With the advent of more ebook reading devices, sites like Manybooks.net are providing a useful service in transforming digital materials into a variety of electronic formats that can be read by several different ebook readers and mobile devices. All of the 19,000+ ebooks on Manybooks are available for free. Many works are originally sourced from Project Gutenberg, a longstanding project to release books in the public domain as digital texts.

Check out this interesting article that identifies how Creative Commons licensing can help give authors another way to promote their writing. From Jim Higgins:

Using a Creative Commons license, for example, creators can choose to release electronic copies of their books for readers to try, while retaining their rights to publish in print format and to sell their stories for adaptations. Some top-notch speculative and sci-fi and fiction writers have released free electronic editions of their books with a Creative Commons license, including Cory Doctorow, Charles Stross and James Patrick Kelly. Beyond promoting new work, some writers have used Creative Commons licenses to give out-of-print works a free electronic afterlife.

At the moment, Manybooks.net hosts about 130 Creative Commons works in multiple formats. You can find another cache of CC-licensed books and other texts over in our Content Directories. Help us add more CC-licensed reading materials by signing up as a wiki contributor and filling out an easy form.