Amazon offers a large selection of free books in its Kindle store, but youll need to browse online or check out AmazonsKindle blogfor the most recent freebies. Theyre downloaded directly via the Kindle app; right now, theres no way to import files from a computer via USB. To help matters, check constantly updated free Kindle book sites such as (Read
how to find free books on your Kindle
For $.99, GoodReader reads .doc, PDF, HTML, and TXT files, can import docs and PDFs from any Web page or even directly from the Google Docs server, and it also allows wireless drag-and-drop of files from a nearby computer without syncing. A clever trick: visit Google Books on GoodReader and download the PDF link for free books directly into the reader app. Its page-turning system is a little awkward, but its a great tool to have (and PDFs retain color-coding for those using it for revisions). Its a shame it cant read ePub as well.
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Sure, Apple and others dont exactly want you to stock up on free literature if they can help it, especially in the case of books that arent public domain. Still, we have to try, dont we? Here are the best (legal) ways not to pay.
Any other tips? Let us know in the comments.
does have over 30,000 free books, mostly from Project Gutenberg, and many of them with surprisingly decent formatting. There is a trick, though: youll have to be fastidious. Searching for an author in the iBooks Store will often bring up only for-pay versions of many books, whereas entering their specific titles will brings up free versions, too. Its extremely odd, but we discovered the bug when looking for many titles, including Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse and Thomas Hobbes Leviathan.
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There are a lot of advantages to the iPad as an e-reader, chief among them its capability to be a true multiformat product supporting Kindle, ePubs, PDFs, and others.
One little difficulty remains: finding ways to get free books.
The iPads an excellent universal e-reader, but it can be a bit of a hassle looking for freebies. Here are our tips.
You can download or convert your own ePub books from any source (including Googles large collection) and import them into Apples iBooks app, but youll need to go through iTunes on a computer using iTunes 9.1. Dragging the file in will put the book in your sync queue, but you cant directly drop the book onto your iPad. As for where you get those ePub books from…well, thats your decision.
And, of course, theres always good old-fashioned Web browsing if youre online, or Instapaper Pro ($4.99, also a free version) for downloading any HTML page for easy offline reading.
Free Books and Kobo are two other iPad book apps that have their own slightly different supplies of titles. Weve found luck getting a free book on one that we couldnt get on another. Its a hassle to swap back and forth, but it might be the only way to get what youre looking for.
The Kindle App has free books galore, if you can find them.