Say books and a bibliophile’s ears will perk up. Say free books and it will bring immense pleasure to any reader. After all, what brings more happiness to a reader than more books, either cheap or free? If you are looking for good places to find great reads, the following should be on your radar.
Good ol’ Wattpad
Wattpad is an online reading and story publishing platform. Access a variety of books published by aspiring, amateur writers, and even readers. Of late, several Wattpad stories have found their way to the OTT — After series, Perfect Addiction, The Kissing Booth, Through My Window, etc, to name a few, have been made into movies and web series. Numerous stories from the platforms are also getting published as long-form novels. Closer home, we have the desi Saga
Fiction, which is similar to Wattpad. Here too you can read and publish stories.
Free ebooks & online reading
Fond of ebooks? But don’t want to spend money? Check out these websites that have an awesome range of free ebooks. You can also read books for free online.
Fussy Librarian, Library Genesis, Many Books: You can download free e-books and PDFs from these sites. Fussy Librarian sends the ebooks directly to your device.
Open Library: From Shakespeare to Jane Austen, and more, you can find all kinds of classic books available here for free reading.
Novel Free Read Online: You can read works by contemporary writers like Susan Hill, Sylvia Day, Stephanie Meyer, Dean Koontz, etc, for free here.
Libby: All over the world, local libraries offer millions of ebooks and audiobooks. You can borrow them — for free, instantly — with a library card and Libby. They also have comics that you can digitally borrow for reading.
Comic fun: There’s no age bar to read comics. However, if you are finding it difficult to go to your favourite bookseller to buy the latest comic or simply want to read them online, these are the websites to visit.
Marvel & DC: Fans of Marvel and DC superheroes can visit the Marvel Unlimited website and DCkids. Both websites boast comics, games, and more.
Digital Comic Museum: Login and get started. Millions of decades-old comics (as old as 1900) are available for download.
Manhwa & Manga: For the past few years, manhwas are slowly gaining traction in India. Manhwas are Korean comics and several are available online in English in the form of a webtoon. A webtoon is a digital manhwa, with beautiful visuals and sometimes even music.
Webtoon: It has webtoons from different genres in English. Plenty of them are available for free but the latest ones are paid. Several popular Korean dramas (True Beauty, What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim, etc) are based on webtoons and you can read them here. You can also download the Webtoon app.
Other sites that offer a delectable range of webtoons are Webcomics, Netcomics, and Toomics (which also offers Japanese comics). If you are a manga (Japanese comics) fan but are finding it difficult to find the English versions, these websites are a must-visit.
Shonen Jump: Weekly Shonen Jump is one of the oldest manga publications and you can access a range of titles. You can also download their app.
BookWalker: The website is home to mangas from various publications like Viz, Kodansha, and Yen. You can also download their app.
Crunchyroll: Here, you can watch anime for free and for a subscription, buy a combo of manga and anime. They also have an app.
