Free e-books for your e-reader: the best legal, DRM-free sources

All four are legal and DRM-free, so their books open on any e-reader that reads EPUB.

Project Gutenberg is the oldest digital library, with over 60,000 public-domain books: Austen, Dickens, Doyle, Shelley, Twain and thousands more. No account is needed. On a book's page, choose the EPUB download; Gutenberg offers a modern EPUB for current e-readers and an older version for older devices.

Books are proofread by volunteers, but formatting varies; if a classic is also on Standard Ebooks, that edition is usually nicer to read.

Standard Ebooks takes public-domain texts and produces carefully typeset editions, with modern typography, proper covers and consistent formatting. The catalogue is smaller than Gutenberg's but higher in quality. Download the compatible EPUB for most e-readers; there are also Kobo and Kindle versions.

• Wikisource: volunteer-transcribed public-domain texts, including poetry, plays, letters and historical documents. Pages can be exported as EPUB.
• Internet Archive: millions of scanned books. Public-domain titles can be downloaded freely; many newer books are only available as DRM-protected loans.
• Faded Page: books in the public domain in Canada. Canada's copyright terms differ from other countries', so check that a book is out of copyright where you live.
• Baen Free Library: free science-fiction and fantasy novels from the publisher, as a taster of its authors.

For newer books, these stores and publishers sell without DRM, so what you buy opens on any reader:

• Smashwords: independent authors and small presses, all DRM-free.
• Baen: all its e-books are DRM-free.
• Tor: most of its e-books are sold without DRM.
• Kobo: some e-books are DRM-free; the book's page says which.
• StoryBundle: DRM-free e-book bundles.
• Amazon: since January 2026, some Kindle books can be downloaded DRM-free as EPUB. See Kindle books on a non-Kindle e-reader.

A book enters the public domain when its copyright expires, which depends on when the author died and on the country you're in. Project Gutenberg's main site follows US law, and Faded Page follows Canada's. If you're outside those countries, check your local rules before downloading.

Download the EPUB to your computer or phone, then add it to your reader. For pocket readers, see how to get books onto a pocket e-reader; for IKAWE Moov, add books to Moov. To keep a growing library tidy, see how to organise an e-book library.