This site may be going away; please consider donating.
A huge thank you to all who donate; 2026 August Web hosting: 100%
The ads on this site pay about two thirds of the cost of hosting it. In 2026 i moved the site to less expensive hosting. It is still in Canada, and has unlimited bandwidth, necessary these days because of AI bots.
Since i am out of work, and do not qualify for any governent benefits, i rely on donations.
I am not a professional bookseller. Just a private person. I used to collect books, years ago, and that’s where most of the pictures and texts come from on this Web site. I do sometimes buy books for the images, but i don't have much budget. Very occasionally people have sent me books, which is kind.
The images are free at Web sizes; at larger sizes I still tend to give them away to barefoot people :-) or to non-profit organizations or for research. Since sales have fallen almost to zero, the images are now pay-what-you-want, but there is not room on this server to host the actual scans (and i do need to keep them in Canada for legal reasons).
Here in Canada you can send an Interac paypment to liam at fromoldbooks.org - wow, awesome!
Any amount over USD $5 or €3 helps, but much less than that means that the currency conversion and fees eat it all and you're really donating to a bank! One person donated $1 once, which was kind but i ended up paying more in bank fees than i received...
You can also send illustrated out-of-copyright books; if I can, I will pay postage. Right now, i usually can’t, so please ask first!
Note, copyright varies from country to country: serving up books on the Web for other people to use means I have to respect that regardless of where I live.
If you scan (i normally do 2400dpi 16 bits greyscale, but 1200 is OK too), make sure the image is not screened (made of little dots) as those need special treatment. Or feel free to point me to interesting books on the Web that you would like to see cleaned up.
Some of the books I bought when I was younger, I have put up for sale. You can explore rare books for sale. The prices are wild guesses; don’t be afraid to offer less (or more). If you are in Canada, this is a personal sale, but if you prefer I can charge sales tax as I do have a tax number.
There are also some books on eBay if that’s easier.
Thank you, and I hope you get some pleasure from visting From Old Books dot Org.