The 20 Most Downloaded Ebooks of 2009

February 2, 2009 Finding books, What to Read 7 Comments

I have started reading more downloadable ebooks. Now there are more available to purchase, but there are also many that can be downloaded free.

Some of my favourite download sites are Manybooks, Project Gutenberg and Feedbooks. To emphasize how many great books there are out there that are royalty free and easy to download, I have compiled a list of the 20 most downloaded ebooks this year.

How I compiled the list

Manybooks and Project Gutenberg publish their download totals for the last 30 days. Feedbooks compiles an ordered list of total downloads for the year. Unfortunately, they only provided numbers for total downloads over the life of the site. These three ebook download sites are the biggest sites for downloads of e-novels

In order to compensate for Feedbooks, I converted all the download numbers into a percentage of total for that site. These were compiled to give a top twenty.

I admit this is a bit fudgy, but stay with me on this one - the list is good.

The 20 Most downloaded Ebooks of 2009

  1. The Art of War
  2. The Kama Sutra
  3. Pride and Prejudice
  4. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
  5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
  6. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
  7. Dracula
  8. The Count of Monte Cristo
  9. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
  10. Ulysses
  11. Grimm’s Fairytales
  12. 20000 Leagues Under the Sea
  13. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
  14. War and Peace
  15. A Tale of Two Cities
  16. Frankenstein
  17. The Prince
  18. The Call of the Chtulu
  19. Fanny Hill
  20. Les Miserables

And I should make an honourable mention of I, Robot by Corey Doctorow, which landed in the top ten on absolute downloads, despite being only listed on one of the surveyed sites.

I have read six of the list. What about you?