How to Find Free eTextbooks for College Students

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Free online digital textbooks for college students – 8 great sites to find free textbooks

College students often search for textbook rentals in order to reduce the cost of college. Besides rentals, there are options to find free textbooks and free PDF and other formats.

Not all your textbooks will be available for free on the internet, but it helps to look around to ensure you can save money.

Your college professor is a good source to get information on free eTextbooks.

However, things change often when it comes to online book business, so it pays to find out for yourself.

There are lots of options to rent or to buy new and used textbooks.

You’re probably familiar with Chegg, Amazon, CourseLoad and Textbook.com, among many. These platforms are good tools to search for textbook when you’re willing to pay.

For free eTextbooks, check out the list of curated sources below. These platforms offer eTextbooks in subjects like Business, Accounting, Finance, Engineering, Science, History and others.

One of the advantages of eTextbooks is the ability to print out material like one chapter at a time or only a few pages. So, if you find free eTextbook on any subject it’s a nice benefit.

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These are some of the subjects you can find in free eTextbook formats

Business eTextbooks
Accounting eTextbooks
Technology eTextbooks
Biomedical eTextbooks
History eTextbooks
Computer Science eTextbooks
Biology etextbooks
Humanities
Law textbooks
Politics

Ways to Find Free Digital Textbooks – etextbooks

Most professors don’t cover the entire assigned textbooks during the semester or year. I remember paying hundreds of dollars for a textbook and the professor ending up covering less than half of the book.

Many times, you’ll probably just need some chapters from the assigned books.

Try finding these chapters using these methods.

1.Google the name of the textbook followed by the word “pdf” at the end. You’ll get search results from Google indicating the finds for the textbook on the inter webs. You may also get other suggestions, similar books.

2.Try the public library. Most public library offer E-Media and Digital content on their system. You can access the library system with a membership card and do a search for your textbook.

3. Visit your school library. There may be a copy of the textbook in the school library. You can scan or copy the chapters needed.

8 Best Sites to Find Free eTextbooks for College Students

Just because you find a book for sale in a platform does not necessarily mean it can’t be access for free in an Open Book platform. So, try some of these resources.

Generally, the agreements these sites have with the authors is for the download and print of the textbook by students. However, if you intend to change or adapt these books, make sure to find the additional permissions required.

These are mostly non profits digital platforms for open textbook access.

Connexions

This digital platform is a non-profit supported by Rice University and other institutions. It has a large collections of books free of charge.

There are thousands of pages organized into textbook-style books in many subjects. These are accessible online and downloadable to many devices, anywhere, anytime.

Connexions encourages the sharing and reuse of educational content, therefore it allows users to download the free textbooks and to adopt it with attribution.

Among the many subject books available here are; Algebra, Biology, Business, Chemistry, Social Science, Entrepreneurship.

This platform has a powerful search tool that is searchable by author, subject, keyword, publication date.

University of Minnesota

This university provides a list of Open Textbooks for free download. These college textbooks are written by college professors across the country.

The authors have agreed to make available these free books for use as is and for changes. Books subjects include; Business, Accounting, Psychology, Computer Science, Medicine, Mathematics.

These books can be used and adopted without the need for further permissions.

PDF Drive

PDF Drive is a search engine for ebooks and content including textbooks that are on pdf format. The digital content and books here are free of charge. the site claims to have close to 80 million ebooks.

This is a commercial website with advertisements, however these are nonintrusive. There is a free version of the search tool and a Premium paid version. The free version allows access to many textbooks and other pdf documents.

Among the subjects you can find textbook for include Business, Science, Technology, Literature.

The best way to locate a book on this platform is by using the Search bar and typing the author name, title or keywords.

Gutenberg Project

This is a very popular site to download free books and it’s one of the oldest Open Book sources. The search engine allows you to do quick search or advance search with more details.

Titles here are available for free download in many disciplines, however the site’s most available books are in the Humanities.

Saylor Academy

Sailors.org free textbooks include Accounting, Management, Law and general business.

These books are available for print and download. The user agreement is between you and the author, Taylor doesn’t own the copyrights to the books.

The best way to search here is by subject or topic.

Other free eTextbooks sites and Engines- Commercial

These are some additional sites where you can find free textbooks, however these are commercial sites and you may see ads and sometimes not secured out bound links. So, be mindful when accessing these.

These include eBookee, PDF Search Engine and Library Genesis

Final Thoughts

Textbooks can be very expensive and often you don’t need an entire book to complete your coursework. A little bit of research can help you save hundreds of dollars on textbooks.

Look for free; textbooks, digital textbooks and pdf formats to download copies of the required books for college. Also, consider renting the book or paying for an older edition to save money.