Books! Books! For Free!
March 3, 2008 by Michael
A recent blog-hopping journey of mine landed me at a blog titled, “Planet eBook: The free eBooks blog.” I don’t know how I came across this blog but when I found it, the latest entry had just a short excerpt from the opening lines of Paradise Lost along with a generic book cover for Milton’s epic poem.
Then I saw that it had a “download page” link at the bottom of the post. I clicked on the link, which took me to a page with two available downloads: 1-page version or 2-page version I was like, “No…really? The entire work? It can’t be…” but I downloaded the 2-page version anyway. (The 2-page version shows two pages side-by-side from the book on each single pdf “page.”)
And sure enough, in a couple of seconds, I was electronically flipping through an extremely sharp-looking, easy to read, professionally done copy of Paradise Lost in its entirety on my laptop! Immediately thinking this was too good to be true, and had to be illegal, I of course did the only logical thing: I tried to get as many other books as possible before the site got shut down! I went on a clicking and downloading frenzy for the next half-hour, getting both one- and two-page versions of Dickens, Bronte, Dostoevsky, Kipling, Shelley, Twain, and many other pillars of the English language. I then found the home page of the wonderful people (or person?) behind this project and I went to the “about” page…to be relieved, joyful, and thankful when I read this message:
…. Existing free eBooks on the Web tend to be well beneath the quality of paper books, making them more difficult and less pleasurable to read. At Planet eBook we’re trying to change this. Our goal is to publish a small selection of high-quality eBooks — each a genuine alternative for readers wanting to enjoy reading a book without having to pay for it. The books we publish are all in the public domain so there is no real need for readers to continue to pay for them.
So no, you’re not going to find the latest Phillip Roth or Cormac McCarthy on there, but you’re going to find a bunch of great classics from centuries past — many of which I personally have yet to crack open. And the quality of each release really is admirable. Check out their version of Frankenstein (one of the reasons I became an English major). This is the front “cover” opened in a regular ole’ default pdf reader (click to enlarge):
This is how it looks like inside for the 2-page version:
They update pretty regularly too, so you can just subscribe to them in a feed reader like I do, and have a free book delivered to you every few days. After my experience, I went back to the Paradise Lost post and left a very excited comment. I was so excited, I even offered to open up my wallet! (Note: I haven’t jumped on the Amazon Kindle bandwagon, but I believe these free ebooks will work on the Kindle or other electronic print readers. Those devices are a bit too expensive for me right now. I’m sure we’ll all have one of them sooner or later though.) The website is at planetebook.com and, if you missed the link at the top, the wordpress blog is at blog.planetebook.com and you can even request books you want published at the ebook suggestion page.
Song of the Day:
thank you for good samaritans like these!
Don’t thank me, thank God. Or Fate. Or whatever is out there. Or destiny. (I think it’s God.)
I’m kidding…I totally agree with you. I don’t know how or why these people are doing such great things for people like us. But I sure do appreciate it.
Sounds good - I’ll have to check it out. When I was a grad student in the late 90s I downloaded public domain books from Project Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.org) but there was little or no formatting. I just checked it again after a few years away and it’s still much the same.
I was planning to write a blog post on free literature on the Internet (books, academic papers, anything else I can find over the next week). I ‘d be very happy if I could mention your post in it. Would that be okay?
Blimey! Are you me by any chance? That’s exactly what happened to me!! I have no idea how I ended up on the planet e-book blog but I did and the first book that I downloaded was Paradise Lost which has been on my books to buy list for ages!! I then tried downloading Lady Chatterley’s lover but for some reason the link didn’t work but I still was pretty happy about my little discovery and added the link to my blog as well.
I have to agree with Mike about Project Guttenberg, I’ve downloaded some books from them but they do need serious retyping (unlike Planet e-book), in fact I’m still stuck trying to fix Walden and it’s quite a turn-off coz you cannot really read it properly unless you reformat the entire word document but at the same time as your reformat it you are reading bits of the book and inevitably killing much of the mystery of the book.
But both sites are great if you live in a non-English speaking country and want/need to read original versions of the old classics.
Anyway thanks Michael for leaving apost on their blog, I was so excited about finally having Paradise Lost that I completely forgot to send a feedback and thank them for the effort!!
Mike: Sure! That would be perfectly fine. Yes, that’s what’s really exciting…what these guys are doing is not just convenient for everyone, but it fills a real need! These are high-quality ebooks.
Icey: haha….no I don’t think I’m you. But if I start using Project Gutenberg, I just might be! I’ve heard of it but yeah…I heard it wasn’t that great either, so I never really tried it. Also, I haven’t been a fan of this shift to “electronic” books…but after seeing the books that Planet eBook puts out, my eyes are finally opening. (Although I am sure actual, physical books will be here — and be necessary — for a long, long time.)
Michael, thanks so much for the positive feedback. I think you’re probably the first person online to write about the new site. Much appreciated!
I’m aiming to do 2-3 new books a week (work permitting).
If you guys really want a particular book, please head to the ‘Suggest a book’ page and I’ll do my best to get it up at some stage soon.
This is really cool. I use the library a lot but I’ve noticed some of the books are really dusty and I’m constantly sneezing when I read them… this will be cool because I’ll be reading a timeless classic right on my new laptop.
Richard: Your blog/site rocks! Thanks for providing this to everyone. I’ve since checked out other free ebook options and none of them reach the level of quality of Planet eBook. Please keep up the good work.
Crystal: hahah…I could imagine a huge, quiet library with a bunch of people working hard, and you in the middle, sneezing away, surrounded by glares and stares…
You got a new laptop? What kind? Have you seen those indestructible laptops? They’re crazy! They could survive getting run over by a car! And they’re water-proof! Please tell me you got one of those.
We have something like this at school. Though it is only educational books so far as I can tell. Which reminds me, I should be doing homework.
eit i´m here again… the library on line is a FIASCO is like fake. u never find an entire book when u need it. well i have 2 go, have a gud weekend. byte.
What? “Fiasco”? The books look okay to me… Are you sure? Why are you running off so quickly? Come back! Explain!
haha…but seriously, please come back and explain later.
How very awesome. I will definitely check out these ebooks.
I’m going to have to get used to reading all these books online anyway, since the school I’m headed to uses ebooks more often than hard copies. Seriously, the library has at most, 3 small shelves of books.
(Yes, that means I got into medical school. Which means I’ll actually start a med-blog. I’ll send you the address via email.)
Congratulations on getting into med-school!
Nice…I’ll be checking my email. I can’t wait for this “Doogie Howser MD - 2.0″ blog of yours.
Wow, this is awesome. Thanks for pointing us to it, Michael! I’m adding some of these e-books to my already very long to-read stock of books.
jaja i was trying to tell u that in all the times i was looking for a book, chapter or summary i cant find them in on line libraries. In my experience i’ve never found a site like this (library on line) before. Have u or is it unique.
I love free stuff. But I prefer hard copies over e-copies. For me, reading is more about the experience and not the content.
Razzo: Ah…thanks for the clarification. Yeah…Planet eBook has the best free electronic books I’ve seen. I know you can buy ebooks off of Amazon now (for the Kindle)…but I would doubt the quality is any better than the free ones you can get at planetebook.
And like a couple of people have said already, Project Gutenberg has been providing free ebooks for a while and they have an extensive collection of public domain literature available…but the quality is spotty and the works are not very enjoyable to read (because of the format of the files…not the works themselves, of course). I have also found one other alternative to planetebook, Planet PDF. I think they are somewhat related to Planet eBook, because they have a similar collection of books and, more tellingly, they are both sponsored by “Nitro PDF,” which I’m assuming is a pdf file company that makes all this possible. (And both of the sites have “Planet” in the name.)
But Planet PDF only offers 1-page versions (I find the 2-page versions better for reading) and the Planet PDF books just don’t look nearly as sharp and professional as Planet eBook. But I do believe that Planet PDF may be better optimized for input into those electronic reader devices.
leafless: I have to say that I’m a huge fan of actual, physical books as well. I find devices like the Kindle or even basic pdf-file ebooks intriguing and useful but can you write in the margins on those things? Can you flip the pages back and forth from a previous section while figuring out the section you’re on? Or how about using 3 or 4 fingers as bookmarks while you read or while writing a paper on a book?
I think books are as perfect and evolved as they can get…and to replace them with all-electronic alternatives…it’s going to take some time. Sure there are advantages to electronic books…like the valuable search function to find any word or sentence in a flash, but a physical book has too many things going for it.
I mean…me personally, I won’t fully transition to devices like the Kindle until they can produce a real-life 3-D holographic image of a book, which I can see before me and virtually hold, flip pages, touch the margins — which will indicate to the device that I want type in notes in the margin through a small fold-out keyboard from the device or something — and basically be able to do all the things I can already do with a book today, while having all the advantages of electronic books at the same time. Maybe I’m being a bit too picky…but hey, you gotta be demanding with things like this. (And who doesn’t like holograms??)
(Wow…these comments were long. Huge, long-winded comment replies usually mean my mind is subconsciously telling me it’s time to post again.)
[...] plain text, for free. Thankfully, copyright protection doesn’t last for ever. Michael Kim over at Hopping into Puddles recently mentioned a new blog, Planet eBook, which is starting a similar, smaller-scale effort with [...]