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Editor-in-chief here, happy to answer any questions, as always. We also recently celebrated Public Domain Day with an especially notable crop of books, includin
by acabal 2y ago
Editor-in-chief here, happy to answer any questions, as always. We also recently celebrated Public Domain Day with an especially notable crop of books, including The Sound and the Fury, All Quiet on the Western Front, John Steinbeck's first novel, some Hemingway, Gandhi, two Dashiell Hammett novels, and more: https://standardebooks.org/blog/public-domain-day-2025 https://standardebooks.org/blog/public-domain-day-2025
- Erlangen 2y agoHi, Alex. Is there anyway to browser the ebooks filtered by languages? I tried to find some texts in French, but it doesn't seem to have any.
- LtWorf 2y agoSame for me. I think it's english only.
- acabal 2y agoStandard Ebooks only works on English-language books, as typography varies between languages and we're only experts in English.
- philistine 2y agoI can tell you there is a lot of appetite for other languages. I looked at the project and the amount of stuff that would need to be rewritten to work with multiple languages was daunting. I would consider working on making your documentation and workflow functional with multiple languages.
- acabal 2y agoLots of people have tried similar projects in other languages but as far as I know none have persevered. Personally I think it's important to have one person in charge who is able to approve of the quality of all the project's output; for now, at SE, that person is me and I'm only an expert in English.
- colonwqbang 2y agoProject Runeberg seems to be still going after 30-odd years.
- robin_reala 2y agoProject Runeberg is trying to be a nordic Project Gutenberg, not a nordic Standard Ebooks.
- philistine 2y agoEnlightening comment!
- loloquwowndueo 2y agoWhich ebook reader works well with standard ebooks in 2025? (More concretely my reader is a 2nd-gen kindle which is basically useless these days and I’d love an idea of something that can display standard ebooks with all their advanced formatting) Thanks!
- wyclif 2y agoA Kobo would be a great choice. I use a Kobo Libra 2 and love it a lot more than my old Kindle Paperwhite that got stolen: https://gl.kobobooks.com/products/kobo-libra-2 https://gl.kobobooks.com/products/kobo-libra-2 The Kobo Sage is also good because it has an 8" screen. Standard eBooks offers kepub format for Kobo devices and files, they use their advanced Webkit-based renderer: https://standardebooks.org/help/how-to-use-our-ebooks#kobo-faq https://standardebooks.org/help/how-to-use-our-ebooks#kobo-f...
- loloquwowndueo 2y agoWhat did you do with purchased books you had in your kindle? Rebuy them? Just “let them go”? Thanks for the recommendation!
- wyclif 2y agoFortunately, I had them backed up to a cloud folder. I remember almost deciding not to go to the trouble to back them up, but isn't that how it always works with backups? The Kobo also works with epub.
- acabal 2y agoI read on an old Kobo, using Kepub files. Their Kepub renderer is quite good. I think Kindle's renderer hasn't changed significantly for many years, and it had always been pretty bad. I always say that Kindle seems to have been created by people who hate books. The best renderer around is iBooks on an iPad, which as far as I can tell uses an up-to-date Webkit.
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- bodantogat 2y agoIs there an API or downloadable catalog of the titles? Happy to feature them on meetnewbooks.com so more readers can find them.
- acabal 2y agoYes, we have complete feeds available for our Patrons: https://standardebooks.org/feeds https://standardebooks.org/feeds
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- sbarre 2y agoWhat's the point of including books that aren't public domain yet in your collections? It makes it hard to browse those collections to find actual books to read. The first 3 series I clicked on all said "not P.D." (which at first I didn't know what "P.D" meant - remember your audience does not have your level of familiarity with your context, perhaps a tooltip on that badge would help).. Then I see "this book will enter public domain in 2050".. I commend you for this project, it's really awesome work.. From a user's experience, it would be great to have a filter on your various lists that restricts only to books that are available, and excludes these books that are not yet in your collection.
- robin_reala 2y agoWhenever we add a collection, the books that are in that collection but not yet in PD in the US get placeholders. But a filter might not be a bad idea.
- acabal 2y agoIn addition to what Robin mentioned below, some of these placeholders are for books on our Wanted list. I also think it's useful to show readers that particular books are looking for volunteers to produce, and also to show that some books they might want are locked away by copyright for possibly decades. In that sense it's partly a political message.
- salviati 2y agoIt sounds like implementing the filter gp suggested would still send the political message though.
- frereubu 2y agoI love this. However, I couldn't find an alphabetical list of authors, which is the way I wanted to browse on my first visit. Instead my only option is to show 48 on a page and paginate through, which is tedious. I know there are author pages - e.g. https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/william-makepeace-thackeray https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/william-makepeace-thackera... - so I presume it's feasible. An author index would significantly increase my likelihood of understanding what's available and engaging with the content.
- acabal 2y agoWe don't have a list of authors yet, but that's a good idea to add!
- Kye 2y agoYou could reuse whatever process generates the sitemap: https://standardebooks.org/sitemap https://standardebooks.org/sitemap All the author pages come before any pages with books from those authors.
- homebrewer 2y agohttps://standardebooks.org/bulk-downloads/authors https://standardebooks.org/bulk-downloads/authors Links in the first column.
- frereubu 2y agoAnother question - in https://standardebooks.org/contribute/producing-an-ebook-step-by-step https://standardebooks.org/contribute/producing-an-ebook-ste... you talk about "modernising" spelling, e.g. changing "some one" to "someone". This may be against the implicit goal of making these accessible for a general reader, but I prefer to read what was originally written, and it feels like it crosses a line into editorialising rather than letting the original feel stand as-is. (Although of course these texts have already been "editorialised" by their original editors!) Totally your decision given the amount of effort that has clearly gone into this, but I'd be interested to read the rationale for that decision.
- acabal 2y agoThat's fine! Our editions didn't erase any of the other editions you can find online and in print. You're more than welcome to select any edition that fits your reading preferences.
- frereubu 2y agoApologies if that came across as at all critical. Genuinely interested in the rationale rather than it being a how-dare-you demand for you to explain yourself!
- acabal 2y agoSpelling varies widely across the eras our ebooks were published in. Therefore we attempt to standardize spelling to what a modern reader might be familiar with. We only make sound-alike changes, like to-morrow -> tomorrow. This is a common practice that editors and publishers have quietly engaged in for centuries. For example, today you are not reading Shakespeare in the way it was spelled in its first printing.
- cenamus 2y agoAnd you're for sure not speaking it like he would have
- greenie_beans 2y agoooo tempted to reprint faulkner as part of a small press, thanks for the idea
- fauria 2y agoRoughly speaking, how long does it take you to produce a single ebook?
- contact9879 2y agoit varies widely depending on the length and type of book and how much free time the volunteer has to devote to it Anywhere between 1 week for the simplest (straight narrative, not too much verse or endnotes) and ~1 year (thousands of endnotes, pages of verse, drama, in-line references to book titles, use of technical terms, etc)
- acabal 2y agoOnce you're very familiar with the process, you could get a draft of a basic prose novel ready for proofreading in a few hours. Then it has to be proofread and completed. Beginners, and people working on more advanced books, can take much, much, much longer.
- htunnicliff 2y agoI’d love to know more about the pattern of keeping each book in individual repos, rather than in a singular repo.
- remus 2y agoPresumably to keep the repo size reasonable. Say I want to make an ad hoc contribution to a book, if step 1 is "download this multi-gigabyte repo" then that's a fairly big hurdle.
- acabal 2y agoEach repo is a history of the ebook including editorial changes, typos fixes, and the like. Having a single repo containing thousands of ebooks and their histories would be pretty annoying to browse.
- jayanmn 2y agoI am from India. Could you add local UPI based donation option at some point? Not everyone has card here.
- mourner 2y agoWonderful project! One thing I wish the website would have is being able to find the right book to read out of this enormous list — e.g. showing / sorting by Goodreads ratings (which I realize you might not want to do), or at least having some kind of a "Featured" section with the most critically acclaimed / must read books of the project on one page.
- cxr 1y agoThere are around a dozen collections on the (not prominently featured) collections page[1] like Le Monde's 100 Best Books of the Century and Modern Library's 100 Best Novels, etc. 1. <https://standardebooks.org/collections https://standardebooks.org/collections>
- theyinwhy 2y agoGreat work! Gutenberg project books have always been a pain to read. Thank you for caring!
- agiacalone 2y agoBeen using Standard Ebooks for a while now, but wanted to drop by here and say how great this site is! It's replaced P.G. for me (for whatever is on this site, at least) and I like the much nicer formatting on the texts. It's great on both my physical Kindle and Apple Books on my iPhone.
- crorella 2y agoIn your opinion, what is the ebook reader you like the most ?
- sgustard 1y agoSteinbeck was the first name I searched for, so this was great to see even if his major works won't be available for some time. I do wonder how badly the Steinbeck or Faulkner estates are hurt by the sudden loss of royalties? Imagine working hard to write a book to make a living and then just under a hundred years it's taken away from you. Also, AI.
- HexPhantom 1y agoReally appreciate the work Standard Ebooks puts into making these texts not just available, but readable