[HN Gopher] Standard Ebooks
___________________________________________________________________
Standard Ebooks
Author : tosh
Score : 1460 points
Date : 2022-07-24 16:59 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (standardebooks.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (standardebooks.org)
| Thrymr wrote:
| The Kindle FAQ [0] is interesting:
|
| > Why don't you provide mobi files in addition to azw3 files?
|
| > Standard Ebooks is a small, volunteer-led project, and we don't
| have the time or resources to support a second proprietary file
| type just because Amazon can't get its act together. We have time
| for one or the other, and azw3 is the technically superior format
| that provides the better reading experience.
|
| > Why can't I use "Send to Kindle" to send an azw3 file to my
| Kindle?
|
| > We don't know! You'd think that Amazon would allow you to send
| the very file format it invented to its own devices. But Amazon
| hasn't made it possible to send azw3 files via "Send to Kindle,"
| even though they surely could. You should complain to Amazon, or
| vote with your wallet and buy a better ereader.
|
| [0] https://standardebooks.org/help/how-to-use-our-
| ebooks#kindle...
| mecha_ghidorah wrote:
| In terms of switching e-readers I currently do have a kindle
| voyage, which I love, but I am increasingly worried about what
| happens when it reaches end of life... Does anyone have
| recommendations for a similar e-reader that has the things I
| love about it: e-ink display, and buttons for page turning
| instead of a touchscreen, _and_ have said buttons on both sides
| of the device? The Kindle Oasis and a few others I 've seen
| only have buttons on one side and having to rotate the device
| 180 degrees and wait for the display to flip every time I want
| to change hands sounds like a nightmare. It might just be
| because I'm left handed and therefore am more comfortable using
| both hands for things than most people, but the lopsided
| designs Amazon and some other manufacturers are using just look
| so hobbled to me.
| tssva wrote:
| The Barnes & Noble Nook Glowlight 4 has an e-ink display and
| physical buttons on both sides. This is not a recommendation.
| I have never held one in my hand and the last time I had
| anything to do with the Nook ecosystem was over 10 years ago.
| I just know it exists and meets those 2 criteria.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Caliber's maintainer has similarly pithy remarks about Amazon
| if you ever check the MobileRead forums.
|
| Amazon should officially be supporting EPUB as the send-to-
| Kindle option now, so that might no longer be necessary. You
| might still have an issue with missing covers, though.
| acabal wrote:
| This is technically true, however when you do that they
| simply convert the epub to mobi on the backend, which is even
| worse.
| hollandheese wrote:
| They're converting it to AZW3 actually. Which makes them
| not allowing AZW3 in Send-to-Kindle even more baffling.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| I'm suspicious whether they're still using MOBI on the
| backend, given that they sent me an email about it a few
| days ago when I tried to share a mobi file to my mother's
| Kindle. The email is below:
|
| ---
|
| Dear Kindle Customer,
|
| Thank you for using the Send to Kindle service to send
| personal documents to your Kindle library. We noticed that
| the following document(s), sent by you at HH:MM AM on Sun,
| Jul DD, 2022 GMT are in MOBI (.mobi, .azw) formats:
| <<REDACTED>>
|
| We wanted to let you know that starting August 2022, you'll
| no longer be able to send MOBI (.mobi, .azw) files to your
| Kindle library. Any MOBI files already in your library will
| not be affected by this change. MOBI is an older file
| format and won't support the newest Kindle features for
| documents. Any existing MOBI files you want to read with
| our most up-to-date features for documents will need to be
| re-sent in a compatible format.
|
| Compatible formats now include EPUB (.epub), which you can
| send to your library using your Send to Kindle email
| address. We'll also be adding EPUB support to the free
| Kindle app for iOS and Android devices and the Send to
| Kindle desktop app for PC and Mac.
|
| If you have any questions, please visit our help page or
| contact our Customer Service team.
|
| Regards, Amazon Kindle Support
|
| ---
|
| I would think they might be converting it to some other
| format? Otherwise, why yank the feature to send direct
| MOBIs anymore?
| acabal wrote:
| The technical decisions Kindle makes are shrouded in
| obscurity, both in logic and in execution...
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| I have to assume it's at least a precursor to rolling out
| broader support for EPUB.
|
| Unfortunately, I am using a ~12 year old Kindle which
| isn't going to be seeing any updates, so discontinuing
| send-to-Kindle for MOBI will basically just mean I can't
| use that feature anymore.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Any reason why you haven't upgraded? I keep an old Kindle
| around as well, but just for having a physical Kindle
| registered to my account so that I can download the books
| I purchase and remove the DRM. All my actual reading is
| done on a Kobo.
|
| At some point Amazon sent me an email that my Kindle
| would soon lost storefront access and offered me some
| kind of voucher for an upgrade (like 30% off and a $40
| ebook credit). Surely with all that you could've grabbed
| a new model during the Prime Day sales for next to
| nothing?
| gnuj3 wrote:
| Hey I'm just curious about what you said here. I've got
| Kindle Paperwhite but I was thinking of moving away from
| Amazon in the future and buying Kobo for example when the
| upgrade is due. My only worry was money spent on Kindle
| books. Will I be able to move the purchased books easily
| to Kobo? So they look natively? Thanks!
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| The challenge will be removing the DRM from your Kindle
| books. You may need to Google around a bit, but here's a
| high-level of what you need to do:
|
| 1) Seek out a tool called "DeDRM". The original plugin is
| no longer supported, so you may want to search on GitHub
| for the fork from NoDRM, which is still maintained.
|
| 2) Download Calibre if you don't already have it and
| install the DeDRM plugin.
|
| 3) You now need to get your books from Amazon into a
| format that DeDRM is able to crack. One method is to
| download the Kindle for PC app, but this method can be
| finnicky because Amazon keeps changing the DRM schema to
| avoid being cracked and you may have to track down an
| older version of the install. The easier method is to
| pull the books off your Paperwhite itself. So inside of
| Calibre, configure the DeDRM tool and enter in your
| Paperwhite's serial number (this is needed because the
| serial number is used as part of the encryption).
|
| 4) Finally, try importing one of your Kindle Paperwhite
| books into Calibre, and try opening the book using
| Calibre's ebook viewer. If you can read the book (i.e.
| the text is not scrambled), the decryption was
| successful. You can then load the rest of your
| collection. You should now have a collection of DRM-free
| AZWs.
|
| 5) The final step to getting the books over to your Kobo
| is converting them to a compatible format. Calibre has a
| built-in conversion tool for AZW to EPUB, however some
| people complain that the built-in tool can mess with the
| formatting. You may wish to download an additional plugin
| called KindleUnpack, which will produce an EPUB or MOBI
| file that is closer to the source material.
|
| You can try all of this before getting a Kobo to make
| sure that it works. I've set this up for various family
| members who all uses Kindle exclusively, primarily so
| that we can share books with each other, but also just to
| make sure that everyone has a good backup of their
| collection.
| jdougan wrote:
| I can't speak for him, but my old devices are a pair of
| Kindle DXs. AFAICT there is no real upgrade for those.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| Mainly I just don't see the point in upgrading when my
| existing device (currently) works perfectly fine. It's
| less about cost and more about waste, and good old
| fashioned stubbornness. Most of my books are physical; I
| mainly use the Kindle for reading free ebooks (like those
| from Standard Ebooks) or I will occasionally buy an ebook
| when ordering physically is impractical for whatever
| reason. So any slight annoyances that come from using an
| old device don't really bother me.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| acabal wrote:
| As I'm fond of saying, Kindle is an ecosystem invented by
| people who hate books. It's a pity they're the first thing many
| people think of when they hear "ebooks."
| enriquto wrote:
| This is really great, and a fantastic complement to PG.
|
| I'm a bit surprised that pdf downloads are not proposed. Given
| the (lovely!) emphasis on typography, it would seem the natural
| option. The epub formats are a bit foreign to me. The html
| version is alright, and you can "print" it with the web browser,
| but it does not produce a perfect pdf.
| teekert wrote:
| If you are an avid reader with and e-reader you sort of start
| to hate pdf and it feels annoying if you follow some links to
| an ebook and you get... a pdf.
|
| Still, for the tablet readers of course it could be a nice
| extra option, I agree. It takes some effort though.
| enriquto wrote:
| Interesting... I am an avid reader (and an obsessive
| bibliophile!) but I have the opposite reaction to yours
| regarding file formats. Pdf is perfection, then I like djvu
| and then well-formatted plain text files. Epubs are a thing
| of horror, that invariably botches all the formulas and
| destroys the flow of the pages.
|
| It has gotten to the point where if something is in epub
| format, I don't even bother to download it.
| innocenat wrote:
| I guess you don't read on smaller device. Kindle, for
| example, with 6-7" screen, is not going to read
| A4-formatted PDF well at all. On phone, too. A4-sized PDF
| only works well on 10" device or larger.
| enriquto wrote:
| Sounds more a problem with the kindle and its software
| than with the pdf format itself. Books are typically set
| at around 65 characters per line. This is perfectly
| readable even on a small phone screen, in landscape
| orientation and without margins. Think about it: a
| typical phone is taller than the width of a paperback
| book. The space is there, if you cannot get it to work
| it's a software problem.
| robin_reala wrote:
| Your perfectly readable isn't everyone's perfectly
| readable, and the benefit of ePubs is that they're
| reflowable, unlike PDF. Having said that, why don't you
| try our ePubs? We spend a lot of time on them to make
| sure that they're not "things of horror" :)
| innocenat wrote:
| > This is perfectly readable even on a small phone
| screen, in landscape orientation and without margins.
|
| That's a lot of condition to be perfectly readable.
|
| EPUB is readable even without all those conditions
| because it's reflowable.
|
| (And personally I hate using landscape mode on my
| phone/Kindle)
| aorth wrote:
| I love this project. Just became a patron. Thanks for all the
| hard work and commitment over the years.
| virtualritz wrote:
| This is fantastic!
|
| The flabbergasting quality (or absence thereof) of ebooks I
| purchase on Amazon is regularly driving me nuts.
|
| Particularly forced justified layout (lacking hypenation, no
| less) - on a mobile phone. Wtf? Don't get me even started about
| the 'typography'.
|
| Great to see there are other people who care about these things.
| zolland wrote:
| This is the worst part about libgen as well... no way to
| navigate or sift through the horribly formatted epubs out there
| :( tons don't even have a TOC it makes me so sad
| david38 wrote:
| Wow, talk about the most boring title that turned out to be the
| best project I've read about in a while!
|
| Literally thought it was about standard ebook structure (TOC,
| index, etc). Turned out to be Ebooks Brought Up a Notch!
| VladiKup wrote:
| Dear Standard Ebooks guys & girls!
|
| My startup is developing a similar service (beta), but including
| books IN COPYRIGHT.
|
| Our idea is to ensure technologically, that we enable book
| digitizing P2P in one copy, on-demand (BookOfOne), FOR PRIVATE
| USE ONLY, which is fair use / fair dealing by most countries'
| copyright laws.
|
| We leverage the Finnish legislature (incl. Public Lending Right's
| author royalty 0.32EUR paid, at each access to BookOfOne = a
| Book's unique ONE ONLY copy with digital twin made on-demand,
| Peer-to-Peer): https://bit.ly/oeBookTONstatement
|
| Slide deck: https://bit.ly/oeBook10D100Cslides One-pager for
| students: https://bit.ly/oeBook10D100C One-pager for Internet
| Archive: https://bit.ly/oeBook4IA1pager
|
| Website blog (with video links): http://smartpaper.fi/oe
|
| Would you be interested to collaborate? If yes, I'd ask our
| coders to develop API from public libraries to your service, so
| that any global user could access HYBRID (paper + eBook) version
| of any published book, anonymously, in accordance with the
| Finnish law. FOR FREE (for library patrons) / for 12EUR yearly
| membership fee / for 1 hour book scanning job's token.
|
| *We send OTP access code to a book's digital twin/e-file at a
| paper letter first to a public library patron's registered home
| address, for 2 Factors Authentication of Right to access; incl.
| ZKP encryption, anonymised DID tokens etc.
|
| Via TRANSKRIBUS READ-Coop https://readcoop.eu/transkribus/public-
| models/ and UpCode image recognition of a book's cover
| https://www.upcodeworld.com/about/news/ and white-hack scraping
| of book image at a local library / National archive (WorldCat
| etc.) https://bit.ly/oeBookARbutton
| andrew-jack wrote:
| This project is amazing. newly acquired patronage. Thank you for
| your dedication and hard work over the years.
| khendron wrote:
| Amazing! Love this!
|
| How do you choose the books to added to your library?
| anjbe wrote:
| https://standardebooks.org/contribute/collections-policy
| spansoa wrote:
| Bookmarked. Another reminder we are drowning in information on
| the web. There's no excuse for not becoming a better version of
| yourself due to The Internet. I will certainly read some of the
| books hosted on this site.
| gnuj3 wrote:
| I'm recently trying to limit my internet use to such projects -
| can you share any other bookmarks that you saved?
| [deleted]
| radicalriddler wrote:
| Slightly off topic, but how has Amazon and Kobo picked up the
| rights for ebooks? Can anyone set up a ebook marketplace? I'm
| assuming it takes quite a bit of negotiating with publishers and
| other distributors?
|
| Anyone have any insights into this process?
| [deleted]
| jibbers wrote:
| I've only read a handful of books from Standard Ebook, but
| they've all been amazing quality ebooks -- better than some
| ebooks I've paid for through an Amazon Kindle back in the day.
|
| These folks keep an RSS (love it) with each new book they add to
| the collection. The hoarder/collector in me likes to have all
| these perfectly formatted books and thanks to the hardworking
| people at SE I have, and you can too, some 700 classics for free!
| acabal wrote:
| Glad to hear you're liking the project! We just added bulk
| downloads too, for the collector in you:
| https://standardebooks.org/bulk-downloads
| mchusma wrote:
| Hi, I am curious if you might consider publishing directly to
| the stores (Kindle) as a free book (or $0.99). It would make
| it easier for people to access. I am an engineer but failed
| to try and get a kindle book downloaded and read last night
| after seeing your post. So I imagine your work is out of
| grasp to all but the most technical who have a computer
| handy. I was 100% on my phone (no computer to upload), and I
| just couldn't figure it out and gave up. I would support you
| over other publishers.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Without a desktop intermediary your best bet is to email
| the file to your kindle from your phone. By default kindles
| have a random generated email address. You can customize
| the email address to something memorable in your kindle
| settings (and also in Amazon's Devices settings web pages)
| or just add the random generated address to your contact
| list.
|
| There's a bunch of tutorials on it you can find that try to
| make it easy to figure out where these settings pages are.
| But of course Amazon likes to move that cheese every few
| months and A/B test "improvements" to the pages and page
| designs so tutorials also get outdated quickly.
| acabal wrote:
| Kindle is one of the worst reading platforms and it looks
| like this kind of difficulty is one more reason why. If
| you're on your phone, try using almost any other ereading
| app and download our epub files instead.
|
| Amazon expressly forbids any more free public domain ebooks
| on their platform. But our ebooks are available at the
| Google Play store and in the Apple store, for free.
| neves wrote:
| There was a hack to publish a book for free in Google
| Play and ask for a price match from Amazon. Does it still
| work?
| acabal wrote:
| Not sure, but even if Amazon allowed more free public
| domain books, it wouldn't make much sense to post there
| because their store is so saturated with low-quality junk
| editions. There isn't much point in being on the 20th
| page of search results for "Pride and Prejudice".
| unnouinceput wrote:
| Since this is on top of HN now, you'll get hit by the crowd.
| You might want to implement torrent support too, so you won't
| get hit that hard.
| m463 wrote:
| it requires an email address/login so it won't be hit that
| hard. (no disrespect intended)
| acabal wrote:
| We've been front paged before without problems :) See
| https://alexcabal.com/posts/standard-ebooks-and-classic-
| web-...
|
| (Though that article is now out of date, as we now have a
| database running that handles things like patron
| registration, though it still doesn't index ebooks.)
| Aeolun wrote:
| This web stack sounds hopelessly anachronistic.
|
| If you'd just use a modern stack you could serve 10x less
| requests with more hardware.
| [deleted]
| irrational wrote:
| You had me in the first half ;-)
| zolland wrote:
| Sounds pretty far from hopeless to me
| irrational wrote:
| Closely read the second half again.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| The sarcasm almost flew right past me.
| sk0g wrote:
| So would you say they are just not web scale yet?!
|
| They seem to be serving millions of books per month on a
| cheap VM. For once a smaller website didn't crash upon
| hitting the front page, so I don't really see any
| problems here.
| _carbyau_ wrote:
| Read the comment again, you brain may have made automatic
| corrections - as mine did upon first read. :-) There is
| more than a little cynicism there.
| sk0g wrote:
| Oh you're right, my bad! Definitely glazed over good
| chunks of the comment because I've seen similar takes
| without the sarcasm ad nauseam.
|
| I did read anachronistic as antagonistic (?) and less as
| more. Brain auto-correct may just be worse than the phone
| keyboard one!
| baq wrote:
| I love the old hattedness of this comment. Aeolun must
| have been around and seen things.
| tigerlily wrote:
| > For example, once you start with AWS and its eldritch
| coterie of inscrutable services
|
| Ohh dang this is good prose, and a great read to boot.
| Thank you!
| tambourine_man wrote:
| God, I loved this article. I kept nodding to the point of
| almost exclaiming agreement out loud.
|
| It's rare to see some good sense in this industry, which
| is almost completely fashion and hype/novelty driven,
| despite supposedly being a technical field.
| willhinsa wrote:
| Completely off topic, but the name "standard" makes me think of a
| hilarious Bob Mortimer story on "World I Lie To You?" where he
| accidentally set his house on fire as a child with a box of
| "Standard Fireworks", which he assumed would be very basic and
| safe because of the name.
|
| https://youtu.be/Rqmd39GdDww
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Lots of philology this weekend... "Standard" is the symbol you
| place up high, to "stand hard [firm]", a mark to behold, as if
| - then - a parameter.
|
| So, 'Standard Ebooks' is read as "model ebooks, exemplary of
| how they should be made", and the same for the fireworks... In
| spite of David Mitchell who wanted to joke on "standard" as
| "common" - which is an overly optimistic deviation, and
| Mitchell fumbled there, while remaining a good support act for
| international treasure the Bob Mortimer, the "Standard" (of
| himself).
| bdefore wrote:
| But standards can be low or high. Can one firmly stand on
| unfirm ground?
| Shared404 wrote:
| TCP would suggest that the answer is yes, though it may not
| always be obvious how.
| akprasad wrote:
| Wonderful project! I'm working on something similar for a
| different language.
|
| How closely do you work with Distributed Proofreaders? [1]
|
| [1]: https://www.pgdp.net/c/
| fernly wrote:
| As a long-time PGDP volunteer and a some-time Standard Ebook
| one, I would say the connection isn't close. The "distributed
| proofreaders" at the wonderful PGDP put zillions of hours into
| cleaning up and formatting books which are then fed to Project
| Gutenberg for distribution. Standard Ebooks picks up the PG
| books and re-formats them to their standards.
|
| Back in the day I was the "post-processor" for a number of PGDP
| books. This meant I received the page scan files which had
| already been through five (5!) separate passes by volunteer
| proofers and compiled them into a single etext in (initially)
| HTML, and later Ebook.
|
| The fact that Standard Ebooks finds typos in PG books (and they
| do, and kudos to them for their work) simply underscores the
| huge difficulty of cleaning OCR'd text. In the example on the
| linked Standard Ebooks front page, the typo of "tne" for "the"
| is a very typical "scanno" as they are called at PGDP. Both the
| software and the wetware have overlooked the missing vertical
| stem of the letter "h".
|
| However, that particular scanno should never have reached
| distribution at PG, because the last two volunteer passes at
| PGDP _require_ the volunteer to apply spellcheck before
| committing a page as complete, plus the post-processor should
| use spellcheck on the finalized book. That example typo must
| have come into the PG library at least 20 years ago, or else it
| didn't come through PGDP.
|
| From experience I can say that as an organization Standard
| Ebooks are much more tightly managed than most open-source
| volunteer outfits, and if you can fit into their system, you
| can put in very satisfying hours building books there. (Despite
| having formatted some (I thought) handsome works for PGDP, I
| couldn't meet the standards of Standard Ebooks, or maybe I was
| burned out, and didn't stay with them.)
| acabal wrote:
| PGDP is an incredible project. We mostly work on the
| transcriptions they produce and we specifically avoid creating
| our own transcriptions, because PGDP already has such a good
| system in place. When people ask for a new transcription we
| point them to PGDP instead.
|
| (We have occasionally done our own transcriptions, since in the
| past few years the US public domain has started expanding
| again. In these cases we may transcribe a popular book
| ourselves to have it ready at the start of the public domain
| year, instead of waiting for PDGP's process.)
| mike_n wrote:
| Is there a set of standard open-source textbooks for k-12 levels?
| If not, can we make it happen?
| gnicholas wrote:
| Yes, CK12. [1] Fun fact: it's run by Neeru Khosla.
|
| 1: https://www.ck12.org/student/
| hericium wrote:
| The page links to Google Groups as "mailing list". Is this the
| only option for errors reporting when GitHub option doesn't fit
| the problem?
| robin_reala wrote:
| It is a mailing list: I only interact with it via email. But if
| you don't want to use that or Github you can find editor emails
| at https://standardebooks.org/about#masthead.
| SMAAART wrote:
| This is quite an interesting poject.
| llaolleh wrote:
| The ebooks here on this website are great. I've been reading
| Tolstoy's Confessions from there and it's been a delight.
| mattwilsonn888 wrote:
| Publish date should be standard information available on every
| layer of the UI where the book title is shown. Otherwise this is
| excellent and very much appreciated.
| acabal wrote:
| This is a not-uncommon request. The problem is that the
| publication date for many older books is unclear or unknown.
| Was _Romeo and Juliet_ published in 1597? It certainly appeared
| in print, but that edition was so riddled with errors that
| scholars think it was pirated. Was it published in 1599? A
| better edition certainly appeared in print then, but that
| edition too was incomplete and filled with errors. Then was it
| published in 1609?...
|
| This is a common theme for a surprising number of books, even
| going in to the modern era. For that reason we're only
| concerned with the publication date of our own editions.
| Interested readers can come to conclusions about the original
| publication date of particular books using their own research.
| Valakas_ wrote:
| Then maybe a range could be a good idea? "Publication date:
| Likely sometime between 1597-1609."
| thiht wrote:
| Why not 1597-1609?
| breck wrote:
| I agree with OP and think it may be better to show a
| publication year on every title. (Of course, the site is open
| source so I could experiment with this myself).
|
| I'd push back on your example and say it doesn't matter if
| you say 1597, 1599, or 1609--any of those provides quite a
| lot of information to the reader and vastly more information
| that not providing any date at all. I find it a bit hard to
| scan because some of the books seem to be from the Roman era,
| others 1800's, and having an approximate publication year
| would be very helpful.
|
| But again, I could be wrong, just suspect OP is right and
| putting years frequently would be a decent improvement.
| alexalx666 wrote:
| Amazing
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| Another library that collects volunteer efforts:
| https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=130&ord...
|
| Uneven, but some contributors generate very good quality ebooks,
| and there's some unique stuff in collections and omnibus
| editions.
| longnguyen wrote:
| Standard Ebooks is fantastic. The ebooks' quality is amazing.
| I've been reading Sherlock Homes and am very happy with the
| experience.
|
| Shameless plug: I build this little tool[0] to make it a little
| easier to send SE ebooks to your Kindle. Give it a try if you're
| a Kindle owner.
|
| [0]: https://ktool.io
| dtparr wrote:
| This seems to be primarily talking about sending web articles.
|
| How does it work with SE Books? Are you able to do it
| wirelessly while still maintaining the azw3 features given SE's
| Kindle FAQ indicating it doesn't work with send to Kindle[0].
|
| [0]: https://standardebooks.org/help/how-to-use-our-
| ebooks#kindle...
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| Big fan of Standard Ebooks. Another similar project, which I
| discovered on HN, is Global Grey:
| https://www.globalgreyebooks.com/index.html
| acabal wrote:
| They've been around for a while, and now I notice that their
| cover art format and ebook page layout look vaguely familiar
| ... :)
| esperent wrote:
| Probably because they are using public domain historical art?
| AtNightWeCode wrote:
| I would recommend to not read most of these originals. New
| editions modernize the language and are well worth the money to
| buy or read at subscription services.
| aeneasmackenzie wrote:
| "modernize the language"? People still buy Chaucer in old (or
| middle, whatever) English.
| AtNightWeCode wrote:
| Poe too, I actually had a phrase about poetry in my original
| comment that I removed cause not generally interesting.
| richardjs wrote:
| Standard Ebooks does modernize language; it's step 14 on the
| production guide[1].
|
| [1] https://standardebooks.org/contribute/producing-an-ebook-
| ste...
| solardev wrote:
| Not being familiar with the literature world, are the "new
| editions" typically standardized, or are there many competing
| new editions for a given title? How do you tell which one(s)
| are the higher quality new editions?
| AtNightWeCode wrote:
| There is no standard as far as I know. Anybody can get hold
| of ISBN series so there is a torrent of releases for old
| literature.
| squidbeak wrote:
| I appreciate this project very much and constantly wish ebook
| standards at the big commercial publishing houses were even half
| as good as SE's.
| qqquackk wrote:
| Can anyone recommend a high quality ebook reader app for Android,
| that would be compatible with one or more of the formats this
| site offers?
|
| Also what is this "advanced epub" format they have? I can't see
| where they describe the actual difference with "compatible epub".
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| An underrated choice is Google Play Books. Share an epub file
| to it and Google will upload it and make it available on the
| app and on play.google.com/books, with page position synced and
| everything else you'd expect
| tharen wrote:
| > Can anyone recommend a high quality ebook reader app for
| Android, that would be compatible with one or more of the
| formats this site offers?
|
| I use [Librera Reader](https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.foob
| nix.pro.pdf.reader/] and
| [Voice](https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.ph1b.audiobook/) for
| audio books.
|
| [KO-Reader](https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.koreader.launch
| er.fdroid...) is also recommended, but the one above I found
| easier to use, though both seem highly recommended.
|
| I found these Android apps from this [post on r/androidapps](ht
| tps://old.reddit.com/user/Jackie7610/comments/lr5gag/list_...)
|
| Basically just look for epub, as that is the open standard -
| though really it doesn't matter if you use
| [Calibre](https://calibre-ebook.com/) as it can convert between
| them, but you have to check the types supported yourself...
|
| > Also what is this "advanced epub" format they have? I can't
| see where they describe the actual difference with "compatible
| epub".
|
| They have [an explanation
| here](https://standardebooks.org/help/how-to-use-our-
| ebooks#which-...), but I would say, when in doubt, just go with
| the compatible one.
|
| _Besides, it 's just a book, I doubt anything will explode if
| you use the wrong the version..._
| magnio wrote:
| The one with the best UX I found is Lithium Reader, but it only
| supports epub. For a versatile reader, I use ReadEra, which can
| open more formats than I care about. Both are free and have no
| ads.
| feydaykyn wrote:
| I've been using MoonReader (https://moondownload.com/) for
| years now and it's great, with an integration with the
| Gutenberg project. I also love the gestual shortcuts to control
| brightness, and the treasure thrive of options.
|
| The "advanced ebook" is not displaying the cover, I'll reach to
| the dev, but the compatible version is ok.
| AB1908 wrote:
| I second this suggestion since I heavily annotate my books.
| The free version has ads but can be blocked via custom DNS.
| I've written a bit about how I annotate here:
| https://randombutinteresting.me/2022/03/11/annotating-in-
| moo...
| acabal wrote:
| Editor-in-chief here, happy to answer any questions!
| badtension wrote:
| How do you calculate the reading difficulty?
| acabal wrote:
| Using the Flesch-Kincaid scale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
| /Flesch%E2%80%93Kincaid_readabi...
| BossingAround wrote:
| I wish there was a difficulty for non-native speakers.
| Flesch-Kincaid score does nothing for the majority of
| readers if it doesn't distinguish between Night and Day
| (Woolf) and Shakespeare's Coriolanus. From purely the
| language's perspectives, non-native speakers will struggle
| with Coriolanus much more due to outdated language.
|
| Flesch-Kincaid makes little sense to me for books aimed at
| adults in general.
| lumb63 wrote:
| Love this project! I've read several books from Project
| Gutenberg and owe a great deal to the project. I love seeing
| this extension of it and will be sure to avail myself of it and
| possibly contribute one day!
|
| Not a question, so much as a suggestion from an interested
| netizen: it would be great to see changes flowed back up to
| Gutenberg. I know they have a process for submitting updates -
| I've made several to The Wealth of Nations myself.
|
| Thanks for sharing the project, and I look forward to my next
| read!
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Yeah, the question is: why this, and not just put in with
| Project Gutenberg?
| sigzero wrote:
| I think the differentiator is that SE puts a lot more care
| into the creation of the end product than PG.
| robin_reala wrote:
| I think that's a little unfair on PG. Their goal is
| digital preservation, whilst SE's is readability. We
| couldn't do what we do without PG, and there's (luckily)
| space for both projects to coexist in a mutually
| beneficial way. And the reader gets to pick a source that
| best matches what they're looking for.
| robin_reala wrote:
| It's down to the producer, but 95% of the SE books I produce
| have changes upstreamed to PG. There's no competition between
| us: we both serve different niches.
| stevage wrote:
| How many volunteers do you have? What motivates people to keep
| working?
| acabal wrote:
| I don't keep count but over the years I'd say the number is
| in the several hundreds, including one-time volunteers. We do
| have a core set of what we call "editors", who are volunteers
| in charge of managing individual productions, along with a
| solid amount of repeat contributors who work on ebooks as
| they feel like it.
|
| I think people participate because it feels good to make
| something of quality, and then give it away. If you're
| passionate about literature, then you get to read a lot of
| great stuff while you're doing it, too.
| hackernewds wrote:
| To tack on, how could one join as a volunteer?
| acabal wrote:
| See here: https://standardebooks.org/contribute
|
| Our number one need is ebook producers. If you're passingly
| familiar in a command line environment and have basic
| HTML/CSS knowledge, you can produce an ebook!
| duckmysick wrote:
| I'd love to see a section (or sorting option) with the most
| downloaded ebooks.
| ioblomov wrote:
| What a great project! Would you have a need for a veteran web
| dev who also happened to be an English major? Took a look at
| the volunteer page, but nothing jumped out.
| acabal wrote:
| Absolutely! Creating epub ebooks is basically creating web
| pages. Epubs are just zipped up XHTML files, with exactly the
| same semantic structure and CSS styling you'd find on a well-
| made web page. That makes web devs with English majors our
| ideal type of volunteer!
|
| Check out our step by step guide to creating an ebook[1] and
| then our Wanted Ebook list[2] for some good first-time
| productions. Then send a note to our mailing list and we'll
| help you through it.
|
| Creating an ebook is a very satisfying endeavor - I always
| say it's like building your own lightsaber.
|
| [1] https://standardebooks.org/contribute/producing-an-ebook-
| ste...
|
| [2] https://standardebooks.org/contribute/wanted-ebooks
| Aeolun wrote:
| The list for accepting ebooks makes a lot of sense, but I
| noted that public domain books are excluded. What is the
| reason for that?
| macintux wrote:
| I'm neither associated with the project nor a lawyer, but
| I can speculate: afaik U.S. copyright law doesn't
| explicitly allow someone to declare a text to be in the
| public domain.
| [deleted]
| fimdomeio wrote:
| Just a note, the line height (leading) when reading a book
| online seems too small.
| acabal wrote:
| Line height is set to the browser/ereader default - it's not
| something we change as it depends on the font. Font size is
| also the ereader default, though if viewing in a web browser
| we increase it slightly.
| closeneough wrote:
| If you wanted to create an ebook from scratch, how would you do
| this? Would you write plain html. Would you write markdown, and
| convert it? What tools would you use?
| nynx wrote:
| I'm curious what format the advanced epub is -- epub v3?
| acabal wrote:
| Yes, the advanced epubs are just the zipped source repo,
| which is epub 3.2, including any "advanced" CSS selectors and
| so on. "Advanced" here just means that the epubs are written
| with a modern web rendering engine in mind, while most
| ereading platforms in the wild are still at an IE6 level of
| CSS/HTML rendering support.
|
| The "compatible" epub is the same epub, but with various
| compatibility enhancements automatically added for different
| ereading platforms.
|
| Currently only web browsers can render the advanced epubs at
| 100% fidelity. iBooks might be the only non-browser ereading
| platform that does a pretty good job with the advanced epubs,
| as I believe it uses modern Webkit as its renderer. For any
| other ereader, use the compatible epubs. (Or kepubs for
| Kobo.)
| BossingAround wrote:
| Would you have any Android reading app recommendation for
| advanced epubs? There are android ereaders, those should
| surely be able to handle any epub given the right app,
| right?
| acabal wrote:
| Lithium seems to be fairly good in terms of rendering our
| advanced epubs, but it's not perfect; note especially
| that it doesn't invert black-and-white SVGs correctly so
| unless you set it to a dark page theme, they'll be
| "invisible". There are also some other rendering quirks
| for things like very big tables used for play formatting.
|
| Poor renderers are a perennial problem in the epub world
| and there seems to be little interest in improving the
| situation. Just use the compatible epubs - for reading
| purposes they're almost equivalent except in some rare
| edge cases. Or, you can use our 'read online in browser'
| option to read ebooks directly in your web browser, which
| will serve you the source of our advanced epubs. But of
| course reading in a browser is less than ideal.
| Beldin wrote:
| just curious, not planning...
|
| Would you accept novel translations of non-English classics?
| The policy suggests yes, but I imagine such a work would fall
| under US copyright (which the policy forbids).
| acabal wrote:
| If by "novel" you mean "modern", then potentially, but they
| would have to be actually good translations, and released to
| the public domain via CC0. We only work on public domain
| books.
| axiomdata316 wrote:
| I enjoy the cover art selected for the ebooks. How do you
| select the cover art and what sources do you like to use?
| acabal wrote:
| Cover art must be in a fine art oil painting style, and it's
| up to each producer to find something thematically
| appropriate. Once they do we require proof of US public
| domain status. See
| https://standardebooks.org/manual/1.6.4/10-art-and-
| images#10...
|
| Wikiart and Artvee are good places to start cover art
| research. Many museums now have explicit CC0 collections,
| too.
|
| Finding good public domain cover art can be extremely time
| consuming - it's the part of the process most likely to make
| a new contributor give up. But when you find a great cover,
| it feels great!
| occamschainsaw wrote:
| Slight tangent, but have you considered using these new
| generative models like Dall E 2[1]? So far my experience
| has been that they generate great oil paintings. Maybe
| there could also be an automated pipeline that generates
| oil painting covers using book titles or first sentences.
|
| [1] https://openai.com/dall-e-2/
| robin_reala wrote:
| Leaving aside the aesthetic considerations, the images
| produced from OpenAI software aren't public domain, and
| so we can't use them. See
| https://openai.com/api/policies/sharing-publication/ for
| a list of restrictions OpenAI places on the use of their
| generated images.
| stew-j wrote:
| My wife is an admin on the PG project. She puts in a lot of
| effort to keep the site secure. I think they welcome efforts
| like yours, and reuse is part of why they exist! They also
| research the copyrights, to make sure they are clear to share.
|
| I use Project Gutenberg a lot personally, and in fact I'm using
| one of their books as a study for my upcoming startup:
|
| https://github.com/carter-brothers/hand-propped#first-stage-...
|
| One thing I really like about the PG site is that a few years
| ago they removed most of the JavaScript, which IMO makes it
| more usable. I haven't looked at Standard Ebooks yet, but I
| look forward to. Thanks!
|
| One book I'd like to see on Standard Ebooks is "The Flying
| Girl", which my wife and I just read and loved. It's by L.
| Frank Baum (The Wizard of Oz), and is about a flying startup in
| 1911, which I previously posted on HN:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32142757
| acabal wrote:
| _The Flying Girl_ would make a good first production, if you
| 'd like to take it on! See
| https://standardebooks.org/contribute/producing-an-ebook-
| ste...
|
| Make sure to thank your wife on my behalf for her hard work
| at PG!
| stew-j wrote:
| What a great idea! There was also a sequel:
|
| https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/53692
|
| I'll look into doing these, I also know a librarian who
| might be interested.
|
| I really can't believe Disney or Pixar, or some studio
| didn't make "The Flying Girl" into a movie. It really was
| bold and quite moving to see Baum (writing nom de plum as
| Edith Van Dyne) make the female character the hero, back in
| 1911.
| [deleted]
| neves wrote:
| Do you plan to make other browse options? I'd like to browse by
| popularity or author. There's a bulk download by author, but
| not in the browse page.
| voxl wrote:
| Have any of the ebooks included any serious math? I see that
| MathML is the expectation, but I wonder if the rules around the
| math aren't just ignored because of the rest of the culture
| around which books are selected and worked on.
|
| Indeed, in academic writing I never see MathML used in an HMTL
| setting, it's always MathJax or KaTeX. For your purposes this
| is probably fine, but imagining if someone wanted to author a
| high quality math textbook following the same standard I would
| wager they'd run into a brick wall
| anjbe wrote:
| It's certainly not "serious math," but I'm rather proud of
| this revision I made to the MathML used for a throwaway
| equation in an obscure short story:
| https://github.com/standardebooks/fritz-leiber_short-
| fiction...
| acabal wrote:
| _Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus_ , _Passages from the Life of
| a Philosopher_ , and _A Tangled Tale_ are probably our most
| MathML-heavy books.
|
| Books from the PD era are not very likely to feature math
| serious enough to require MathML. This is probably for the
| best... MathML support in ereaders is poor, with the
| exception of iBooks and Kobo. Raw MathML is retained in our
| "advanced" epubs, but it's converted to PNGs in our
| "compatible" epubs, for this reason.
|
| https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/ludwig-
| wittgenstein/tracta...
|
| https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/charles-
| babbage/passages-f...
|
| https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/lewis-carroll/a-tangled-
| ta...
| firstbabylonian wrote:
| Do you have any plans to support (and accept contributions to)
| non-English books? It'll be amazing to see original Russian
| classic texts redone with the same level of care.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| SE has a lot of English-specific tooling if you look at their
| cli tool.
| acabal wrote:
| This is a common request and the answer is unfortunately no.
| Typography varies across languages and we are only experts in
| English typography. People have tried to start up various SE-
| like projects for other languages, but as far as I know none
| have taken off.
| billfruit wrote:
| What about Latin, it uses the same typography as English.
| firstbabylonian wrote:
| Fair enough. Would you consider officially endorsing any
| such projects (e.g. with links on your website), for mutual
| benefit?
| politelemon wrote:
| Would you consider creating a Goodreads collection/list of all
| the books in Standard Ebooks? Though I can appreciate if it's
| too much work to curate or manage.
|
| Edit -- oh, is this the list?
| https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/140305.Standard_Ebooks
| acabal wrote:
| We did have one volunteer adding items to Goodreads as we
| produced them, but the process was manual and very tedious,
| and the ROI was questionable at best. So IIRC he no longer
| does that. I'm not against the idea but someone has to
| volunteer to pick up the task.
| politelemon wrote:
| Yeah it's a shame that Goodreads stopped giving out API
| keys, that could have helped with automating the list to
| some extent at least.
| joshspankit wrote:
| I may be seeing this thorough a "sensitive" lens, but the
| language on the website feels like it's bashing Project
| Gutenberg in order to show SE's strengths.
|
| > Ebook projects like Project Gutenberg transcribe ebooks and
| make them available for the widest number of reading devices.
| Standard Ebooks takes ebooks from sources like Project
| Gutenberg, formats and typesets them using a carefully designed
| and professional-grade style manual...
|
| > Other free ebooks (which PG has already been highlighted as
| being in that category) don't put much effort into
| professional-quality typography
|
| It can be a very difficult task to compare without criticism.
| It's clear that SE _does_ put care and attention in to all the
| things mentioned with the goal of creating an excellent
| edition, I just think that PG has well-earned the respect they
| have for doing _what they do_ well: getting so many books in to
| so many hands. As highlighted in the page and in your comments
| here: PG and SE fill different needs so there is room for both
| to stand tall.
| 8b16380d wrote:
| Bashing? The goals of each project are different and
| compliment each other. I am almost positive the folks at PG
| encourage projects like Standard Ebooks.
| ncallaway wrote:
| That doesn't strike me as "bashing", it strikes me as
| contrasting different focuses.
|
| PG is going for breadth--as many public domain books on as
| many devices as possible. Standard Ebooks are going for depth
| --a very quality of typesetting for each book.
| labrador wrote:
| I'm getting old and my eye sight is going. Are there any read-
| a-loud options you can recommend? The Edge browser does a
| decent job on PDF's in a voice you can select, but it's kind of
| hacky for an entire book.
| Poppys wrote:
| Have you tried using NVDA? It's an open source and free
| screen reader - https://www.nvaccess.org/
| labrador wrote:
| Thanks! This looks promising for the visually impaired.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| if you have an Alexa it can read ebooks you've bought on
| Amazon.
| ekianjo wrote:
| the whole purpose of this thread is not to rely on Amazon
| hackernewds wrote:
| the question is clearly asking how not to do this on
| Amazon.
| POPOSYS wrote:
| Thank you very much for demonstrating that a website without
| JavaScript is still one very good way to produce a website!
| compscistd wrote:
| What's something you'd recommend to a friend as a beach read?
| anjbe wrote:
| I'll second Alex's recommendations of P. G. Wodehouse
| (especially _Jeeves Stories_ ) and Agatha Christie.
|
| A personal favorite of mine is Jules Verne's _Around the
| World in Eighty Days_ :
| https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/jules-verne/around-the-
| wor...
| acabal wrote:
| The Book of Wonder is a series of weird short stories, some
| of them gloomy and pessimistic but many with a thread of dark
| humor. "Chu-bu and Sheemish" is one of my all-time favorite
| short stories - it's creative and hilarious. [1]
|
| I also liked _A Voyage to Arcturus_ , which has become a
| modern cult classic. It's probably my favorite book I've read
| for SE, though it might be a little heavy for a "beach read."
| [2]
|
| P. G. Wodehouse is always a good bet for lighter reading. [3]
|
| The Martian books are also light swashbuckling sci-fi. [4]
|
| _The Murder of Roger Ackroyd_ is considered to be one of the
| best murder mysteries ever written. [5]
|
| [1] https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/lord-dunsany/the-book-
| of-w...
|
| [2] https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/david-lindsay/a-voyage-
| to-...
|
| [3] https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/p-g-wodehouse
|
| [4] https://standardebooks.org/collections/martian
|
| [5] https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/agatha-christie/the-
| murder...
| technothrasher wrote:
| The first book I downloaded from standard ebooks was a PG
| Wodehouse book. I'd never read him and figured I'd give
| both him and the service a try. Neither disappointed.
| malshe wrote:
| Thanks a lot for doing this! I just downloaded a PG
| Wodehouse book on the iPad and I am thoroughly impressed by
| the quality of the book! I read PG's books when I was
| young. I used to borrow them from a local library so I
| don't own any of them.
| billfruit wrote:
| Along with Wodehouse, I would also suggest E F Benson.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| Do you have a plan for ensuring that Standard Ebooks never gets
| overtaken by profit-seeking spam the way Manybooks was?
|
| Love your project, thank you!
| acabal wrote:
| There are no guarantees in life, but as long as I'm at the
| helm I hope to avoid spam!
|
| We do accept donations because as SE becomes more popular and
| attracts more contributors, managing the project is
| approaching the time required for a full-time job.
| infogulch wrote:
| Great project thank you!
|
| Have you considered adding _A Million Random Digits with
| 100,000 Normal Deviates_ to the collection? It 's quite the
| thriller -- every page is a surprise and you will never guess
| what happens next!
| [deleted]
| anatoly wrote:
| 1. Apart from Project Gutenberg, where do your books come from?
|
| 2. When you proofread and fix typos, do you contribute the
| fixes back upstream?
| acabal wrote:
| The vast majority come from PG. When they don't it's another
| public domain transcription source, like Wikisource, Faded
| Page, or Project Gutenberg Australia. We usually don't create
| our own transcriptions.
|
| Our producers can and do contribute back upstream! It's up to
| the individual producer.
| wafriedemann wrote:
| What's your favourite ereader on macOS?
| BbzzbB wrote:
| Thoughts on introducing some kind of popularity/rank sort?
| I.e., number of on-site downloads, off-site citations or some
| book-equivalent-IMDB. Is it a conscious choice not to have one
| or just feature prioritization?
|
| The site looks lovely and I think it's great to have classic
| books properly formatted for e-readers, I've snatched up the
| ones that were sitting on my reading list for a while, but I
| find it unfortunate that it's a bit rough to find new things. I
| guess that mimics the feeling of a library, where books are
| grouped by broad genre but only alphabetical (or random)
| within, but I feel like it would be useful if it had some kind
| of pointers for discovery.
| acabal wrote:
| I'd be open to that but there's limited time in the day! If a
| volunteer wants to discuss making it happen, send a note to
| our mailing list or open a GitHub issue and we can talk about
| it.
| Namari wrote:
| Might be a stupid question but in France books over 50 years of
| age ended up "free" (to read not to exploit), does it work the
| same way on all countries? Does it mean we can access books
| that are over 50 years in your platform or even GP?
| maxnoe wrote:
| In Germany, works become gemeinfrei, a status similar but not
| exactly equivalent to the public domain, 70 years after the
| author's death.
| vmilner wrote:
| In general, I love the format, however I notice that (for
| example), Hugh Lofting's "The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle" has
| none of Lofting's illustrations - which seems a shame in a
| children's book - is this a deliberate policy choice?
| acabal wrote:
| Yes, we purposely don't include decorative illustrations in
| any ebook. (With some very rare exceptions.)
| jacobolus wrote:
| Is that just to cut down on file size?
| ekianjo wrote:
| even if they are also public domain?
| gault8121 wrote:
| What's the rationale for not including illustrations?
| acabal wrote:
| The ebooks we work on are often very old, and have been
| illustrated various times over the years. We don't want
| to have to pick and choose a single set of illustrations,
| nor do we want to forced to constantly justify exceptions
| for everyone's pet book, so we just have a blanket "no
| decorative illustrations" policy.
|
| Note that this only refers to _decorative_ illustrations,
| which is not the same as an illustration required to
| understand the text. As someone pointed out elsewhere,
| books like Sherlock Holmes or Agatha Christie, which can
| include narrative-critical illustrations like a map of a
| murder scene, or nonfiction which can often have relevant
| pictures but are not "illustrated" in the decorative
| sense, get to keep their images.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| I would argue that, where the book is illustrated by the
| author, you should keep those illustrations.
|
| (I'm against the no-illustrations policy in general, but
| illustration by the author seems like an especially clear
| case.)
| ggm wrote:
| yes, this seems to me to make sense, contextually. If you
| did Piranesi on architecture, it wouldn't make sense to
| exclude his drawings. or Ronald Searle's diary of his
| time in the PoW camps in Japan, or Edward Ardizzone's war
| diaries, or the sketches by "DD" watkins in his books..
| or heaps of others.
|
| arthur rackham's illustrations for childrens books, just
| like e.h. shepards for winnie-the-pooh, or Quentin Blake
| for his contributions to childrens books: its senseless
| to re-publish them without these illustrations (when the
| IP becomes available, of course)
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| I was imagining an illustration-free version of Dr.
| Seuss.
| OskarS wrote:
| What about texts where there are more or less "canonical"
| illustrations? Like, for an edition of Bleak House by
| Charles Dickens, it's just not the same without the
| sketches by "Phiz" that were present in the original
| publication. Same with John Tenniels illustrations of
| Alice in Wonderland.
|
| Amazing project by the way. Can't believe I just heard
| about it today, will dig into your catalogue with
| excitement!
| orzig wrote:
| I super respect your thoughtful principles. the focus has
| clearly paid off!
| vmilner wrote:
| Thanks - as I suspected, one of those seems to be "The
| Return of Sherlock Holmes" where "The Dancing Men" story
| needs the illustration to make the story understandable.
| Brakenshire wrote:
| From someone reading with a Kobo device:
|
| * Have you considered putting the books onto the official
| store? It would make it much smoother to get books on the
| device. You could charge a small fee to pay for the effort, I'd
| pay the extra to support the project and avoid the hassle of
| doing an upload. I just saw above you now do bulk downloads,
| which will help also.
|
| * Although your covers are beautiful, they only appear in a
| small corner of the screen for the Kobo devices I've used, even
| using the Kepub format, is that a known issue?
|
| And also to thank you for the effort. This project plays a
| really important role and has been a source of pleasure for
| many of my friends and family.
| acabal wrote:
| We've been in touch with Kobo but they haven't expressed a
| lot of interest. We do have an integration with the Google
| Play store, so if you search for an ebook we have in our
| catalog, it should appear near the top.
|
| I use a Kobo eink device myself and haven't noticed the cover
| art problem you're describing. Make sure you're on the latest
| firmware, and that you're transferring our kepub files using
| a USB cable and not Calibre. (Calibre may attempt to apply
| their own conversion on top of our own conversion, which can
| result in unexpected things happening.)
| Brakenshire wrote:
| Thanks for both answers, I use Calibre, so that's the
| reason why I'm getting that.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| I've taken to just opening the SE website in the Kobo
| experimental browser and downloading the books directly
| onto the device that way. The browser is pretty sluggish,
| but even then it only takes a few clicks if you know what
| book you're looking for.
| acabal wrote:
| There's been some talk about improving the Kobo browser
| experience, if you want to take a crack at it!
| https://github.com/standardebooks/web/issues/126
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Are you aware that someone is selling your books on Kobo
| with the Standard Ebooks publisher name?
|
| https://www.kobo.com/us/en/search?query=standard%20ebooks&a
| c...
| hackernewds wrote:
| That is very sad to see.
| acabal wrote:
| Yes, that's going to happen. The books are in the US
| public domain and anyone in the US can do anything they
| want with them, including reselling them. Obviously we
| are not the ones selling these.
| AequitasOmnibus wrote:
| The stories may be public domain but your arrangement,
| and more importantly your trade name _are_ protected. You
| may not have the desire to take action like a dmca
| takedown, but you 're definitely within your rights to do
| so.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| You can stop the third-party vendor from saying "I am
| Standard Ebooks", but you can't stop them from referring
| to the book as coming from Standard Ebooks, because
| that's true.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| That's fair, but I'd think the issue was less about
| copyright and more...trademark infringement? Since
| they're selling _as_ "Standard Ebooks", I think there's
| reasonable grounds for confusion that someone browsing
| the Kobo store might see one of the books being offered
| as coming _from you_ and make a purchase as a kind of
| donation, thinking that it 's going towards SE's upkeep
| rather than into some random's pocket.
| acabal wrote:
| This is a problem Project Gutenberg has had for years, on
| Amazon and other platforms. It's a game of whack a mole
| and ultimately not really worth pursuing. As soon as you
| shut one guy down, another one appears with the same
| great idea.
|
| In any case almost nobody is buying these anyway, as
| there are so many other free ebook editions of just about
| all of these books already.
| hedora wrote:
| I'm not a lawyer, but I believe failure to defend a
| trademark is a great way to lose a trademark.
|
| I'm surprised Kobo doesn't have a list of banned seller
| names for situations like this. It would take zero effort
| on their end, and they're clearly opening themselves to
| liability.
|
| Off to create Amazon and Disney stores over there... /s
| omnimus wrote:
| I am not a lawyer bit it seems that Standard Ebooks is
| not a trademark.
| BbzzbB wrote:
| >Make sure you're on the latest firmware
|
| If I may interject, overriding Kobo's firmware with
| KOReader (simple drag-n-drop of a file) gave a second life
| to my Aura 2. It's made it responsive and snappy while
| providing more features. It may not be necessary for newer
| ones (or for cover art on sleep), but I was on the fence to
| upgrade my 5 year old e-reader before trying it, feels like
| a new device now.
| rg111 wrote:
| If I use Lithium Epub Reader Pro on Android, does that support
| "advanced epub" properly?
| Farbklex wrote:
| What would be a good affordable ebook reader to enjoy this books?
| TheFreim wrote:
| I have a KOBO Libra H20, it is very good. I loaded KOReader on
| to it which adds functionality
| (https://github.com/koreader/koreader).
| nvllsvm wrote:
| These books should be usable on any Kindle or Kobo device. Just
| be sure download the appropriate format for the device - the
| download page on this site will tell you which one you need for
| your device.
|
| Personally, I use a Kobo Libra 2. Not the cheapest ereader at
| $179 USD, but I went with it due to USB-C, IPX8, and support
| for the third-party KOReader viewer.
| omnimus wrote:
| I recently need cheap one and got Pocketbook Touch HD 3. My
| expectations were low but it turned out to be great. It runs
| their locked down linux distro but it had Dropbox sync and i
| installed KOreader on it. Kinda everything i needed.
| pronoiac wrote:
| Huh. Choosing a book at somewhat random - Mike by P.G. Wodehouse
| - neither the compatible or advanced (experimental?) epubs are
| working terribly well in Bluefire Reader on my iPad. I might poke
| at this with Calibre. Or if there are recommendations for another
| epub reader, with the caveat that I need annotations.
|
| It looks like the workflow is per book. That ... seems odd.
| acabal wrote:
| iBooks is at the moment the best ebook renderer for iPad, hands
| down. If there are specific issues that look very bad on
| Bluefire Reader, please send a note to our mailing list with
| details so we can take a look!
| dirkt wrote:
| Calibre actually does horrible things to the HTML source that
| hides in each epub. While Standard Ebooks do promote awesome
| HTML. If you run Calibre on it, it's ruined.
|
| An epub is just a zip file. Open it up, look inside, see for
| yourself.
| rkapsoro wrote:
| Isn't this only if you use Calibre to do a _conversion_ on
| the epub?
|
| Calibre can just be used as a library, right?
| zufallsheld wrote:
| Can you explain or link to some resources on what calibre
| does with ebooks?
| solardev wrote:
| Their website is terrible (this was the best resource there
| I found: https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/#customizing-
| calibre-s-e-bo...), but the Calibre software itself is
| really powerful, letting you do things like:
|
| * Read eBooks in just about any popular or semi-popular
| format
|
| * Manage your library
|
| * Convert books to and from any of the supported formats,
| specifying details of that conversion like tables of
| content, typography, chapter headings, etc.
|
| * Edit book metadata
|
| * With a plugin, strip DRMed ebooks of their protection so
| you can use them on other devices
|
| It's just a one-stop GUI for doing just about any sort of
| ebook maintenance/library management/cleanup. Helpful if
| your source materials are free or pirated, or if your
| device is unsupported at the major ebook stores. Lets you
| take a Kindle-only ebook, for example, get rid of the DRM,
| rip it to a more standard format, and send it to some
| obscure ereader that you have.
| zufallsheld wrote:
| I think you misunderstood my question. The question was
| in regards to this sentence from the op: > Calibre
| actually does horrible things to the HTML source that
| hides in each epub.
| solardev wrote:
| I did indeed misunderstand. I'm sorry :)
| jbotz wrote:
| OK, I checked. Calibre did almost nothing to the epubs I
| downloaded and added to the Calibre library and then sent to
| my device from there (a KOBO Libra H2O). The _only_ thing it
| did was to add a file `. /META-INF/calibre_bookmarks.txt` to
| the zip archive. The HTML was completely untouched. Now
| obviously if you do some conversion it's going to be another
| mattter and it's possible that the Calibre checks for some
| things it considers incompatible with its reader and in those
| cases alters the HTML, but I didn't find anything like that
| in the books I checked.
|
| Admittedly I don't think that Calibre should touch the
| contents of an ebook zip file without specific action from
| the user (such as requesting a conversion)... but what it
| does doesn't seem to be problematic.
| [deleted]
| hackernewds wrote:
| Sad this only has 9/70 patrons??
| robin_reala wrote:
| That's the latest drive. You can see our full patrons list at
| the bottom of https://standardebooks.org/about.
| aclindsa wrote:
| Curious: Since Standard Ebooks uses Project Gutenberg's work, why
| not contribute back instead of 'fork' to a separate project? Are
| there obstacles preventing this or making it less than desirable?
| ptato wrote:
| I assume creating a brand of their own makes it easier to get
| donations which allows them to continue and/or grow the
| project.
| acabal wrote:
| Our editions are totally different than what PG does, our goals
| are different, our technical approach is different, and our
| collections policy is different. We would rather have our own
| curated catalog on our own website, than be another edition
| lost among many in PG's huge catalog.
|
| PG does great work and we rely on them almost exclusively for
| transcriptions. But we're two friends working towards to
| different goals.
| causality0 wrote:
| _PG does great work and we rely on them almost exclusively
| for transcriptions_
|
| Until I got to this part of the comment I was thinking "Yay,
| an alternative to PG's godawful OCR transcriptions". Why
| would you reuse the worst part of Project Gutenberg?
| jxramos wrote:
| It's a starting point is what I think they're getting at.
| Preclassification which a human then corrects--we're
| effectively talking about a labor saving device for an
| otherwise tedious task.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Can confirm. Think of it like using an AI to do an
| initial pass at a conference transcription and then
| correcting the typos, rather than doing the whole
| transcription by hand. Even if it's only 85% accurate,
| you've still saved a boatload of time.
|
| When I did "The Valley of Fear" as my first project, the
| PG text was used as the base, but if I encountered any
| kind of ambiguity in the text, I consulted at least a
| half-dozen other versions of the text via Google Books
| scans for agreement.
|
| The team is also very particular about only using
| editions that have entered into the public domain. So if
| the first edition of a book just entered public domain,
| you _must_ make sure that what you have produced only
| uses text from the first edition, and that you haven 't
| inadvertently used a later edition as a base that may
| have included subsequent editorial changes.
| causality0 wrote:
| So they're actually reading the texts and correcting the
| mistakes?
| acabal wrote:
| Yes - that's one of the main points of the project!
| aclindsa wrote:
| Would it be possible to contribute back the corrections from
| proofreading so that others could benefit, if not some of the
| fancier formatting/fonts/etc.? Or is that prohibitively
| difficult due to what is effectively a one-way conversion
| from PG to your own format?
| JohnAaronNelson wrote:
| RTFA
| aclindsa wrote:
| May I ask why you felt rudeness was appropriate here?
|
| I had read the link and it was not obvious upon reading it
| why contributing back to Project Gutenberg did not make sense
| for them. In particular, I did not understand why it would
| not be desirable to contribute back corrections to the text
| to the "upstream" and original source so that others could
| also benefit - I did not see any contradiction between doing
| so and the goals/benefits stated on their page.
| spicymaki wrote:
| This is important preservation work. Thank you!
| dimmke wrote:
| This is great but want to clarify - Kindles do support Epub now.
| Which is great. Because I love the Kindle ecosystem and I really
| like a project like this.
|
| How do you handle translated works? Like The Communist Manifesto
| was written in German. Would something like Death in Venice be in
| the works too?
| acabal wrote:
| They only fake support epub - when you use "send to Kindle" to
| send an epub, it gets quietly converted by Amazon to either
| mobi or azw3 (I don't know exactly which of those two but it
| seems like azw3 is more likely). I assume they use kindlegen to
| do the conversion, even though Calibre does better azw3
| conversion. If you're using SE ebooks on a Kindle, you should
| simply download our premade azw3 files as I guarantee they'll
| be better than whatever Amazon does to an epub sent over email.
|
| We accept translations into English, but the translations need
| to have been published before 1927 for them to be in the US
| public domain. See our collections policy:
| https://standardebooks.org/contribute/collections-policy
|
| The _Communist Manifest_ is already in our catalog:
| https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/karl-marx_friedrich-engels...
| hanche wrote:
| Is the tool to convert to azw3 part of the toolkit available
| to contributors, or do you perform that conversion in-house
| after the volunteer has made the epub?
| acabal wrote:
| Our source format is epub, and the conversion is part of
| our toolkit. Azw3 conversion is done using Calibre:
| https://github.com/standardebooks/tools
| LazyEvaluation wrote:
| I know it's not a library in the conventional sense. But it would
| be a bit proper to separate things in to fiction and non-fiction
| at the very top level.
| auxym wrote:
| A bit late here, but by any chance, does anyone know of a similar
| site for non-english high-quality ebooks? Specifically, I'd
| really like to read some french classics in the original french.
| I know Project Gutenberg, but quality is variable compared to
| Standard Ebooks.
| urlisse wrote:
| 1. https://www.bibebook.com
|
| 2. https://www.ebooksgratuits.com ( bigger catalog)
| auxym wrote:
| Thanks, will have a look!
| dontcare007 wrote:
| Another good place for free books:
| https://www.baen.com/catalog/category/view/s/free-library/id...
| billybuckwheat wrote:
| This is a great project. It's really prodded me to reread some
| classics, and read more than a few I've never tried to tackle
| before.
|
| I really should donate a few dollars to the project to show my
| appreciation and to try to help (in a small way) keep it going.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-07-25 23:01 UTC)