Ember

Like this young person didn't even know about goddamn Gutenberg which is a SHAME. I linked to it and they went "aw yiss time to do a theft" and I was like "I mean yo ho ho and all that, sure, but. you know gutenberg is entirely legal, right?"

Project Gutenberg is a gigantic collection of books that are in the public domain.  You can read the books through the site or you can download them in various formats so you can get the format you prefer for your eReader of choice.

It is free. 

It is legal.

I was reviewing the list of the top 100 books downloaded yesterday and I saw a fair few that I had to read for college classes - so if you’re a college student and your professor assigns you to read Plato or any number of older works, check here before you buy a copy.

If you look at the first reblog from me I also recommended a few other resources, most of which were from www.archive.org, home of the Wayback Machine! They run openlibrary.org, where you can check out ebooks of some public domain titles! They even have the Bone series by Jeff Smith!

And archive.org itself has all kinds of public domain media including music and movies! For Dracula fans, here's a radio show adaptation of the book, starring Orson Welles! And here's a 1920 movie adaptation of "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," starring John Barrymore, the grandfather of Drew Barrymore!

lots of writers and publishers are prepared to waive future profits for entirely petty reasons

because of this the entire works of Philip K Dick [petty writer who found himself with lots of hangers on during his life] and HP Lovecraft [his publisher - who was his wife and hated him] became public domain on their death

Sherlock Holmes entered public domain this year, it's always worth checking because you can save a fortune

book is old because it’s in

the public domain

LibriVox has free public domain audiobooks.

Public domain works in the US are:

Anything published (in the US) from 1927 or earlier (this number goes up every year for quite a while), and

Anything published between 1928 and 1963 that wasn't renewed, and

Anything published before 1989 without a proper copyright notice.

(Don't go looking for things in that third category unless you've studied a LOT about copyright law. Mostly that covers things like "weird little newsletters" and "self-published booklets" and sometimes fanzines. But most publications have a copyright notice in them.)

There's also some oddball exemptions here and there; copyright law is a tentacled mess. But those are the basic guidelines. (Except for audio. Audio has its own set of rules. It's weird.) (I mentioned tentacles, did I not? Double the amount of them you were thinking of.)

There are a lot of works from the 50s and early 60s that were not renewed, especially short stories published in magazines.

Ko-fi commission of Shallan Davar. Painted with my watercolour brushes in Procreate.

And I will tell you my:

First impression

Impression now

Favorite moment

Idea for a story

Unpopular opinion

Favorite relationship

-

By the time his internal clock informed him it was morning Kaladin found himself spluttering with a mouth full of red hair. It took a moment to remember where he was. The room unfamiliar yet still filled with a bone deep sense of safety he couldn't pin down, senses still slowly recognising where he was. He breathed deeply an achingly familiar cologne in his nose alongside an unknown perfume. It was light, inoffensive in a way that reminded him of home, though he didn't know why. Slowly memories of last night gently trickled through his mind. Kaladin smiled slightly, pressing his head more firmly into his pillow, there was a weight against his chest there hadn't been last night and his arm was dropped around someone now.

His head was still in Adolin's lap but Shallan had somehow wiggled her way between Kaladin and the back of the sofa. Lying curled into his chest whilst simultaneously shoving him precariously towards the edge of the sofa.

He tugged the red strands out his eyes, blinking himself awake. He could see Syl sat on the back of the sofa swinging her legs and grinning down at him, Adolin's head tipped fully backwards as he snored softly.

'Hey.'

'Morning.' He murmered to her, keeping his voice low to avoid disturbing the other two.

'You look cosy.' Kaladin grunted and Shallan sighed in her sleep burrowing her head deeper against Adolin. He tilted his head back looking at the ceiling. It was later than he was used to getting up, last nights excitement draining his energy, leaving him heavy and exhausted. He could feel pressure building between his eyes as he thought of all the ways his life was mow completely upended, he shifted against Adolin.He wasn't trapped exactly, but pinned between the pair wasn't exactly comfortable once he was awake. Carefully he lifted his head, Shallan moved, taking full advantage of Adolin's now vacated lap.