Online books, any good?

I was just wondering if there are any good sites out there in English where people write novels or short stories or books to be viewed for free?

Obviously I’m aware of fan fiction, and just as obviously I don’t want that.

While I can imagine in the hands of the random person perhaps on original story on the net supposes that it wasn’t worthy of publishing, that’s not necessarily the case.

I ask, because I pretty much get my fix for mystery stories from free online novel sites in Japanese and they’re mostly written pretty well and not a complete embarassment to the form. I’ve read other types too – I mostly choose from an online ranking site that links to other writer’s stories as based on a monthly ranking. My favorite so far has been an absolutely sublime piece of science fiction about a man searching for a lost girl and a humorous novel about living with a complete maniac for a little sister. This is a good site, because other than one story that had a really scary breakdown into anal sex procedures with cherries, I’ve not run into any real duds and the writing has been anywhere from passable to inspired and excellent.

What’s the English equivalent and where can one find it?

I’m wary of searching google more thoroughly for painfully obvious reasons. Also, there’s a set name for it in Japanese which makes it easy to search for, but I wouldn’t know what that was in English. Searches for “online novels” and the like wind up with painful results that satisfy the first lines in the Lyttle Lytton contest so far.

Anyone know anything on this?

-Kitsune

Try looking for fiction with ‘creative commons’. I’m reading http://www.accelerando.org/ online right now.

I don’t know of any sites that fit your specific requirements. Project Gutenburg is the closest equivalent I can think of, and it is not very close either.

That’s presuming I have not insulted your intelligence by posting something you already know about.

Edit: The sites certainly exist, but I have no idea where.

The Baen website has some free e-books, and if you go onto their forums, you’ll see a bunch of people writing stories in the shared 1632 universe.