Download free and legal eBooks to fill your eReader before you go on vacation.
Lovers of literature will tell you all, for nothing in the world they would abandon the paper book in favor of the electronic book. If the desire to own the physical object and to be able to touch its pages can be understood, opting for the electronic book can prove in certain very practical situations, in particular when packing its suitcases.
In addition to allowing you to travel light, and ensure comfortable reading in the dark, adopting the e-book will allow you to end the dilemma of choosing which book to take.
In addition to the official platforms to which some e-readers and e-book reader applications are attached, there are many solutions to download e-books for free. The editorial staff gave a quick round-up of the best sites and apps for downloading free books.
Amazon Kindle
If you’re an Amazon customer, you won’t have to travel far to download ebooks. The platform offers more than 3 million ebooks in its catalog, including more than 175,000 titles in French.
Among all these works, in both French and English, a large number of literary classics, now in the public domain, are available for download free of charge from the Amazon Kindle store. Other more recent works are also available free of charge. One click from the site will suffice to validate the free download in Kindle format of the selected book.
The e-book store is not intended only for owners of the digital reader from Amazon. All the Kindle Format ebooks offered on the platform can also be viewed from the Kindle mobile application available on Android and iOS. If you decide to download a book from a computer for later transfer to an e-reader, the resulting file will be in AZW format. You can either read it from the cloud, via your browser, or transfer it to a Kindle, the only device officially compatible with this format.
Finally, if you are a Prime subscriber, you can take advantage of the included Prime Reading offer and allow you to enjoy hundreds of novels, thrillers, children’s books, etc. for free.
Download free ebooks from Amazon (Free)
Download Kindle for Windows (Free)
Download Kindle for macOS (Free)
Download Kindle for Android (Free)
Download Kindle for iPhone / iPad (Free)
Apple Books
Apple’s eBook app, available only on iPhones, iPads, and Macs, doubles as a purchase and download store.
In addition to the paid books that can be found in all online merchants, Apple’s digital bookstore also offers hundreds of free books, in French and English. Among these works are a large number of literary classics, most of which have fallen into the public domain, but also modern novels, comics, manga, and much more.
To access it, you must first download the Apple Books application on your iPhone or iPad, then go to the Bookstore. By browsing the sections, accessible from the hamburger menu, it is possible to explore the Apple Books library by choosing Special and Free Offers. You can then find a selection of the best free books, the most downloaded, etc.
Apple Books are only available on Apple devices, so most of the books available for download are DRM protected and can only be read on a Mac, iPhone or iPad.
Download iBooks for iPhone / iPad (Free)
Google Play Books Books
Like Amazon and Apple, Google has its online library of eBooks. Google Play Books presents itself as a classic shopping store, but offers free ebooks for download, like its competitors.
To find them, you have to go to the top free ebooks, or use the search engine before filtering the results by displaying only free books. Google Play Books allows you to read the works from the web interface, but also from the Google Play Books application on Android and iOS.
However, if you wish to download a book to read it from a digital reader, simply click on the options associated with a book to retrieve the file in EPUB or PDF format.
Download books from Google Play Books (Free)
Download Google Play Books for Android (Free)
Gutenberg Project
The Gutenberg Project is a free library of books and physical documents in the public domain having been digitized, which includes nearly 60,000 documents. The Gutenberg Project offers works in French, but also in around forty other languages.
The proposed works are classified by authors in alphabetical order and the documents for download exist in several formats and several versions. You will find books with or without images in EPUB, HTML, plain text and Kindle formats. All files are downloadable directly from the Project Gutenberg site, without the need to register.
Download books on Project Gutenberg (Free)
Gallica
Through Gallica, the National Library of France offers free access to more than 4 million documents. Books, newspapers, magazines, sound recordings, manuscripts and even videos can be viewed free of charge from the website. In total, nearly 700,000 books are accessible on Gallica.
The homepage of the site can be overwhelming for the first time user of the platform. It brings together news from the Digital Library as well as a selection of documents put forward for visitors. To fully explore the library, it will be necessary to launch a query directly in the search engine, or by performing an advanced search.
The books can be read from your computer’s web browser, but can also be downloaded to your hard drive. You will be able to save a copy of the documents in PDF or in text format. Note that all of the content is accessible without connection or registration.
Download books on Gallica (Free)
Download Gallica for Android (Free)
Download Gallica for iPhone / iPad (Free)
ebooksfree.com
In addition to the platforms offered by the web giants, other independent players offer catalogs of free and legal ebooks. ebooksgratuits.com is managed by volunteers in charge of managing the site and adding new books.
The platform offers e-books in multiple formats (Mobipocket, eReader, BBeB Book Sony Reader, ePub, PDF, HTML, DOC-ODT), whose catalog is shared with partners also offering e-books, such as Project Gutenberg.
In total, ebooksfree.com provides the reader with some 2,800 works. Be careful, however, as the site is hosted in Canada, it respects Canadian copyright laws. Consequently, certain works for free download in Canada, where a work becomes free 50 years after the death of its author, cannot be legally downloaded in France where this duration is 70 years. For all affected books, an information note is displayed next to the download link.
Finally, we appreciate that the downloads are accessible to all, without the obligation to register.
Download free books on free ebooks (Free)
Bibebook
Among the few independent platforms for legally downloading electronic books, Bibebook is a good student. The site gathers 1700 free ebooks, free of rights, published under Creative Commons license. The ebooks are downloadable without any limitation: no blocking is applied and no DRM is used.
Bibebook mainly offers works by classical authors, but also some works by contemporary authors. The ebooks are available in EPUB format and can be downloaded with one click from the site which does not require any registration or registration.
Note that it is possible to download complete packs bringing together all the books offered on the site, and this in the three formats offered on the platform: EPUB, PDF and Mobipocket.
Download books to Bibebook (Free)
All Books
With more than 6,000 books in French, Livrespourtous is the best-equipped independent download platform for free ebooks. All the works on offer are in French, and the available download formats allow you to enjoy the books regardless of the platform used for reading.
Livrespourtous offers free books in Mobipocket, EPUB, Sony Reader, eReader and Word formats. No registration is required to download library books. The platform offers to explore its catalog by browsing by authors listed in alphabetical order, but also by searching directly by category. There are thus comics, tales, poems, documents, and much more.
Download books on Livrespourtous (Free)