Photography has always been an integral part of storytelling.

Whether it’s your book cover, social media or your blog images breathtaking photos can make or break your message.

Unfortunately, we’ve grown accustomed to seeing cheesy stock images of men in suits shaking hands. Not only are a lot of these stock photos tacky, but they are expensive and overused.

You don’t want your book or promotional materials with the same photo as everyone else.

And you NEVER ever, ever, ever (I hope you get this point) download a photo off the internet and use it for anything – blog posts, promotions, covers, newsletters or other materials.

It is illegal.
It’s stealing.

I have seen quite a few cease and desist letters from clients needing a “fix” to their photo dilemma.  And these lawyers don’t mess around. One client’s woes were in reference to a dog photo used in a PDF downloadable newsletter on their website.

They thought it was okay to just google a terrier photo and use it. They found out the hard way that you can’t just Google any photo you want to use, no matter how small or insignificant it may seem.

Thankfully, there’s a growing number of websites with beautiful stock photography popping up all over the web. Best of all, they’re free to use!

In this post, we’ve curated a list of awesome websites for free stock photos for authors.

A Note About License

Many of these photographs are free from copyright restrictions or licensed under creative commons public domain. This means you can copy, modify, distribute and utilize the image, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. Yeah!

However, some photos may require attribution. We advise you to do your own research and determine how these images can be used, especially since things can change. Look for terms like:

• Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license
• Creative Commons Public Domain – no attribution required
• Free to use commercially and editorially–no attribution required.
• No copyright restrictions

Read the fine print on each site—if it exists. Some of the sites are very straight forward and invite you to download their images and use as you wish. But most sites detail whether:

• there are restrictions to usage
• you must create an account
• the image can be edited
• must give attribution
• limit the number of free photos available

A small amount of due diligence is well worth the amazing amount of photos out there for you to use.

With that out of the way, let’s dive in.

Here are 77 Free Photo Sites for Authors

1. A Digital Dreamer
2. albumarium
3. Alegri Photos
4. AllTheFreeStock
5. Ancestry Images
6. AvoPix
7. BarnImages
8. Beautiful Free Stock Photos
9. Big Foto
10. Burst
11. Cepolina
12. Cupcake
13. DesignersPics
14. Dreamstime
15. e-Cobo
16. Epicantus
17. EveryStockPhoto
18. FancyCrave
19. Foodiesfeed
20. Free Digital Photos
21. Free Nature Stock
22. Free Stock Photos
23. FreeImages
24. FreeImagesLive
25. FreeMediaGoo
26. FreeRange
27. Getty Images
28. GoodFreePhotos
29. Gratisography
30. Hubspot
31. Im Free
32. ImageBase
33. ImageFree
34. ISO
35. Jay Mantri
36. Jeshoots
37. Kaboom Pics
38. LargePhotos
39. Library of Congress
40. LibreShot
    
41. LibreStock
42. Life of Pix
43. Little Visuals
44. Magdeleine
45. MMT
46. Morguefile
47. Negative Space
48. New Old Stock
49. NOAA Photo Library
50. Pexels
51. picjumbo
52. Pickup Image
53. Picography
54. PikWizard
55. Pixabay
56. Polarfox
57. Raw Pixels – Free Images
58. Raw Pixels – Public Domain
59. Reshot
60. RGBStock
61. Shotstash
62. skitterphoto
63. SNAPWIRE SNAPS
64. Stick Stock
65. Stock Snap
66. StockPhotos 4 Free
67. Stocksy
68. StockVault
69. Stokpic
70. Styled Stock
71. Sunipix
72. Super Famous Images
73. Travel Coffee Book
74. Turbo Photo
75. Unprofound
76. Unsplash
77. Wikimedia Commons

BONUS: Heritage Type

Do you have one to add to the list?

Got a favorite free stock image site that you think we should add to the list? Please let us know in the comments.