I was recently watching a marvelous PBS documentary on Benjamin Franklin. They mentioned that he wrote an autobiography that takes the form of writing to his son about his life and all the things he learned.
I immediately decided to purchase the autobiography from Amazon which cost me roughly $9. I only discovered a little while later that I could have downloaded a free ebook of Franklin's autobiography from Project Gutenberg.
Project Gutenberg is a website where volunteers digitize books that are not under copyright and are in the public domain. They place these digital ebooks on their website where the public can download them free of charge or read them online.
They include classic works by top authors including William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Jane Austin, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, and many more.
The site includes not just books, but sheet music, speeches by presidents, and other forms of material.
If you're looking for a classic book whose copyright has expired there's a good chance you can find it on Project Gutenberg's website. For the United States, all books published prior to 1923 are in the public domain. Works published between 1929 and 1964 may or may not be in the public domain according to Wikipedia. Search for "Wikipedia Copyright" for more details about what falls under public domain.
I wish I had known about Project Gutenberg a few days ago because it could have saved me $9.
