Where to get French, Spanish, Italian and German ebooks legally

Free public-domain libraries, stores that sell DRM-free books, and the files you can't use. Every source below was checked in October 2026.

There are two kinds of ebook you can read, keep and convert without trouble. The first is a public-domain book: free, from a library that publishes it as an EPUB. The second is a book you bought without DRM, the copy protection that ties a file to one store's app. This guide covers both, language by language, and ends with what doesn't work and why.

The short version

• Free classics: Project Gutenberg and Wikisource cover all four languages. Each language also has its own library: Ebooks libres et gratuits for French, Elejandría for Spanish, Liber Liber for Italian, Projekt Gutenberg-DE for German.
• Bought books: look for "DRM-free", "watermark", sans DRM, ohne Kopierschutz or Wasserzeichen on the product page before you pay. A watermark is fine; Adobe DRM is not.
• Not usable: library loans, almost all Kindle books, and any file you would have to "crack" first.

What public domain means, and why the translation matters

A book enters the public domain when its copyright runs out. In the EU and the UK that happens 70 years after the end of the year the author died (UK Copyright Act, s.12; EU Directive 2006/116). So in 2026, authors who died in 1955 or earlier are free. Spain is an exception for older authors: anyone who died before 7 December 1987 keeps the old Spanish term of 80 years (Ley de Propiedad Intelectual, transitional provision 4). In the United States, works published before 1931 are in the public domain (Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain).

Two things catch people out:

• The rules depend on where you live. Project Gutenberg is American, and every book page says "Public domain in the USA". Its own licence page tells readers elsewhere to check their own country's law.
• A translation has its own copyright. The Berne Convention protects translations "as original works". A novel from 1880 in a translation from 1990 is not free. For a learner this matters less than it seems, because you want the original-language text anyway.

Free sources for every language

Gutenberg counts are text items in its own catalogue file in October 2026. Wikisource counts are what each wiki's front page says; "texts" includes poems, articles and chapters, not only books.

Project Gutenberg is the place to start. On a book page, choose "EPUB3"; no account is needed. Two regional notes: in Germany, 18 books by Thomas Mann, Heinrich Mann and Alfred Döblin stay blocked until their German copyright expires (PGLAF). In Italy, a 2020 court order blocked the site, and it may still fail to load on some Italian networks.

Wikisource is transcribed and proofread by volunteers. The download link sits in the left sidebar of a work's page: "Télécharger" on the French site, "Descargar" on the Spanish, "Scarica ePub" on the Italian, "EPUB herunterladen" on the German. Not every page is a complete work, so open the book's main page, not a chapter.

Internet Archive has old scans of almost everything. For public-domain scans, the EPUB is generated on demand from the scanned text, so expect recognition errors (broken words, page numbers in the middle of sentences). Its lending library is a different thing: borrowed books are protected and can't be converted.

French

Ebooks libres et gratuits is the largest. One catch: a few titles are marked auteur contemporain, which means they are not public domain and are shared with the author's permission. The Swiss Bibliothèque numérique romande is still adding books in 2026.

Spanish

Elejandría has 2,342 books by 391 authors, each with "Descargar en ePub" and no registration. Every book page states that the title is free of copyright restrictions in Spain and asks readers elsewhere to check their own law. Some books are Elejandría's own translations into Spanish, which is worth knowing if you want the original language.

Beyond that, use Project Gutenberg and Wikisource (es).

Italian

Liber Liber (its Progetto Manuzio) is the main Italian library. Every book has "Scarica gratis" with EPUB, ODT and PDF, under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence, so free for personal use. Optional paid bundles support the project. Wikisource (it) is the second stop, and Project Gutenberg the third if it loads on your network.

German

Projekt Gutenberg-DE has close to 13,000 titles. Since its relaunch under a new operator in January 2026, every book has a free "Als EPUB herunterladen" button. Older articles that say it only works online, or charges for downloads, are out of date. Its terms allow private use only. Despite the name, it has nothing to do with gutenberg.org.

Wikisource (de) has 58,188 works. Two others are useful but don't give you EPUBs. Zeno.org is a huge public-domain library to read online, with no downloads. The Deutsches Textarchiv has 5,483 works in research formats (XML, HTML, text), in the original spelling of their first editions.

Buying ebooks without DRM

DRM (digital rights management) encrypts the file so that only the store's app can open it. A watermark, sometimes called "social DRM", only writes your name or order number invisibly into the file; the book itself is an ordinary EPUB. Watermarked books can be read anywhere and converted. Books with DRM can't.

How to spot DRM before you buy:

• Kobo: unprotected books are marked DRM-free in their download options. After buying, download the file from My Account → My Books → Download. If you get an .acsm file instead of an .epub, the book has DRM (Kobo help).
• Google Play Books: in your library, choose Export → Download EPUB. You get a plain EPUB when the publisher allows it, and an ACSM licence file when it doesn't (Google help).
• Amazon Kindle: Kindle books only open in Kindle apps and devices. Since 20 January 2026, there is one exception: self-published books whose author chose no DRM can be downloaded as EPUB or PDF from "Manage Your Content and Devices" (Amazon KDP help). Most Kindle books are not in this group.
• Apple Books: DRM is the publisher's choice for each book (Apple), and books bought there stay inside Apple Books.

Stores by language:

• French: leslibraires.fr, the independent bookshops' site, has a "Protection" filter. In October 2026, about 480,000 of its ebooks were marquage en filigrane (watermark) and 171,000 had pas de protection, against 337,000 with Adobe DRM. The publisher Publie.net sells all its books sans DRM ni tatouage.
• German: product pages at ebook.de and Hugendubel have a "Kopierschutz" line. "Wasserzeichen" or "ohne Kopierschutz" both work, and in the bestsellers we checked, every title had one or the other. Beam sells only books without hard DRM.
• Spanish: Casa del Libro labels its ebooks "EPUB sin DRM" or "con DRM" on the product page.
• Italian: check the format line before buying. On IBS and laFeltrinelli, every title we checked was "EPUB con Adobe DRM", which won't work. For Italian, the free libraries above are the surer route.

What you can't convert

• Library loans. Libby/OverDrive, Onleihe (Germany), PNB (France), MLOL (Italy) and eBiblio (Spain) all lend ebooks with Adobe DRM or Readium LCP. The loan expires, and the file can't be opened outside an approved app.
• Most Kindle books, and any book you can only read inside a store's own app.
• Anything you'd have to break first. Tools that strip DRM exist, but using them is against the law almost everywhere (see below).
• "Free PDF" sites for books still in copyright. If a recent bestseller is free on a site that isn't the publisher's, it's pirated.

Is converting a book legal?

This is general information, not legal advice.

Removing DRM is not allowed in the EU (InfoSoc Directive, Article 6), the UK (Copyright Act, s.296ZA) or the US (17 U.S.C. § 1201). The US Copyright Office's current exemptions cover print-disabled readers and research, not personal format-shifting (2024 rule). That's true even for a book you paid for.

Public-domain books are free to copy and convert, wherever they are public domain for you.

Copying a DRM-free book you bought for your own use is a grey area that varies by country. France (CPI L122-5) and Germany (§53 UrhG) allow private copies from a lawful source. Spain and Italy have narrower private-copy rules for ebooks bought online, so the store's licence terms count for more there. The UK has no private-copying exception at all since 2015 (s.28B). Stores that sell watermarked files, such as Beam, say you may copy them to all your own devices. What none of these rules allow is sharing the file or the converted book with others.

Reading it in Lexico

Lexico turns a book into a reader where every sentence has its English translation one tap away, every word its meaning in context, and the words you look up become flashcards.

• The free classics are already done: fifteen public-domain books in French, Spanish, Italian and German, free to read in your browser.
• Your own book: convert it from €2.99, priced by length and shown before you pay. Lexico accepts EPUB, Word, HTML, Markdown and plain text without copy protection. It refuses files with DRM and never removes it. The converted book appears only on your own shelf, and your upload is deleted 30 days after the book is ready.
• Or make it yourself: the Lexico book format is open and documented.