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Standard Ebooks: Free public-domain ebooks, carefully produced
- kevinh 7y agoIt's great that these are in a consistent formatting style. When trying to extract some contents programmatically from some Gutenberg texts, I kept running into different formatting styles. That combined with being able to check out the entire repository makes it much simpler to do data processing on the works. And, of course, fixing more errors is of course a noble goal. Are these corrections going to make it upstream to Gutenberg?
- souterrain 7y ago> Standard Ebooks puts significant work into designing, formatting, marking up, and hosting our ebooks. While some think we could, or even should, release our work with some kind of copyright notice, instead Standard Ebooks dedicates the entirety of each of our ebook files, including markup, cover art, and everything in between, to the public domain. https://standardebooks.org/about/ https://standardebooks.org/about/
- matt4077 7y agoPublic Domain projects that subtly argue for an extensive view of copyright in ambiguous (in the best case) situations make me somewhat suspicious. Editing is a lot work, and their efforts are appreciated. But most of that involves the application of existing rules (curly quotes etc.) and therefore doesn't meet the creativity standard of copyright. I guess the texts are out there anyway, and it doesn't make much of a difference. But I'm reminded of the art world, where many a painting is long out of copyright, yet only the Museums have access and the insist setting up a lightbox and taking a photo is a creative endeavour worthy of protection from the prying eyes of the non-paying public.
- roryokane 7y agoI was curious about the copyright situation of photos of old paintings that you referenced in your last paragraph. I found this article that explains their status: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/museum-paintings-copyright_b_1867076 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/museum-paintings-copyright_b_.... The bottom line: > [T]hose who are hesitant to use photos of works that are in the public domain […] should know that under the law if the image is “slavish,” a mere reproduction, a plain unadorned exact image, they can use it and do not have to pay anyone a licensing fee.
- AdmiralAsshat 7y ago> Are these corrections going to make it upstream to Gutenberg? It's an issue worth raising to the team. In the spirit of GPL, I think reporting any instances of clear typos in the source text upstream would be a good idea. The problem is that so much work is done to the text as part of StandardEbook production that we can't exactly just submit a single patch or diff. It would be difficult to identify the textual corrections from stylistic changes in an automatic way, unless we were to enforce typo corrections to occur in a single commit. We're currently encouraged to use an [Editorial] tag when modernizing spelling such as "any one" -> "anyone", so perhaps we should see about a [Transcription Error] tag for obvious typos. The upshot is that all of the books' sources are hosted on GH. So an interested party could, in theory, review the commit history and pull out what look to be typo corrections. See, for example: https://github.com/standardebooks/emile-gaboriau_the-lerouge-case/commit/50958e4ed3cc22cf9afb26dabcd93d9f986f9b8a https://github.com/standardebooks/emile-gaboriau_the-lerouge... Failing that, the contributor could simply manually keep track of any typos they fix and report them to GP.
- Moru 7y agoOn the other side, modernising the texts might not be what gutenberg wants, if they want to keep original errors from the books? Haven't looked it up but I have been in other book project where it was more important to keep everything as it was printed.
- the_duke 7y ago"Modernizing" is a very questionable thing to do IMO. Fixing typos is fine I guess, but books are the result of an era and grammar or writing style is an inherent part of a book that should not be altered.
- StavrosK 7y agoThat's true, it changes the book materially, I think.
- robin_reala 7y agoWe’re pretty light touch. For an example, the biggest change a typical novel gets is amending “to-day” to “today”.
- robin_reala 7y agoNot all the sources come from Gutenberg for a start. But for those that do I usually keep a running list of proofing corrections as I go and submit them back. Gutenberg are pretty responsive to any changed submitted if you supply a link to source scans as well.
- mhxion 7y ago> Other free ebooks don’t put much effort into professional-quality typography: they use "straight" quotes instead of “curly” quotes, they ignore details like em- and en-dashes, and they look more like early-90’s web pages instead of actual books. True. I hope you guys get proper funding and keep this project on. Contribute: https://standardebooks.org/contribute/ https://standardebooks.org/contribute/ (I was thinking a Slack or Discord would be better than Google groups mailing list for this?)
- toomuchtodo 7y agoMailing lists are superior for async communications IMHO for endeavors such as this. Nothing needs to be addressed immediately (and as everyone is a volunteer, realistic expectations should be set for response latency; email helps that, Slack/Discord does not), and the mailing list archive is a natural log of conversations and decisions that are open and accessible (Free Slack only keeps 10k lines of conversation history if I recall). A mailing list is also free (can be, not always, but can be), and does not require a chat client installed.
- kkarakk 7y agoCounterpoint: Old mailing list conversations are difficult to parse and encourage a "ignore it until the issue goes away" mentality if no one is enforcing a reply rate. Mailing lists only really work for corporations imo
- toomuchtodo 7y agoWe're talking open source/free/non-profits here. No reply rate should be enforced unless by project owners (their time, their project, their rules). Some issues should be ignored until they go away. I myself ignore issues from some folks who engage me in my role as an open source tooling maintainer, after I have exhausted my patience working with them and they are not receptive to polite discussion. > Mailing lists only really work for corporations imo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel_mailing_list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel_mailing_list We've steered off topic though. Feel free to email me if you want to chat further on the topic.
- techgeekbuzz 7y agoI don't like these books.
- dang 7y agoDiscussed in 2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14570035 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14570035
- terminalhealth 7y agoDang, could you lift vvillyd's rate limit as new user in case this still exists?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- sctb 7y agoWe removed it a little while ago, in fact. Thanks for the heads up! (Emailing hn@ycombinator.com is quicker and more reliable for next time.)
- terminalhealth 7y agoThanks.
- xrd 7y agoI'm really curious why a book (https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/charles-w-chesnutt/the-conjure-woman https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/charles-w-chesnutt/the-con...) originally published in the US would need to include this: "This ebook is only thought to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. It may still be under copyright in other countries. If you’re not located in the United States, you must check your local laws to verify that the contents of this ebook are free of copyright restrictions in the country you’re located in before downloading or using this ebook." Can anyone speak to this?
- toomuchtodo 7y agoCopyright laws differ between countries. https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Copyright_FAQ#C.2._Does_copyright_differ_from_country_to_country.3F_From_state_to_state.3F https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Copyright_FAQ#C.2._... https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/okbooks.html https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/okbooks.html
- hollerith 7y agoJust because it was first offered for sale in the US doesn't mean the owner cannot apply for copyright in other countries.
- pkaye 7y agoA few countries had copyright terms longer than the US. For example Mexico is life of author + 100 years while US is life + 70 years.
- robin_reala 7y agoMost of the work is life of the author + 70 years, but the US is anything published in 1924 or later (with a few exceptions, for example if copyright wasn’t renewed in the 60s).
- paulcarroty 7y agoGuess "printing by demand" will be a good source for funding such projects.
- hombre_fatal 7y agoAre there any plans to support languages beyond English?
- mfsch 7y agoIt looks like they’ve decided not to publish any non-English books [1]. It’s a pity – I much prefer reading books in their original language if I’m able to understand it, and I was even considering contributing some German books to their collection. Maybe it would complicate the publishing process a bit though since different languages have different practices for things like punctuation. [1]: https://standardebooks.org/contribute/accepted-ebooks https://standardebooks.org/contribute/accepted-ebooks
- domoritz 7y agoThe tools are available. Maybe someone would be willing to make a similar project for other languages.
- trynewideas 7y agoThe only one I know of is http://projectoadamastor.org http://projectoadamastor.org in Portuguese. I can't tell whether it uses the same tooling, but the project generally predates Standard Ebooks.
- interfixus 7y ago> I much prefer reading books in their original language if I’m able to understand it Absolutely. To the extent that I have trouble focusing on texts I know to be translations, unless there are inescapably good reasons for them to be, i.e. they come from a language I have no chance of understanding. Currently battling to resurrect my highschool German. Getting there, but cursing myself for not starting out with something a wee bit more accessible than Thomas Mann...
- trynewideas 7y agoDoesn't seem likely: https://standardebooks.org/contribute/accepted-ebooks https://standardebooks.org/contribute/accepted-ebooks > Types of eBooks we don't accept > ... > * Non-English-language books. Translations to English are, of course, OK. I don't see any rationale for it on the mailing list, only a message from Alex Cabal two years ago stating "not at the moment": https://groups.google.com/d/msg/standardebooks/JdVpCm3ckGg/iiGr9VBeBgAJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/standardebooks/JdVpCm3ckGg/i... Alex explicitly does not want the "Standard Ebooks" name or mailing list used to coordinate similar projects elsewhere (including other primarily English-language nations), due to copyright issues: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/standardebooks/qRDTb-hHMxk/zjwXuczqCQAJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/standardebooks/qRDTb-hHMxk/z... Nor is Alex aware of any other similar projects: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/standardebooks/ikg07cqkABY/Qs1NHr29BQAJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/standardebooks/ikg07cqkABY/Q...
- baalimago 7y agoThis is absolutely amazing!
- criddell 7y agoI wonder if the azw3 files work with the Kindle's latest display engine? Specifically, can ragged-right be turned on? Are hyphenation hints embedded?
- robin_reala 7y agoI don’t have a Kindle so haven’t tested, but I believe we build the AZW3 files from the epub2 ones, which have hyphenation baked in using the Python hyphenation library.
- Alex63 7y agoI'm a fan of Standard Ebooks for my Kobo Aura One reader. Their EPUB versions look great.
- baalimago 7y agoI'm a bit surprised they have the communist manifesto but not mine kampf.
- elkos 7y agoApparently someone interested to creat a proper ebook within the project's production standards volunteered to create one.
- Koshkin 7y agoMein Kampf is pretty long and, frankly, boring (unlike The Communist Manifesto that reads like a poem).
- robin_reala 7y agoWithout commenting on the contents, it wasn’t fully published in English until 1939, which means it doesn’t arrive into the US public domain for another 15 years. It’s also down to personal preference what people work on.
- niea_11 7y agoA similar project for books in french (french books and books translated to french) : https://www.ebooksgratuits.com/ebooks.php https://www.ebooksgratuits.com/ebooks.php
- qwerty456127 7y agoThanks! I've been looking for a website with free French ebooks for quite some time...
- scanny 7y agopretty good resource, glad to see fellow french learners (or francophones?) sharing it
- jarboot 7y agoIs there any way to download them all? Ebooks are very small so it shouldn't be a problem to make an archive, or at least have a way to use curl/wget to download them all from a directory.
- simongr3dal 7y agoThere’s something called opds. Sort of like a file that defines a library and its contents. https://standardebooks.org/opds/ https://standardebooks.org/opds/ I’ve never really been able to get it to work with calibre, pretty much the standard go to piece of software for all things ebooks. I would be interested in hearing about any tips for getting an opds working.
- bori5 7y agoFor iOS there’s something called KyBook which reads that opds link and shows a list of books with cover art, book name, author and tags pertaining to the books subject matter. It does not allow one to search the opds library in anyway. I was able to download a book using the app, and from within the app move the book to iCloud. From within the Files app I found the KyBook folder, selected the book and using share opened it with iBooks and it is now in my iBooks collection. I found the app here https://www.maketecheasier.com/best-ebook-reader-ios/ https://www.maketecheasier.com/best-ebook-reader-ios/
- lainwashere 7y agoI ended up using this to download all the azw3 files for my kindle, it's probably not the best you could do, so feel free to use it as reference for yourself if you might do something similar. curl -s https://standardebooks.org/opds/all | grep -oE "/(.*).azw3" | sed -e"s/^/https:\/\/standardebooks.org/" | xargs -n 1 curl -O P.S. Calibre seems to only work with them and the kindle when you send over USB (I keep my paperwhite in airplane mode, signed out, ads disabled)[0] [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20596300 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20596300
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- GeekyBear 7y agoI just want to say that I appreciate all the effort. I've finally gotten around to reading many of the classics using your ePub files.
- numbers 7y agoGreat project, following your progress and will be getting books from here since the formatting is so much nicer than some other places. Question: how is Philip K Dick in public domain already?
- abbe98 7y agoSeveral of his works were published before 1964 and the copyright was not renewed. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Philip_Kindred_Dick https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Philip_Kindred_Dick
- notadoc 7y agoGreat idea. Now consider something similar for Audiobooks.
- mgbennet 7y agoAre you familiar with LibriVox? https://librivox.org/ https://librivox.org/
- notadoc 7y agoYes but the audiobook, voice, and reader quality has been very hit and miss.
- abbe98 7y agoLoyal Books has a lot of public domain books as audio books. In my experience the quality varies widely but there is plenty of good content. http://www.loyalbooks.com/ http://www.loyalbooks.com/
- buzzdenver 7y agoAny chance to provide mobi format? The azw3 files do not work on my Kindle Paperwhite.
- AdmiralAsshat 7y agoHow are you sending the file to your Kindle? AZW3 should work if you're connected to your computer via USB and dragging over manually or sending over via Calibre, but I've seen it not work if you're trying to send it to the email addy associated with the kindle. For that, you are correct, MOBI is usually the preferred option.
- buzzdenver 7y agoYup, I am trying to email it.
- AdmiralAsshat 7y agoWon't work, I'm afraid! And the project leader has already shot down that request in the past. See here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/standardebooks/mobi|sort:date/standardebooks/GyjQL1s9rAA/BsGpOnvSBgAJ https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/standardebooks/mo... It should still work if you transfer it over USB, but if you're trying to do it all wirelessly, simply download the EPUB and convert it to MOBI, and you should be good to go.
- eigenvalue 7y agoUnfortunately none of the formats given work with Amazon's "email to kindle" system, which is the most convenient way to load books-- it allows you to download a PDF on your phone and send it to a special email address associated with your Kindle device. Considering all the work this site has already done preparing the book files, it seems like they might as well ought to generate PDF files using a page size roughly equal to that of the most common Kindle readers.
- tssva 7y agoAmazon's "email to kindle" system also accepts books in the mobi format which would be a preferable to mapping pdf page sizes to Kindle reader screen sizes.
- qwerty456127 7y agoBTW does Kindle let you load your own DRM-free ebook files instead of buying books on Amazon? I use a PocketBook (pocketbook-int.com) which emulates a mass storage device and lets me read everything. I once considered buying a Kindle but heard it won't let me load bare files this way. Is this true?
- politelemon 7y agoYou can sideload the files via USB, just copy the files over to its internal storage and it will appear on the home screen. You can also associate a Kindle with an email address, and email files to that address. The file appears as part of your cloud collection. For sideloading, the books need to be azw3 or mobi. For emailing the book needs to be mobi. In either case epub is not accepted.
- qwerty456127 7y agoVery informative. Thanks.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y agoI have had sideloaded files mysteriously disappear from a Paperwhite 3.
- syshum 7y agoMy Kindle Paperwhite will read PDF, there are some limits and Mobi displays better but it possible to read a PDF on a Kindle
- patrickk 7y agoCalibre is a great way to manage syncronisation and reformatting to Kindle-supported file types, it even allows you to select your Kindle model to make sure it looks well: https://calibre-ebook.com/ https://calibre-ebook.com/ https://www.howtogeek.com/73979/how-to-organize-your-ebook-collection-with-calibre/ https://www.howtogeek.com/73979/how-to-organize-your-ebook-c...
- earenndil 7y ago
- disease 7y agoAre there any good, open source e-readers out there?
- zajio1am 7y agoI must admire beautiful cover art selected for ebooks.
- robin_reala 7y agoThanks, it’s honestly the hardest part of the production process.
- robin_reala 7y agoA book that might be of specific interest for HN’s audience is the recent production for Standard Ebooks I did of Charles Babbage’s autobiography: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/charles-babbage/passages-from-the-life-of-a-philosopher https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/charles-babbage/passages-f... It covers a plethora of subjects, but devotes a few chapters to the Difference Engine and the political difficulties in getting it funded. Bonus MathML (rendered to PNGs in most readers but real for the Kobo), and all diagrams support both normal and white-on-black dark mode if you’re got your reader set up like that.
- Pfhreak 7y agoThis is fantastic, and immediately I want to try and contribute engineering time to it. I've tried reading Gutenberg ebooks before and gave up because of how inconsistent and unreadable they could be. Is there a wishlist of tools/software out there that someone could contribute to?
- jdb42 7y agoIt's always great to see public domain books being made available, and standardebooks is certainly worth a visit. However, while I read quite a lot and in particular the sort of books that are available there, I mostly give the site a miss purely because of its design. I don't want to seem too sarcastic, but having huge images as a listing for books is odd when most of the users can read quite well. I'm probably a bit sensitive about this, since our local library does the same thing - it almost looks like there is something about uncompromisingly textual information that provokes a reaction from web designers.
- viraptor 7y agoThis made me smile: (from the style guide) > Do convert from logical punctuation to American punctuation where possible.
- lone_haxx0r 7y agoI got really excited, but then I noticed that there was no PDF option. I hate epubs with a passion, because all epub programs suck.
- timClicks 7y agoSubmit a patch. It's easy to moan about a missing feature, but isn't terribly productive.
- hombre_fatal 7y agoWhat about any of the ways to convert epub to pdf yourself? Are they no good? If anything, I think an HTML version that you can view right on the website would be the best format addition. It's always interesting to me when a website doesn't offer a browser-native document format as an option to view text.
- lone_haxx0r 7y agoI've tried generating PDFs with Calibre, the result: giant ugly fonts, zero sheet padding, nonsensical spacing, etc. I could spend the time trying to make them look right, but I don't want to spend my time that way. I prefer learning things that will give me more satisfaction per second spent.
- pwg 7y agoHave you tried FBReader (https://fbreader.org/ https://fbreader.org/). The Android version has so far met my needs, and the Linux version works well (in my opinion).
- lone_haxx0r 7y agoFor reference, this is what a document viewer should look like, in my opinion: https://i.imgur.com/kkhk2dX.png https://i.imgur.com/kkhk2dX.png [#] Notice the gray margin outside the sheet, and the padding inside the sheet. The first one gives you a general frame of view, and also you don't want the document to use the whole screen width when using a 16:9 monitor or similar screen. The padding is necessary because you don't want characters too close to a margin, else they look like they're escaping the sheet. I haven't been able to replicate this setup with Calibre, FBReader or any other epub reader. Fonts are another issue. Default fonts always suck. FBReader uses Dejavu Serif, that, in my opinion looks just bad. I changed it to Bitstream Charter, which looks decent, but then the line justification looked wrong, I changed that, and then paragraph margin looked wrong. There's a million little things that look horrible by default and you have to spend an hour per book setting up your reader so that it looks right. I've tried generating PDFs with Calibre, the result: giant ugly fonts, zero sheet padding, nonsensical spacing, etc. At some point you just give up and avoid epubs like the plague. [#] The book is called Crypto 101, by lvh.
- shostack 7y agoIs there any way to browse by genre and year published?
- fenomas 7y agoYou can search by genre, but the only way I noticed to do it is to click on a book with the genre you want, then there'll be a link to browse other books with the same genre tags.
- PorterDuff 7y agoThis is a great idea. Another ebook non-profit I'd like to see is one that shepherds books through the copyright maze. No doubt there are scads of books in the public domain that no one has proven are actually there. Perhaps this exists already but it strikes me as a good separate, and highly targeted, kind of effort.
- oraknabo 7y agoNot only is this an excellent project, I think this is also an incredible collection of books you've chosen to feature. I also really appreciate the art choices that have been made for the covers. I have many of these in epub from Gutenberg, but plan to replace them with your versions when I have some time. I know others have already asked about bulk download--have you considered offering a torrent of the full library or possibly one for each file format?
- StevePerkins 7y agoFor the Amazon-compatible "azw3" files that I'm seeing, I'm curious why the book cover thumbnail images are a separate download from the ebook file itself? Unless I'm missing a trick, it seems like you have to use Calibre (or some other application) to re-build the "azw3" file with the cover thumbnail properly embedded. Why not just ship the ebook files like that to begin with?
- mrunkel 7y agoAccording to the webpage >>>Thanks to a long-standing bug in the Kindle software, side-loaded ebooks don’t display cover images automatically. "
- mrleinad 7y agoYou can also transform the epub to a format compatible with Kindle and save a few clicks. The epub contains the cover.
- sauntheninja 7y agoKobo is far easier just download the epub on to your mobile and use the import button from the app and it will automatically get downloaded
- Tinned_Tuna 7y agohttps://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/ https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/
- cmroanirgo 7y agoI applaud this idea & hope it goes well. I'm always a little disappointed when I download a book from Gutenberg and the formatting makes it virtually unreadable. I'd also like to mention feedbooks which have a very nicely set of curated ebooks: http://m.feedbooks.com/publicdomain http://m.feedbooks.com/publicdomain (I have no affiliation with them)
- jrlandau 7y agoHow many books have been produced? What is the goal/hope?