How to Read Books Online For Free: 5 Best Websites

Books play a quintessential role in everyone’s life by introducing them to a world of imagination, providing knowledge of the outside world, improving their reading, writing, and speaking skills as well as boosting memory and intelligence. Evidence suggests that being immersed in a book-oriented environment is beneficial to educational achievement. People who read a lot often have a better vocabulary than those who don’t. The more you read, the more words you’re introduced to. The importance of books in our life cannot be undermined for they not only help in broadening our horizons but also act as doorways for connecting us with the world around us.

Another reason that highlights the importance of books in our life, is that books help in building our confidence. When we read a book, we get to learn about the struggles and hardships of various characters. Studies show that it only takes about six minutes of reading to slow down a person’s heart rate and reduce muscle tension. When you’re experiencing anxiety, reading a book helps you focus on something other than your stress. Considering a book’s effect on anxiety, it makes sense that reading before bed could improve your sleep.

10 Reasons Why Books are Important:

1. Books relieve stress.
2. Books are therapeutic.
3. Books build confidence.
4. Books improve your memory.
5. Books enhance your vocabulary.
6. Books help in self-improvement.
7. Books illuminate your imagination.
8. Books improve your communication.
9. Books improve concentration and focus.
10. Books help you form your own unique perspective.

To enjoy reading books online, you don’t need a tablet or e-reader. Here are some best websites to read books online for free.

How to Read Books Online For Free: 7 Best Websites

• Project Gutenberg:

Project Gutenberg is one of the most important sources of free ebooks on the web. It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of books in the public domain. No fee or registration to read books online. Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books or eBooks.

Project Gutenberg eBooks require no special apps to read, just the regular Web browsers or eBook readers that are included with computers and mobile devices. There have been reports of sites that charge fees for custom apps, or for the same eBooks that are freely available from Project Gutenberg. Currently, there are over 50 thousand ebooks in the PG catalog.

Website: gutenberg.org

• The Internet Archive:

The Internet Archive provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, movies/videos, moving images, and millions of books. The Internet Archive has been around since 1996, is a member of the American Library Association, and is at the forefront of digital archiving. The Internet Archive operates 33 scanning centers in five countries, digitizing about 1,000 books a day for a total of more than 2 million books, financially supported by libraries and foundations.

The Internet Archive allows the public to upload and download digital material to its data cluster, but the bulk of its data is collected automatically by its web crawlers, which work to preserve as much of the public web as possible. The Archive also oversees one of the world’s largest book digitization projects.

Website: archive.org

• Open Library:

Open Library is an online project intended to create “one web page for every book ever published”. Created by Aaron Swartz, Brewster Kahle, Alexis Rossi, Anand Chitipothu,  and Rebecca Malamud. Open Library is a project of the Internet Archive, a nonprofit organization. It has been funded in part by grants from the California State Library and the Kahle/Austin Foundation.

Open Library provides online digital copies in multiple formats, created from images of many public domains, out-of-print, and in-print books. Open Library is an open project: the software is open, the data are open, the documentation is open, and we welcome your contribution.

Website: openlibrary.org

• Smashwords:

The Smashwords Store provides an opportunity to discover new voices in all categories and genres of the written word. Once you register, the site offers useful tools for search, discovery, and personal library management. Most of their books are affordably priced and multi-format. Over 70,000 of our books are priced at free. Smashwords is a free ebook publishing and distribution platform.

We make it fast, free and easy for authors and publishers to distribute ebooks to the world’s largest ebook retailers and library ebook platforms. Authors and publishers retain full control over how their works are published, sampled, priced, and sold. The ebooks on Smashwords can be read online using our online readers, or they can be downloaded to other reading devices such as the iPhone, Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, or other e-reading devices.

Website: smashwords.com

• Google Books:

Google Books is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical character recognition (OCR), and stored in its digital database. Google Books allows users to view full pages from books in which the search terms appear if the book is out of copyright or if the copyright owner has given permission.

Google Books set out on an audacious journey to bring the world’s books online so that anyone can access them. Searching for a book is exactly like typing a question into Google, but unfortunately, not all books on Google Books are available for free.

Website: books.google.co.in

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