Planet eBook is a new portal of OA books in the public domain, launched by Richard Crocker in February 2008. The books are well-formatted PDFs (cut/paste enabled) with no DRM and no ads. From the about page:
...We offer an assortment of classic novels and books in electronic form which you are free give to your friends, classmates, students, anyone!
Existing free eBooks on the Web tend to be well beneath the quality of paper books, making them more difficult and less pleasurable to read. At Planet eBook we're trying to change this. Our goal is to publish a small selection of high-quality eBooks — each a genuine alternative for readers wanting to enjoy reading a book without having to pay for it. The books we publish are all in the public domain so there is no real need for readers to continue to pay for them.
You're welcome to print them out for classes and courses, distribute them on CD/DVDs, offer them for download from your website, and so on — really, you can share them however you like, as long as you don't charge money for them....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 3/25/2008 11:33:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.