A lot of people who got NOOK for themselves might want to save some money and use this opportunity to read something for free. But when it comes to choosing eBooks to read via NOOK eReaders or applications, you should always know beforehand which formats does NOOK support. From NOOK’s official website, the information is quite clear. And here we can draw a conclusion that if there is one format that is safe and accessible on all NOOK devices, then it’s definitely going to be EPUB.
Okay, now you know that EPUB is the most universal format that NOOK supports, you can go for a book hunt on the great internet. But among thousands of websites that look exactly the same, you can easily get lost and confused. This article saves you the energy for digging all the way down to find the real treasure, for we are going to be by your side to show you the way. Here we list a few of the websites that offer free eBooks that you can download and read legally.
Barnes & Nobles’ own website
That’s correct, you don’t have to go all the way from home to find free eBooks, the answer lies right in your hand: NOOK’s official website. Simply go to the eBook section on NOOK’s official website, and choose free eBooks. There are loads of books that you can freely add to your library. So get your NOOK account ready for the bargain.
NOOK provides over 80,000 free eBooks covering over 40 subjects. You can find not only classics like the works of Agatha Christie, but also the newest popular fiction of the present. If you want to learn some knowledge while reading eBooks, NOOK also has books that deal with more serious subjects like science, biology etc.
Note that Friday is a little special because there is an event called Free Fridays, meaning that on each Friday, NOOK will put on a free eBook on the shelf for its customers. On Fridays, on PC you can view the details under the Free eBooks section. The information of Free Friday event will be shared also on Facebook and Twitter to make sure that you don’t miss it. Do use this limited time to download these books, because it’s most likely that these books will never be free again once this event has expired. (Related guide: How to download NOOK eBooks and remove DRM?)
Have you ever noticed the icon at the bottom of NOOK e-Reading app that says Readouts? It’s for users who have installed NOOK reading app on their phones/tablets, whether the system is Android or iOS, an icon that should be paid attention to if they want to make their reading experience to perfection. If you click on the icon, it will show you two sections. The first section called Daily Picks it’s a page that renews itself every single day and contains a stream of free quick reads. Normally you only need 2 minutes or so to finish these quick reads, they are book excerpts, magazine articles, and some news about books. The second section called Serial Picks is kind of a marathon-like program that motivates you to read something every day by setting a goal of reading a whole book each month, and during this one-month period you can read a certain percentage, namely one chapter of the book every day, consequently you’ll be finishing the whole thing by the end of the month.
Library Genesis
Library Genesis, as its icon suggests, has over 2 million files uploaded and shared in its depository, which includes scientific articles, literary works, magazines, comic books, all offered in various languages and formats. NOOK users can definitely find more EPUB files that are supported by NOOK. It’s a website for students who are struggling with papers, scholars looking for materials within his/her professional fields, but also for e-Book lovers who just want to chill, there are basically no limitations. You can search for your interested stuff without having to register an ID like most other websites require. And the interface is totally understandable, you can change the setting by checking the boxes down below to specify what you are looking for. Remember that the content that you downloaded from this website is only for personal use, otherwise you are likely to get into trouble.
Furthermore, Library Genesis has mirror websites that allow users to access its repository in case one of them breaks down. Currently these websites run smoothly: https://libgen.is/, http://93.174.95.27/, and http://gen.lib.rus.ec/. It’s always doable to search for Library Genesis Proxy or Library Genesis Mirrors when you don’t know where to go.
Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg has more than 60,000 eBooks that you can download and read on NOOK. Most books that they released are in formats of plain text and HTML, but you can still find a lot of books that are downloadable as EPUB, so that NOOK users can read with no worries.
As for genres and legitimacy, this website contains most of the classic literature that has entered public domain, so it’s legal to print out the contents from this website or even produce thousands of copies of them. Another advantage of this website is that you don’t necessarily need to create an ID, which saves you a bunch of time.
Planet eBook
If you are a NOOK user that is a fan of minimalism, this website is definitely for you: The interface is well-designed and organized, the category regarding to books is cut into two sections, which are understandable and on-point. Each book has its own introduction and plot summary written beside it, a lovely and obvious way to know about the general information of the book to decide whether you’ll like it or not.
Most of the books are offered in three popular eBook formats, which are EPUB, PDF and MOBI. For NOOK users, just choosing EPUB will do. These options are on the left side of the book, click one of them and the downloading process will start, no registration needed.
Like Project Gutenberg, this website is mainly for bookworms who are fond of classic literature, most of the beloved writers like Mark Twain, Homer, Franz Kafka etc. all have their works on display, and they are pretty legit. But compared to Project Gutenberg, Planet eBook has much smaller collection of books, and only has eBooks that are in English, even if the work that interests you is originally written in another language.
Manybooks
Manybooks has a collection of almost 50,000 eBooks, including various genres like romance, mystery, thriller etc. and offered in 46 languages. The interface is not so minimalistic, but contains a lot of necessary and user-friendly information.
The books are mainly sorted by genres, and you can customize your searching experience by set up filters like ratings (from one star to five stars) and languages. You can view the details of a certain book by clicking the cover of it, and know instantly how many pages it has or in what year it is published. One special thing about Manybooks is that others’ opinions are open to you, you can go over reviews about a certain book by clicking Reviews beside the author’s name.
You can either read online or download the book to read offline or transfer the downloaded content to NOOK. Fortunately, Manybooks is quite generous about the formats that users can download, there are formats like EPUB, PDF, AZW3, MOBI and so on. Options are given to you once you click Free Download, and simply choosing EPUB will trigger an autonomous downloading process. However, if you are not already registered, there will be a popped-up window to let you login your account, users who are new to this website may need a short while to create an account. Logging in via Facebook or Google is quicker.
Inconveniences of this website might be too many advertisements, and the must-needed registration.
Lit2Go
The website has an interface of classic noir style, the pictures and fonts all resemble the feeling of old times. You can find basically all kinds of classic literature works on this website, with its audio version. On the detail page you can pick up information like language, publishing year, and most the most unique feature of this website: Readability. The website uses Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level index to indicate the complexity of the text. So it’s very useful if you’re using the resources for educational purposes or language learning.
As for downloading eBooks, this website only supports PDF format, and you can only download the text chapter by chapter by clicking the specific chapter, but not as a whole. One relief is that no registration is needed to download these books.
The Online Books Page
This website is managed by the library of Pennsylvania University, and has a huge selection of free books that reaches the number of 3 million. It offers books in multiple languages with legitimacy. Except from books, there are also magazines, published journals and newspapers.
The website also has uniquely picked out several collections regarding crucial topics like censorship, women writers etc. Put some key words in the searching section and you will get what you want, no registration needed.
But the website is a little bit of a mess, mainly because it uses basically the same font to build up the website and the font has the same color. The second disadvantage is that the website lacks order, so for some people it might be difficult to understand and use. Another hinderance is that there isn’t always an EPUB version of the book that you want. So the situation really depends.
Goodreads
You may know Goodreads as a website for reviewing books, but what you might not know is that Goodreads offers downloadable content while provides space for book lovers to share their thoughts and ideas about certain books.
The interface is neat and understandable, and you can change how the books are sorted to find books according to the trend. There is no requirement for registration if you want to download a book. NOOK users can find EPUB versions of specific books, but the downside of Goodreads is that the number of books that can be downloaded in EPUB version is not so many.
Last but not least, you can change websites if one of them doesn’t meet your demand. We do hope that you can use your NOOK devices to its full, and have fun reading!
