Disney Publishing Worldwide authors are making staying at home a little easier by offering readers a free eBook, drawing workshops online, and even videos where they share their favorite story excerpts.

Now through April 4, readers can get a free download of “Conceal, Don’t Feel: A Twisted Tale” by Jen Calonita via Apple Books, Google Play, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo. More Disney Books will be released for free in the coming weeks.

In the young adult novel, Princess Elsa takes on many questions as she moves forward toward her place as Queen of Arendelle. What kind of ruler will she be? Will she have to choose a suitor to be the future king? You’ll have to read on and find out!

Emmy Award-winning writing and New York Times best-selling Disney Hyperion author, Mo Willems, has started a new video series where he hosts virtual lunchtime doodling sessions.

The videos will air live at 1 p.m. Eastern/10 a.m. Pacific. Some of his recent videos include a DIY board game and fun drawings fit for a birthday celebration. To join in live, visit the Source…

Last week, the Internet Archive launched a “National Emergency Library” offering access to 1.4 million free books during the coronavirus pandemic. The library aims to serve people who can’t access a normal classroom or public library, and it’s open worldwide until June 30th or whenever the US ends its national emergency. But it’s raised questions about whether the Internet Archive’s trove of books is legal — and whether it hurts writers.

The Emergency Library is an expansion of the Open Libraries initiative, where the Internet Archive worked with libraries to scan their books. For nearly a decade, it’s let people “check out” books through a waiting list, making them available in the same quantities as their hard-copy counterparts. As the libraries see it, it’s the digital equivalent of checking out a physical book from your local library branch, and publishers haven’t generally tried to shut it down.

But the Emergency Library goes further, suspending the waitlists and making the books immediately accessible to everyone in response to the ongoing pandemic. “This is a response to the scores of inquiries from educators about the capacity of our lending system and the scale needed to meet classroom demands because of the closures,” writes Open Libraries director Chris Freeland.

The changes have drawn condemnation from some writers. The Authors Guild said on Friday that it’s “appalled” by the National Emergency Library, accusing the Internet Archive of “acting as a piracy site” that “tramples on authors’ rights
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In the UK, EU and USA, copyright lasts for 70 years after an author’s death. Every year, many more books get brought into the public domain.

If you want to read any great wordsmith who died before 1945, you can download their best works from these 10 websites and enjoy them on Kindles, tablets and laptops, any time you like. As a bonus, some of them offer audiobooks too.

Major publishers tend to print classics with an analysis from a prominent scholar, but in fact, that intro is the only part of such books that’s copyright protected. In such cases, no money is due to the authors’ surviving relatives (if any are even known).

So if you can do without being told what to think about a book, you’ve got a severe wealth of options. I’m talking: Shakespeare, Dickens, Dante, Balzac, Wordsworth, F Scott Fitzgerald, Plato, Virginia Wolfe, Sigmund Freud, Sun Tzu, Grey’s Anatomy and shedloads more.

More literature than you could ever read in a lifetime. All legal and above board. For free. You’re very welcome.

1. Gutenburg Project

There are fifty thousand free ebooks ready to roll for Kindle and iPad reading, courtesy of the Gutenburg Project. Get inspiration from their daily top 100 chart – a few examples being: Pride and Prejudice, Beowulf, Alice in Wonderland, the Count of Monte Cristo and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. But there’s everything you can think of and more, check it out. Instant download
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(Pocket-lint) – Apple is the latest tech company offering a selection of free goods to parents and kids stuck at home during the novel coronavirus pandemic.

The company’s Apple Books app is currently alerting users to books and audiobooks that are available for free to users for a limited time.

As MacRumors noted, Apple has been sending out push notifications, perhaps to US users only, which serve up a Free Books page in the Apple Books app. Upon tapping this notification, you can “explore free books, read-alongs for kids, cozy mysteries, and audiobooks for the whole family.”

You can also pick a novel from the company’s “First in a Series, Free” section.

Apple is likely offering this promotion as a way to help out people who are self
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Reading is a great way to mix up your social-distancing routine, plus it helps you slow down and fully absorb yourself in new ideas and worlds. Buying physical books might be on hold for a bit (although you can still order, and should, ideally from an independent bookseller). Luckily, ebooks are a safe and mostly worthy alternative to the real thing.

Even if you’re staunchly anti-ebook, you may want to consider giving them a shot, and here’s why: Several digital retailers and ebook apps are giving away scores of free titles right now. You can stock up your phone, tablet, or even your PC with a free digital library that can easily carry you through these uncertain times, and well into whatever the world looks like once we’re on the other side of it all.

Apple Books

Apple is offering a “Stay at home” ebooks catalog through its Apple Books service (via 9to5Mac). The collection includes numerous well-known novels, as well as a bevy of educational Sesame Street books
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For the next two weeks, Haymarket Books is offering free downloads of ten ebooks. The titles offered are nonfiction works focused on social and economic justice.

In a statement, Haymarket shared that the ebooks will be available for free for the next two weeks in an effort to support those whose lives have been disrupted by the COVID-19 outbreak. “Our gratitude and solidarity extends especially to those workers and communities on the front lines of this crisis, and we encourage those who are able to stay at home and follow CDC guidelines. Many of us will be turning to books in search of much-needed relief from constant worry as well as the tools to fight for collective liberation.”

A project of the Center for Economic Research and Social Change, Haymarket Books is a radical, independent, nonprofit publisher based in Chicago. Focused on social and economic justice, Haymarket’s over 500 titles include groundbreaking authors like Angela Davis, Howard Zinn, Rebecca Solnit, and Arundhati Roy.

The ten titles offered for free download are:

Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement by Angela Y. Davis

How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective, edited by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

The Battle for Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes On the Disaster Capitalists
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At the CU Book Store, our primary responsibility is to ensure students have access to the materials they need to succeed in their courses.

With the transition to online learning, some students will lose access to course materials they previously shared with classmates or instructors, or accessed via the library. To support these students, the CU Book Store partnered with their digital course materials provider, VitalSource, and leading publishers, to launch VitalSource Helps, a program that provides access to ebooks to all CU Boulder students through May 25. Students may begin accessing these materials today at bookshelf.vitalsource.com. More than 52,000 titles are available, and students will be able to access up to seven of these titles for free.

Further information, including answers to frequently asked questions for students and publishers can be found here. 

We hope this will be of assistance to you and your students. If you have additional questions that the FAQ above can’t answer, please email jason.katzman@colorado.edu or erin.schol@colorado.edu.

In light of the rapid move to online courses and learning, the CU Book Store has partnered with their digital course materials platform, VitalSource, and leading publishers to launch VitalSource Helps, a program offering free access to ebooks for students who may have lost access to course materials. 

If you previously accessed textbooks via the library, shared a book with a classmate, or left your books on campus, visit bookshelf.vitalsource.com to access free ebooks through May 25. VitalSource Helps provides access to an expansive catalog of ebooks, but some content may not be available and access is limited to seven titles.

Getting started

To access free materials, you must use your colorado.edu email address to log in or create an account. Before you get started, we encourage you to review this student FAQ. 

We hope this will be of assistance to you as you continue your studies online. If you have additional questions that the FAQ above can’t answer please email textbooks@colorado.edu.