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I love the project, but it really does need a way to find the most popular books: https://github.com/standardebooks/web/issues/298 https://github.com/standarde

I love the project, but it really does need a way to find the most popular books: https://github.com/standardebooks/web/issues/298 https://github.com/standardebooks/web/issues/298

chasil 2y ago
Gutenberg.org is reporting the number of downloads; can't this be used? Are these two organizations otherwise not on friendly terms, and able to exchange ebooks?
- robin_reala 2y ago
  We talk a fair bit! Gutenberg is the source for 95%+ of our productions, and personally I upstream any transcription issues I find. What differs though is the mission. Gutenberg generally wants accurate digital translations of the original source texts, whereas Standard Ebooks tries to balance that out with better readability. Both are valid approaches, and there’s space for both of us.
  - chasil 2y ago
    Just curious... do you ever reach a consensus on a text that you decide to share between you? Can you actually share the full .EPUB file, or do they object to the expanded size with bundled fonts and formatting, resulting in identical HTML but otherwise different content in the ZIP?
    - robin_reala 2y ago
      It hasn’t happened before but never say never. What we do do though sometimes is contribute our own transcriptions to Gutenberg first, then use that as a base for the Standard Ebooks version.
cdrini 2y ago
It seems like we need to trigger another import -- we only have 491 of their 1,000! But you can search Standard Ebooks books in Open Library. Here they are sorted by how many people have added them to their reading log: https://openlibrary.org/search?q=id_standard_ebooks%3A%2A&mode=everything&sort=readinglog https://openlibrary.org/search?q=id_standard_ebooks%3A%2A&mo... Or by rating: https://openlibrary.org/search?q=id_standard_ebooks%3A%2A&mode=everything&sort=rating https://openlibrary.org/search?q=id_standard_ebooks%3A%2A&mo... Or by first published! https://openlibrary.org/search?q=id_standard_ebooks%3A%2A&mode=everything&sort=old https://openlibrary.org/search?q=id_standard_ebooks%3A%2A&mo... I created an issue to kick off another import: https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary/issues/9372 https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary/issues/9372
- daveoc64 2y ago
  Thanks - that's really helpful.
bnycum 2y ago
I was gonna comment on the sorting being less than ideal too. Only sort by release date (not publication date), author, ease, and length. Can't even sort by title.
raybb 2y ago
You can use the openlibrary.org API to get the popularity (want to reads, rating counts, reviews) to get you started.
donatj 2y ago
Their tech stack is essentially a really weird really opinionated custom static site generator that makes improvements difficult. The build process is slow and troublesome. I talked with them about adding an index of authors, and were open to the idea. I put probably 5 hours into getting it running correctly and figuring out how to get it to work. They then were at the time unwilling to restructure their data into a way that made it feasible due to how they have books are structured for multiple authors. I've worked on hundreds of PHP apps over the last 20 years, and it's frankly one of the weirdest. It could benefit from even just a little SQLite db or something.

I love the project, but it really does need a way to find the most popular books: https://github.com/standardebooks/web/issues/298 https://github.com/standardebooks/web/issues/298

chasil 2y ago

Gutenberg.org is reporting the number of downloads; can't this be used? Are these two organizations otherwise not on friendly terms, and able to exchange ebooks?

robin_reala 2y ago
We talk a fair bit! Gutenberg is the source for 95%+ of our productions, and personally I upstream any transcription issues I find. What differs though is the mission. Gutenberg generally wants accurate digital translations of the original source texts, whereas Standard Ebooks tries to balance that out with better readability. Both are valid approaches, and there’s space for both of us.
- chasil 2y ago
  Just curious... do you ever reach a consensus on a text that you decide to share between you? Can you actually share the full .EPUB file, or do they object to the expanded size with bundled fonts and formatting, resulting in identical HTML but otherwise different content in the ZIP?
  - robin_reala 2y ago
    It hasn’t happened before but never say never. What we do do though sometimes is contribute our own transcriptions to Gutenberg first, then use that as a base for the Standard Ebooks version.

cdrini 2y ago

It seems like we need to trigger another import -- we only have 491 of their 1,000! But you can search Standard Ebooks books in Open Library. Here they are sorted by how many people have added them to their reading log: https://openlibrary.org/search?q=id_standard_ebooks%3A%2A&mode=everything&sort=readinglog https://openlibrary.org/search?q=id_standard_ebooks%3A%2A&mo... Or by rating: https://openlibrary.org/search?q=id_standard_ebooks%3A%2A&mode=everything&sort=rating https://openlibrary.org/search?q=id_standard_ebooks%3A%2A&mo... Or by first published! https://openlibrary.org/search?q=id_standard_ebooks%3A%2A&mode=everything&sort=old https://openlibrary.org/search?q=id_standard_ebooks%3A%2A&mo... I created an issue to kick off another import: https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary/issues/9372 https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary/issues/9372

daveoc64 2y ago
Thanks - that's really helpful.

bnycum 2y ago

I was gonna comment on the sorting being less than ideal too. Only sort by release date (not publication date), author, ease, and length. Can't even sort by title.

raybb 2y ago

You can use the openlibrary.org API to get the popularity (want to reads, rating counts, reviews) to get you started.

donatj 2y ago

Their tech stack is essentially a really weird really opinionated custom static site generator that makes improvements difficult. The build process is slow and troublesome. I talked with them about adding an index of authors, and were open to the idea. I put probably 5 hours into getting it running correctly and figuring out how to get it to work. They then were at the time unwilling to restructure their data into a way that made it feasible due to how they have books are structured for multiple authors. I've worked on hundreds of PHP apps over the last 20 years, and it's frankly one of the weirdest. It could benefit from even just a little SQLite db or something.