! These are over 3500 open content textbooks available through the site. I’ll often head over there when I’m researching a topic.

FreeComputerBooks.com is exactly what it says, if you’re looking for online books related to many aspects of computing – I don’t use them too much, but I browse now and then.

Lastly for this post, I’ll point you at OpenCulture.com’s list of free audiobooks. I’m not someone who appreciated books in audio form too much (or podcasts for that matter), so I haven’t used them – but the list includes many genres. The science fiction genre popped out immediately for me.

Happy reading!