Planet eBook

Planet eBook provides a free collection of classic literature for download in PDF ebook format. The ebooks are nicely resented and well formatted for reading on a portable ebook reader.

Go to Planet eBook

The Book Depository

Found this one via Lifehacker. The Book Depository is currently offering over 11,000 free ebooks for download. Most seem to be previously out of print titles that have been republished by Dodo Press, available in DRM free pdf format.

Go to The Book Depository

Fictionwise ebook store

Fictionwise (www.fictionwise.com) was purchased in 2009 by Barnes and Noble but still operates as a separate store. Fictionwise has a affiliate program and you can find the same store rebranded at a number of sites including Stanza (iPhone only), eReader.com, Palm eBook Store, and others.

Fictionwise supports a wide variety of common and not some common ebook formats. The Secure eReader (epub) is the recommended format and many books currently offer a 5% rebate when purchased in as an epub ebook. To download and purchase books from Fictionwise (or it's affiliates) you have to sign up for an account, even to download the free ebooks.

Joining the Fictionwise BuyWise Club entitles you to discounted prices and access to the Fictionwise Lending Library, however the lending library only seems to support the Mobipocket ebook format at this time which is not supported on my Sony Reader.

Go to Fictionwise

Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.org) was one of the first (maybe "the first") sites to start digitizing books that are out copyright and making the text available for download.

The Project Gutenberg site is not really a store (as all the books are free) and provides more function over form. Full text search available for the books, but if your just browsing the "Top downloads" is a good place to start, listing may great classics.

Project Gutenberg ebooks are primarily in HTML and plain text formats, but can also be downloaded in epub and other popular formats suitable for ebook readers.

Go to Project Gutenberg

Feedbooks

Feedbooks (feedbooks.com) is a great source for free ebooks. Feedbooks provides a selection public domain and free self published ebooks from original authors made available under the Creative Commons licensing. Supported ebook formats include epub, pdf and Mobipocket.

Feedbooks is also a self publishing platform for authors, but unlike Lulu which I covered in my previous post, Feedbooks is does not offer an option for hard copy publishing.

Go to Feedbooks