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Free eBooks & AudioBooks for Mobile Computers, eBook Readers & Linux

Do you want to read free eBooks and eTexts? Free as in freedom? Many of them are published under a free license, e.g. Creative Commons, GPL. Here you may find some links to free eBooks, which you may read on your Linux PDA, Linux TabletPC or Linux laptop or some eBook reader. Not much yet but I hope it works as a start. There are links to tips, tricks and HOWTOs for format conversions between different eBook formats, too.



Free eBooks and eTexts

Free AudioBooks

Free Applications and Utilities for AudioBooks

AudioBookBinder

Got a lot of audiobooks in MP3 format and would like to listen them on your iPod? Audiobook Binder to the rescue! It is simple utility that converts audiobooks to MP4 bookmarkable (m4b) format. AudioBookBinder is a simple command line utility that converts a collection of audio files to m4b format (iTunes/iPod audiobook format).

MultiReader

MultiReader is an Android speech application, it speaks Word, Power Point, EPUB, PDF, RTF, text documents in several languages. There is also a direct access (search & download) to Gutenberg, online libraries. Currently availables voices are : English, Spanish, French, German, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Finnish, all Android TTS Engines & languages... This application can be useful in public transportation, to listen documents while driving, while doing sports, for people having difficulties with fine characters on mobile phones, for eLearning and more.

Free eBook Readers

Simultaneous Stanza Reader speaks text files aloud and displays the text stanza-after-stanza simultaneously in a high contrast, large font window. Although this reader is meant to assist those with visual impairments, it can be used by anyone. It allows one to read a book while doing something else or sitting in a comfortable chair across the room. It is written for MAC OS X in Applescript Studio - applescript and xcode.

Plucker is an offline web and eBook viewer for Palm OS(tm) based handheld devices and PDAs that comes with Unix, Linux tools and conduits, and Windows and Mac OSX conduits that let you decide exactly what part of the web that you want to view on your PDA.

OpieReader is a port to the Zaurus PDA of TWReader an EText reader for the Agenda PDA. Plucker format is especially nice to view via OpieReader and has a lot of tool support including AvantGo-like offline webbrowsing capabilities which are fully supported by OpieReader.

REBComm is a commandline program for GNU/Linux that lets the user upload and download files from the RCA eBook REB1100 reader device through a USB connection. It aims to provide much of the same functionality as the eBook Librarian software in Windows. It can be used to send user-generated content to the device.

DocReader by Chris Wong is an eBook reader (for Palm DOC format) and more. There is a port for the SHARP Zaurus available.

JustReader is just another reader for Linux PDAs.

At the Weasel reader page you find also a detailed survey of text conversion tools.

GutenFlash is a streaming text reader, based on the concept of Rapid Serial Visual Presentation. The idea is to display a few words at a time, very quickly, in a very large font. Playback speed ranges from 20 to 2000 words per minute, including extra pauses to accommodate punctuation.

kio_reb is a KIO Slave providing access to Nuvomedia's Rocket eBook.

FBReader is an e-book reader. It currently works on the Sharp Zaurus, Siemens Simpad with Opensimpad ROM, Nokia 770/N800 Internet Tablet, Archos PMA430, Motorola E680i/A780/A1200 smartphones, PepperPad 3, Asus Eee PC, IRex iLiad, UMPC, and Linux/Windows XP/FreeBSD desktop computers. It supports several e-book formats: plucker, palmdoc, zTXT, HTML, CHM, fb2, TCR (psion text), OEB, OpenReader, RTF, non-DRM'ed Mobipocket, and plain text.

FBReaderJ is an e-book reader for the Android platform. It is a clone of the FBReader book reader written in Java. FBReaderJ supports several e-book formats: oeb, epub, fb2. In future releases the list will be extended to support the same formats as the original FBReader. Direct reading from zip, tar and gzip archives is supported.

Project Gutenberg supplies a large number of free electronic texts. The JBook project lets users retrieve, read, and bookmark electronic texts, primarily from Project Gutenberg but eventually from other sources.

rwdgutenberg is a book reading tool. It can find text files, build lists of text files, auto read texts, has context sensitive help, and can submit bug reports with one click. Additional applets can be downloaded. It includes the rwdtinker framework, and should not require any other downloads. It only requires that Ruby be installed, and should work on all platforms.

GutenPy makes it easier to find and read books from Project Gutenberg. It has handy bookmarking, line numbering, and word definition lookups. Its catalog browser can use simple or complex regular expression filters for title, author, and subject, and allows you to create a booklist of wanted items that can be saved and downloaded later.

Kiwix is an offline reader for Web contents based on the ZIM file format. It uses the Mozilla framework and integrates a full-text search engine. For example, this software allows you to read Wikipedia offline.

Free AudioBook Readers

k a b o o k

k a b o o k KDE Audiobook mp3 player. GUI mode and console mode for dyslectic, blind and visually impaired. Festival text to speech reads index links to the mp3. Take notes when paused and read them with festival TTS Audio Education, Manage Streaming Recordings, edit MP3.

Freedaisy

Freedaisy is a free implementation of Daisy book standard for allowing MP3 files to be indexed using (X)HTML and SMIL. Daisy is frequently used by visually impaired users, so they can listen to audio books with chapters.

Free Java eBook Tools

Mobile Bookshelf

Mobile Bookshelf converts text files to MIDlets (Java programs that can be run on mobile phone), making it possible to read your favourite books on your handset.

Tequilacat Book Reader

Tequilacat book reader is a free Java midlet allowing to read books on any Java enabled mobile phone or PDA. See this page for links to other free book readers, too.

ReadManiac

ReadManiac is a midlet that lets you read large text files on the Siemens SL45i, SL42i, S55, S57, M50, M55, C55, C60, MC60, SL55, CF62, M65, S65, SL65, C65, C65V/CV65 and CX65 phones, Nokia series 40 and series 60 phones, and practically all other JAVA-enabled phones. Midlet has dedicated search engine for searching books in internet. Midlet download these books directly to phone's memory. Once installed, it becomes library in the pocket. See this page for many links to other free book readers, too.

RSS Reader MIDlet

RSS Reader MIDlet is an RSS feed reader for handhelds that can run Java MIDlets. It uses RMS (persistent storage) for offline reading. It is MIDP 1.0 CLDC 1.0 compliant and requires about 256kb memory to work well.

eKitaab

eKitaab is an eBook Catalog Manager to manage large collections of ebooks. eKitaab is not an eBook reader. eKitaab displays a list of all books you have, with their titles, authors, descriptions, and photos of the book covers. It also shows if you have read that book before or not. eKitaab downloads all this information from the Internet, based on the ISBN of the book, or by searching by author or title.

ZhuaShuShell

ZhuaShuShell is a set of scripts to crawl a collection of online e-books (in HTML format) from certain Chinese e-book sites and save the data to your local machine formatted as a single text book.

WordFlashReader

WordFlashReader is a Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) program useful to anyone who has an electronic text or book they wish to read. This program works with text files, HTML files, and PDF files. WordFlashReader works by flashing each word of the text sequentially on the screen (pausing for punctuation). Not only is this way of reading off of a computer screen more comfortable on the eyes than the normal method, but also after a little practice you may discover that you can read at multiple times the speed you normally do.

Conversion Software

calibre

calibre is a one stop solution to all your e-book needs. It is free, open source and cross-platform in design and works well on Linux, OS X and Windows. calibre is meant to be a complete e-library solution and thus includes library management, format conversion, news feeds to ebook conversion, as well as e-book reader sync features and an integrated e-book viewer.

Lucidor

Lucidor is a program for reading and handling e-books. It supports e-books in the EPUB file format and catalogs in the OPDS format.

PDFRead

PDFRead is a tool for converting PDF and DJVU documents for reading on eBook devices. It does this by creating an image out of each page, enhancing the image, and then collating the images in a device-specific format.

JPluck

JPluck converts web sites to Plucker documents for offline reading using the Plucker Viewer for Palm OS devices or the Opie-Reader for the SHARP Zaurus PDA . With JPluck on your desktop and the reader on your handheld you can carry the web in the palm of your hand! JPluck is a Java application and runs on all platforms where Java 1.4.1 is available: Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP, Linux, Mac OS X and Solaris.

doc2palm

How to convert documents under Linux to read them as eBook on the Palm Pilot PDA (in German).

GutenMark

GutenMark is a command-line tool for automatically creating high-quality HTML or LaTeX markup from Project Gutenberg etexts. There is also a graphical front-end called GUItenMark that greatly simplifies usage for casual users. Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux are each directly supported, limited iPhone support is also possible. In combination with other freely-available conversion tools GutenMark aims to convert Project Gutenberg etexts into publication-quality Postscript or PDF, for print-on-demand applications.

OpenInkPot

OpenInkpot is a free and open-source Linux distribution for eink-based devices.

Agenda2PDF

agenda2pdf is a program that generates a book agenda file in the PDF format. You can choose among different sections. Each section can have PDF links to other parts of the agenda. It was created for use with an iLiad eBook reader.

gPDFText

gPDFText is a text editor that opens PDF documents for ebook readers, converts the text contents into plain ASCII text, restores the original paragraphs, and removes unwanted line breaks to allow easier zooming on the reader.

EPUB2PDF

epub2pdf is a command-line tool that quickly generates PDF files from EPUB ebooks. It allows the user to specify page size, fonts, margins, and default paragraph alignment.

Sigil

Sigil is a free multi-platform WYSIWYG eBook editor. It is designed to edit books in ePub format.

OCRopus

OCRopus OCRopus(tm) is a state-of-the-art document analysis and OCR system, featuring pluggable layout analysis, pluggable character recognition, statistical natural language modeling, and multi-lingual capabilities. The OCRopus engine is based on two research projects: a high-performance handwriting recognizer developed in the mid-90's and deployed by the US Census bureau, and novel high-performance layout analysis methods. OCRopus is development is sponsored by Google and is initially intended for high-throughput, high-volume document conversion efforts. We expect that it will also be an excellent OCR system for many other applications.

DjVu Libre

DjVu Libre is a web-centric format and software platform for distributing documents and images. DjVu can advantageously replace PDF, PS, TIFF, JPEG, and GIF for distributing scanned documents, digital documents, or high-resolution pictures. DjVu content downloads faster, displays and renders faster, looks nicer on a screen, and consume less client resources than competing formats. DjVu images display instantly and can be smoothly zoomed and panned with no lengthy re-rendering. DjVu is used by hundreds of academic, commercial, governmental, and non-commercial web sites around the world. DjVuLibre is an open source (GPL'ed) implementation of DjVu, including viewers, browser plugins, decoders, simple encoders, and utilities.

unpaper

unpaper is a post-processing tool for scanned sheets of paper, especially for book pages that have been scanned from previously created photocopies. The main purpose is to make scanned book pages better readable on screen after conversion to PDF. Additionally, unpaper might be useful to enhance the quality of scanned pages before performing optical character recognition (OCR). unpaper tries to clean scanned images by removing dark edges that appeared through scanning or copying on areas outside the actual page content (e.g. dark areas between the left-hand-side and the right-hand-side of a double- sided book-page scan). The program also tries to detect disaligned centering and rotation of pages and will automatically straighten each page by rotating it to the correct angle. This process is called "deskewing". Note that the automatic processing will sometimes fail. It is always a good idea to manually control the results of unpaper and adjust the parameter settings according to the requirements of the input. Each processing step can also be disabled individually for each sheet. Input and output files can be in either .pbm , .pgm or .ppm format, thus generally in .pnm format, as also used by the Linux scanning tools scanimage and scanadf. Conversion to PDF can e.g. be achieved with the Linux tools pgm2tiff, tiffcp and tiff2pdf.

Scan Tailor

Scan Tailor is an interactive post-processing tool for scanned pages. It performs operations such as page splitting, deskewing, adding/removing borders, and others. You give it raw scans, and you get pages ready to be printed or assembled into a PDF or DJVU file. Scanning, optical character recognition, and assembling multi-page documents are out of scope of this project. Scan Tailor is Free Software (which is more than just freeware). It's written in C++ with Qt and released under the General Public License version 3. We develop both Windows and GNU/Linux versions.

textchunker

textchunker turns text files, especially Gutenberg e-books, into small chunks for portable devices. You can set the width and the length of the chunks it produces. It requires Lua.

HOWTOs

How to Scan a Book?

See this instructions .

doc2palm

How to convert documents under Linux to read them as eBook on the Palm Pilot PDA (in German).

eBook Readers (Hardware Survey)

Amazon Kindle NEW  Linux 
Amazon Kindle 2 NEW  Ubuntu 9.04 
Foxit eSlick NEW  Linux 
Foxit eSlick FE-01 NEW  LinuxGerman
Hanvon N516 NEW  LinuxGerman
Jinke Hanlin V3 (aka LBook V3, DigiBook, WalkBook, BeBook, IBook, et.al) NEW  OpenInkPotGerman
Sony Librie NEW  DebianGerman
Sony Librie NEW  Debian 
Sony Librie NEW  Linux 
Sony PRS-500 NEW  Linux 
Sony PRS-505 NEW  Linux 
Sony PRS-505 NEW  LinuxGerman
Sony PRS-505 NEW  LinuxGerman
Sony PRS-505 NEW  LinuxGerman
Ectaco JetBook NEW  LinuxGerman

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Resources

  • CreativeCommons
  • The American Foundation for the Blind - AFB offers a white paper about eBooks.
  • Newsgroup for Palm e-Books: news:alt.binaries.e-book.palm . But there are not as many choices as there are for .LIT and .PDF e-Books.
  • The Assayer is a site for user-contributed book reviews, with a special focus on reviewing free books. It also functions as a catalog of free books.

Other Free Media For Mobile Computers



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© Werner Heuser 1997-2013 · http://tuxmobil.org/ebook.html · last change Wed Apr 17 2013