Free Readings: How to Find Free Online Fiction

If you're an avid reader, the Internet can be a treasure trove of free books, news, and other reading materials. But where are you looking? Especially if you want to find free reading material that does not violate copyright?

In this article, we list a variety of sources where you can find novels, short stories, poetry, etc., both old and new. But first, we have an interesting news for those who are looking for relatively new books: thousands of works that until now were supposed to be protected by copyright may not be.

Until recently, one could safely assume that anything written after 1924 was still protected by copyright and was not in the public domain. However, as reported by ViceThousands of books written between 1924 and 1964 may have fallen into the public domain.

(If the details of the copyright law make your eyes meet, do not hesitate to skip the following paragraphs.)

Copyright laws are complicated and have been continually modified and amended over the years. In accordance with the 1976 Copyright Act, any work created on or after 1 January 1978 is automatically protected by copyright throughout the lifetime of the author plus an additional 70 years. (Yes, it's very long.You may or may not agree with the way the act was written, but that's the current state of affairs.)

Immediately before, however, copyrights had to be manually renewed after 28 years, then again after 28 years (for a total of 56 years). The result is that all the books published before 1964 and whose copyright was not renewed – because their authors did not know that they had to renew it, did not care or were no longer there – fell into the domain public. (All books published before 1924 are already in the public domain, and those published after 1964 were still protected by copyright when the 1976 Copyright Act came into force and therefore have been automatically renewed.)

As a result, according to the New York Public Library, there could now be more than 480,000 books that are no longer protected by copyright and should be accessible to readers in a completely free way.

NYPL worked on a project to identify, verify and digitize these books. The first step was to convert the Copyright Entries Catalog (CCE), which lists all the author rights for this period, images scanned in XML format, thus greatly facilitating the process. But this is only the beginning of the process.

As the NYPL explains, the determination of public domain works poses many problems. You must first make sure that the copyright has not been renewed. You must make sure that they are not published outside of the United States because they may then be subject to different copyright laws. You must make sure that there is no material in the book – let's say an edition with a more recent introduction – that is still protected by copyright. And so on and so not. Once everything is resolved, qualifying books can be digitized for public consumption.

Until all these new books are available, there are already many online resources where you can find books and free stories to read.

Novels

As mentioned above, many books published before 1924 are available for frequent readers. And do not just look for known classics. If you explore some of these sites, you may discover hidden gems.

• Gutenberg Project was founded in 1971 and, at the time of writing, the collection has about 60,000 texts, all of which are downloadable for free. This is a large project that includes text in a variety of formats (such as TXT, HTML, ePub, Mobi, etc.).

• In addition to being the home of the Wayback Machine where you can find web captures from, as well as a long time ago, Internet Archive offers registered users access to thousands of downloaded texts. He also has copies of e-books that are not in the public domain; these can be borrowed for two weeks.
• Most public libraries now allow their users to borrow e-books. Libby, OverDrive and Hoopla are three of the most popular applications used by libraries. You can also often borrow books in Kindle format. The best thing to do is to check with your local library to find out which applications they support.
• If you like more sound than print, LibriVox is a good resource to check. This service offers audio versions of public domain books in MP3 format; you can also download the books directly to iTunes. Readers are all volunteers. The quality of the readings may vary, but if you find a reader that you like, you can always search to see what else he has produced.

Short stories

There are a variety of online publications that offer well-written (and well-edited) news. Some provide free access to one or two articles in the last issue, while others are completely free.

• Some of the best-known literary magazines include Narrative Magazine, The Vestal Review (specialized in flash fiction), Plows, Granta, Pank, and New Yorker. (New Yorker It's actually one of those publications "you get four free items a month, then you pay through your nose".)
• If you are more interested in genre publications than in pure literature, you will find a multitude of free stories, especially in the science fiction / fantasy genre. A short list of available publications includes Tor.com, Clarkesworld, Speed ​​of light, Under the incessant sky, Strange Horizons, and Strange. There are many others.

• Unfortunately, it is not so easy to find short stories for mysteries and novels. While publications such as The Strand magazine and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine offer online snippets of their content, there are no complete stories available to non-subscribers. However, if you are looking for classic and exhausted fiction, Tales of murder offers stories of varying length, many of which are fun to read simply because they are old fashioned. And you can find a lot of free online romance if you register with the famous publisher Harlequin.
• If you are a blogger, critic, librarian or other influential person, visit Netgalley, a site where many publishers have access to copies of their books before they are published, in the hope that you would recommend the book.

Self-published books

We are far from the time when self-published books were only considered vain projects. Online services and on – demand printing have allowed thousands of authors to bypass traditional publishing houses and publish their novels, collections of short stories and other works. .

However, although there are many excellent self-published authors, many authors do not care about minor annoyances such as editors and grammatical accuracy. Be aware of this as you wade through these waters.

Smashwords offers access to thousands of self-published books – at the time of writing this article, it was over 520,000 available – and many of them are free.

Bookbub is a site that helps self-published authors to publicize their work. It also provides a place to market their books or make them available for free (to try to win an audience).

Amazon has encouraged many authors to self-publish through its various tools. Some of these books are free, but they are hard to find. If you're a core member, you can get one or two free books a month through Amazon's First Reads program, while Kindle Unlimited gives you access to an extensive library of books. However, it will cost you $ 9.99 a month.

Free printable books

Finally, as many people still read printed books, I did not want to forget to mention two sources of free literature. First, of course, there is your local public library. But there is also a small phenomenon called the Little Free Library, which tells you how to share books in a small box or other container in front of your house, store, or other public place. The site includes a map of LFLs registered near you.

While reading free stories and novels is a good idea, it's not a bad idea to buy one from time to time to support your favorite writers.

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