Find Free Books With Google

My previous post, “Why buy the milk, when you can get the milk for free?” looked at sites that are giving away content for free. This post looks at how to find books for free with Google using a simple search query.

Here it is:

intext:”[Title of Work]”+”[Author]” filetype:pdf

Like this:

I don’t know how long the link will be available after this is posted, but my guess is that plenty more will pop up, since that’s the nature of the internet-beast.

And when you need a textbook for a graduate class:

A little more digging, but anyone can find a pdf of the book in its entirety.

Why am I writing this?

To let modern day writers know that their work is being distributed around the internet in a million different ways, both known and unknown. I found myself in The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Pakistan Student Handbook, for the 09-10 school year. As a writer, I don't want to spend my days hunting down every last unpaid copy of my book, I'd rather be writing and reading, which is my book can be downloaded, shared, "pirated", transfered, read, etc. for free. But if you want something you can hold your hands, you got to buy a copy, which I think is pretty fair, and so do other popular authors, like Cory Doctorow and Seth Godin.

But everyone's different, so if you're a writer looking to find these circulating free copies of your work, this is one way to locate some of them.

And if you're out to find free stuff on the internet... well, you probably already know about this trick.

DISCLAIMER:

I do not endorse illegal activity. This post is meant for informational and educational purposes only to be used at your own discretion.