# Downloading E-Books

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downloading-e-books/213609>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [November 17, 2003, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downloading-e-books/213609 "2003-11-17T00:59:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Nobody](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/94ad74/32.png) [@Nobody](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nobody)\
**Post date:** [November 17, 2003, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downloading-e-books/213609/1 "2003-11-17T00:59:10Z")

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Is there a site that lets you just download E-books, without their own readers?  
OK, that probably didn’t sound right, so I’ll try again. I found a couple of sites with free E-book downloads, really old stories of course, ones not copyrighted like **War of the Worlds** or **Great Expectations**. However, the downloads are around 1meg give or take, and the computer I want to download them to has, for the momemnt, a very small hard drive by todays standards (only about 2 gig) so what would be better for me, is to simply download a reader (which I already did), then download stories only, not a story that’s part of its own reader.  
If you understood what I just said 😃 then any help is appreciated. Thanks.

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**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\
**Post date:** [November 17, 2003, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downloading-e-books/213609/2 "2003-11-17T01:07:05Z")

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> **[Project Gutenberg](https://www.gutenberg.org/)**
>
> Project Gutenberg is a library of free eBooks.

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**Author:** ![peri](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/67e7ee/32.png) [@peri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/peri)\
**Post date:** [November 17, 2003, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downloading-e-books/213609/3 "2003-11-17T04:05:27Z")

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What reader did you download?

For the Microsoft Reader:

[http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/ebooks/](http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/ebooks/) has many (1800) free books. Most I’ve downloaded from there have been in the 500K range.

[http://www.fictionwise.com](http://www.fictionwise.com) has a small selection of free books, in addition to many available for a fee. They offer ebooks for several of the readers.

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**Author:** ![Nobody](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/94ad74/32.png) [@Nobody](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nobody)\
**Post date:** [November 17, 2003, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downloading-e-books/213609/4 "2003-11-17T04:07:55Z")

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Thanks. Yeah, now that you mention it, I think that my wife told me about that site too, but I completely forgot. I’ll go check it out.

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**Author:** ![Nobody](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/94ad74/32.png) [@Nobody](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nobody)\
**Post date:** [November 17, 2003, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downloading-e-books/213609/5 "2003-11-17T04:14:15Z")

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Oops, my last post was to Revtim, but thank you also peri.