Project Gutenberg is a free open source website that provides thousands of ebooks that are available in a multitude of formats. Some of the most popular ones include EPUB, HTML and the basic TXT file. Many e-readers but the Amazon Kindle have the ability to read the industry standard EPUB format.
The Gutenberg site is a perennial favourite for eBook Reader companies such as Kobo, Pocketbook, Jetbook and many others. All of these companies often bundle their devices with 100 free ebooks in many different languages or more.
The big policy with the Gutenberg service is that most cannot be sold for commercial purposes. They can be used for recreation, distribution or adoption. Many schools are finding that classic books that are remedial reading in certain grades are saving money by download the book, rather then paying hundreds for the paperback version.
Project Gutenberg has so many books that often it can be quite the daunting experience in finding the most popular content or books that are “must reads.” We have compiled a list of the 25 most popular books that they offer and the number of downloads each one has had.
- The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana by Vatsyayana (25732)
- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (18298)
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (15090)
- The Best American Humorous Short Stories (13854)
- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (12106)
- Ulysses by James Joyce (11361)
- How to Analyze People on Sight by Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict (11248)
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (11063)
- The Art of War by Sunzi (10303)
- Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie (9228)
- War and Peace by graf Leo Tolstoy (8694)
- The Bible, Old and New Testaments, King James Version (8626)
- The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare (8367)
- The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci — Complete by Leonardo da Vinci (8313)
- A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (8249)
- The 2010 CIA World Factbook by United States. Central Intelligence Agency (8130)
- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (8105)
- Grimm’s Fairy Tales by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm (7717)
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (7681)
- The Time Machine by H. G. Wells (7330)
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (7087)
- Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman (7055)
- The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie (6982)
- Dracula by Bram Stoker (6927)
- A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs (6859)
via Overdrive Blog
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.