This is a guest post from Jennifer Carey (@TeacherJenCarey) of EdTechTeacher – an advertiser on this site.
With the rise and prominence of eBooks have come a number of resources for educators and students to access free content on virtually any device. Using e-readers, tablets, or computers; in conjunction with apps such as Kindle, Nook, iBooks, Google Play Books, and OverDrive; you can access libraries of books for free on virtually any device. By downloading these free apps, you make your device a digital reading device that is not dependent on a specific vendor. 
Once you have the apps installed on your device, there are many resources you can use to find free eBooks. While books in the public domain are readily available, there are also self-published books, books available to educators, books on special promotions, and even places that will allow you to check out books temporarily. Here are a few places that you can go to find free eBooks:
- Kindle books – Kindle curates a list of free and low priced books ($1.99) here; come back regularly for newly added materials, especially during promotions and the holiday season. If your school has signed up for Amazon’s Whispercast service, you can even push books directly to students’ Amazon accounts.
- Nook Books – Barnes and Noble curates a list of free eBooks on this site.
- Google Play Books – Google Books allows you to search their store and sort by cost. So search or select a genre, select price, and then indicate: free.
- Google Books – Connected to Google (but outside of the play store), Google Books is accessible online and provides free previews and full length books for its users.
- Feedbooks – Feedbooks contains a list of free public domain books that you can download and install on your device.
- Goodreads – In addition to being a social media site for readers, Goodreads also publishes a list of free eBooks in ePub format.
- Project Gutenberg – Project Gutenberg is one of the most popular resources for free eBooks that you can download as epub, kindle, or read online.
- iBooks – iBooks is proprietary and only available on Mac and iOS. Within the iBooks Store, you can select that tab labeled “free” to access all free iBooks available.
- Project Muse – Hosted and curated by Johns Hopkins University, Project Muse is a great resources for more advanced readers and researchers; they are a repository of more than 300,000 peer-reviewed journals and 700,000 chapters of academic books.
Another resource for free eBooks is your school and local library. Many libraries have made their resources available digitally via tools such as Kindle and OverDrive. This will only cost you a library card (usually free)! If you have a local College or University, you may wish to explore their lending privileges. A small fee may grant you even broader access to books.
As eBook services expand and with more materials entering the public domain, more books become readily available to the public for little or no cost. If you are an avid reader or are looking for free resources for your students, explore these tools available to you.
For more app recommendations and ideas, visit the EdTechTeacher web site.
