- gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

Is PG interested in hand-crafted epubs?
by Robert Gibbins 06 Jan '11

06 Jan '11

About a year ago, I bought myself a Sony Reader, downloaded some ebooks in epub format from gutenberg.org, and settled down to enjoy reading them. And I have enjoyed them; there's no doubt that most of the epubs ARE readable enough if your basic interest is to enjoy the prose in the book. And this way I've been able to re-read, for example some of the more obscure novels of Anthony Trollope, like 'The Belton Estate' and 'Ayala's Angel' which are not easily obtainable by any other means. However, as I've read I've gradually noticed more and more rough edges to the epubs which I've found more and more irritating. So, being a retired software engineer, I eventually googled the epub formats, bought the O'Reilly books on HTML and CSS and started modifying my epubs to make them work better on my Reader (which at some point was upgraded from a PRS-600 to a PRS-650). I won't at this point bore you with the details of the modifications I've made, save to say that: - in most cases it involved simplifying, for example breaking large complex pages, which the machine can't satisfactorily handle, into a number of smaller simpler ones and (occasionally) removing html which does layout rather than declaring the document's structure, etc. - it appears to me that what needs to be done is not technically demanding, but mostly involves a human making judgements on what the original book structure was. And the original prose in the book usually makes this pretty obvious to a human. Having done about half a dozen epubs this way, basically for my own purposes, I feel I should offer them to Project Gutenberg to distribute to other readers who might enjoy them. (Also I now feel I have the bones of a simple technique which could probably be applied to many more of Gutenberg's precious volumes with relatively little expenditure of effort per volume. No doubt what I've done needs to be refined, but if other people were interested it might be possible to start a sort of 'distributed epubmakers' process which could improve the readability of the epub files.) So the question I would like to ask PG is 'Is PG interested in adding hand-crafted epubs to its download pages?'. There don't appear to be any at present. Is this the right forum to raise this question? If not, could someone suggest where else I might raise it? I thought about Distributed Proofreaders, but they seem to be focused on producing new ebooks, whereas most of the books I want to read are already in the Gutenberg archive, just not that readable on an e-reader. Bob Gibbins

3 2

Re: Death by Irony: How Librarians Killed the Academic Library
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 06 Jan '11

06 Jan '11

jon richfield said: > Well, the librarians were by no means the only ones. <sigh> of course you're right. > From the mid-twentieth century on, > the major advances in computing were > missed. misread, mis-evaluated, > mis-accommodated, and mis-exploited. ain't that the truth... > most applications to major IT and comms advances > are analogous to using the internal combustion engine > to brandish the buggy whip. yep... > The social dynamics of innovation are fascinating > in their wasteful teleological inadequacy, > and in their paradoxical Darwinian effectiveness, which > rapidly is dissipated in the triviality of their application. so many places in society, we've missed the big picture... and meanwhile, the google boys made billions and billions off a simple _search_ system. and zuckerberg is laughing his way to the youngest billionaire bank for "reinventing" the college yearbook... meanwhile, our world falls apart... it's a shame. but that's precisely why i take special aim at the librarians... of _all_ the professions, it was the one that was uniquely qualified to see the magic of "unlimited distribution", and uniquely charged with getting information out to the public. they should have been the superheroes that saved the masses from our own shortsighted perspectives. they really should've. but time after time, and time again, they failed in their mission. they should have taken the lead on digitizing our cultural assets. but they were nowhere to be seen, absolutely nowhere to be seen. and they said nothing. everything was as quiet as... well, a library. heck, they couldn't even digitize their own _card_catalogs_ correctly. they gave millions and millions -- literally millions and millions -- of dollars to outside vendors, and didn't even have the intelligence to write performance guarantees into the contracts, so when those vendors turned over systems that didn't work, we were out of luck... and when i say those systems "didn't work", i don't mean that they didn't give optimal results, or even good results. _they_didn't_run._ and the timid, mousy librarians replied with an "oh, that's too bad." and then, after many more millions, when they finally got systems that _did_ run, they were so overjoyed that they forget to examine whether these systems gave good results, let alone _optimal_ ones. it ends up that those systems were crap, and the users knew it, but the librarians were so frustrated with their failure up to that point they tried to paper over the problems and get users to ignore them. meanwhile, those same users _were_ getting results they could use at home, on their personal computers, from google. idiot librarians. -bowerbird

1 0

Death by Irony: How Librarians Killed the Academic Library
by Michael S. Hart 06 Jan '11

06 Jan '11

Interesting essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education's "Commentary" section. Obviously meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but it still resonates. The intro paragraph reads: "The academic library has died. Despite early diagnosis, audacious denial in the face of its increasingly severe symptoms led to its deterioration and demise. The academic library died alone, largely neglected and forgotten by a world that once revered it as the heart of the university. On its deathbed, it could be heard mumbling curses against Google and something about a bygone library guru named Ranganathan." Full text at: http://bit.ly/hzuTX1

3 3

Re: Is PG interested in hand-crafted epubs?
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 05 Jan '11

05 Jan '11

i doubt it will take the project gutenberg c.e.o. "a few weeks" to get back to you on this, bob... but in case it does, you're welcome to munch on my response here, coming from someone who has absolutely no official status with project gutenberg. *** project gutenberg doesn't like hand-crafted files... of _any_ type. because it's usually too difficult to maintain them. (for instance, to correct any typos that're reported.) that's a general stance. nothing personal. sorry. *** more to the specific point, however, the problems that you've noticed have been seen by many people, and there's been growing realization that the .epubs need to be improved. so recently an effort has been started to put into place a workflow to achieve that... for p.g., this will involve an improved .epub converter, plus a contemplated shift to "restructured text" (r.s.t.) as a "master" format that can generate a "better" .epub. (where "better" often means "dumbed down to the pale imitation that still challenges many e-book-machines". i'm not familiar with all of the sony-reader models, but it would seem that yours is one of those primitive ones.) meanwhile, over at distributed proofreaders... d.p. has likewise started related initiatives, three of 'em. one is aimed at installing r.s.t. within the d.p. workflow. another wants to make slight changes to the "traditional" workflow to make it more amenable to better .epub files. and the third is looking at using .html files as the "base" from which an .epub can be converted. as you'd imagine, there could be quite a bit of overlap in these approaches, but the efforts are still being headed by different people. so, to boil things down... in terms of your handcrafted .epub files, the response is likely to be "thanks, but no thanks, thank you very much." however, the wisdom you have gained is very important, and might be very useful over at distributed proofreaders. (it won't be useful here at p.g. proper, because marcello, the guy who's in charge here, already knows _everything_.) so i'd suggest that you go over to d.p. and sign up so you can read their forums, and explore the 3 different threads where the separate approaches are being discussed (a bit). after you've done that, it will probably be apparent to you where you should offer the expertise that you have gained. a word of advice on the people at distributed proofreaders: they are like abused animals, so if you approach them with any kind of self-confidence, they will lurch out and bite you, but if you approach with an extremely deferential attitude, they will be more than happy to welcome you very warmly... http://www.pgdp.net http://www.pgdp.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=45852 http://www.pgdp.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=45853 http://www.pgdp.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=45856 http://www.pgdp.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=45866 http://www.pgdp.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=45548 http://www.pgdp.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=45562 -bowerbird

1 0

[gutcat] MARC records for PG texts in Colorado (fwd)
by Andrew Sly 05 Jan '11

05 Jan '11

Here is a message I've copied from the sparsely populated gutcat list. --------------------------- Today I ran across a blog post about a very interesting undertaking I had not heard about before. Some Colorado libraries have prepared a a program they call "E-discover the Classics." It has a set of complete MARC records for a small subset of frequently downloaded PG books which can be added to each library's main catalog. The the records themselves then direct a user to the Project Gutenberg website to download a book in a format of their choice. What makes this notable is the phrase "complete MARC records". Some people before have had a pipe-dream of automatically converting the whole PG catalog to MARC format. Reading this article, and the links given in it which provide more detail, show how unrealistic that idea is. http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/home/888596-264/colorado_library_consortiu… --Andrew

1 0

Re: Death by Irony: How Librarians Killed the Academic Library
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 05 Jan '11

05 Jan '11

librarians were their own worst enemies... it's so easy to cast the blame elsewhere, but the truth is they shot themselves in the foot, then the leg, then the torso, then the heart... -bowerbird

3 2

happy new year!
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 02 Jan '11

02 Jan '11

happy new year! 2011 is gonna be interesting... in retrospect, 2010 was a pivotal year for e-books... the contrast is about as stark as it could possibly be... *** here, on the one hand, we have the publishing industry. for them, the most significant development in e-books during 2010 was their enforcement of the "agency model". daunted by the deep-discounting offered by amazon.com, corporate publishers got apple to go with "agency pricing" -- where the retail price for a book is set by the publisher, and the retailer simply collects a 30% fee as its payment -- and 5 of the new york "big6" forced amazon to play along... (the holdout, random house, gets to enjoy the advantage of receiving payment based on its fictitious "list price" while it benefits from the big sales enabled by amazon's discounts, so their executives are now laughing all the way to the bank.) *** and, on the other hand, we have the "independent authors"... amazon extended the 70% "royalty" to independent authors, provided they priced their e-books between $2.99 and $9.99, and 2010 proved to be the year that the revolution happened. i've been waiting for authors to break out for _decades_ now, tirelessly seeking signs of life from that corner of the universe, and 2010 was when it happened. ground central for the broadcasts was the blog of j.k. konrath. konrath writes thrillers, and has had success as a midlist author. he'd been putting his books on his site -- as free e-books -- but some kindle owners asked him to post 'em on amazon too. amazon won't let an individual author post e-books for free, so he charged $.99 each, but the kindle people were happy to pay, just for the convenience of being able to download them easily. much to his surprise, konrath started making some real money. in december of 2009, he made $1,650. not a ton of money, no, but it was something. and it went up in january, because of all the people who'd received kindles as presents over the holidays. and it continued to mount as konrath put more of his backlist in the kindle store, and published a raft of new books for the kindle. so konrath blogged about it, and other authors heard his tune. month after month in 2010, konrath's amazon sales increased. and when amazon raised its rate to the 70%, his profit flew up. and those other authors, influenced by him, also started to get some substantial sales of their books, also increasing monthly, and their profit also stepped up significantly with the 70% rate. by the end of the year, the noise had turned into a groundswell. in december of 2010, konrath made $24,000. in just a month. all in all, his take for the year was about $200,000 -- a bundle. and it was not unheard of for other authors to match his sales. indeed, the occasional author made even more... one of the most extreme of these outliers was amanda hocking. amanda hocking was never involved in the publishing industry... before april 15th of this year, she'd never sold a book in her life. but she put some books she'd written on amazon and elsewhere, and she experienced a dizzying sales climb in them over the year, and this past _month_, she sold just over 100,000 copies of them. > http://amandahocking.blogspot.com/2010/12/pics-or-it-didnt-happen.html that's a lot of profit for a kid who had an up-front cost of zero. and you can bet there are a truckload of authors who noticed... the corporate publishing companies will be solvent a long time. they are tucked into corporate parents with very deep pockets, and they are sitting on a goldmine of intellectual property that will continue to provide them with a cashflow for many decades. having said all of that, however, the developments of this past year have made it abundantly clear that -- as far as being a _necessary_ ingredient in the breaking of new authors _or_ the maintenance of midlist writers -- corporate publishers have been disintermediated. there's no way to put this genie back in the bottle... and with the breakdown of borders becoming ever more imminent, those same publishers are having problems on the retail end as well. it's not a good time to be taking a close look at their balance-sheets. *** so, while the corporate publishing industry tried its darndest to hang on to a dying business model during 2010, even at the cost of pricing e-books outside the comfort-range of the customers, independent authors stepped into the void and took advantage... 2010 was an earthquake. the book world will never be the same. -bowerbird p.s. one humorous aspect of this is that some people have started to demand "credit" because they "predicted' that this would happen a few years back. and thus i take great delight informing them that michael hart invented e-books 40 years ago, so they can stand in line.

1 0

Public Domain Day 2011
by Wallace J.McLean 01 Jan '11

01 Jan '11

http://publicdomain.xanga.com/738301293/public-domain-day-2011/

1 0

Re: restructured-text -- the good, the bad, and the ugly
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 31 Dec '10

31 Dec '10

jim said: > Certainly creating an automated tool > to do a good job on 100% of all books > IS an "impossible" task. i'm so sick and tired of the righteous repetition of this... haven't any of you heard of "successive approximation"? i suggest we might introduce some new thinking in 2011. -bowerbird

1 0

restructured-text -- the good, the bad, and the ugly
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 31 Dec '10

31 Dec '10

i don't get over to the d.p. forums very often these days, so i didn't realize they started rolling out their notice on the shift to restructured-text last saturday, december 11th. i also didn't know this initiative was so far along, in that two r.s.t. e-books are already mounted (december 16th): > http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34654 > http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34605 here's my r.s.t. summary: the good, the bad, and the ugly. *** _restructured-text_at_project_gutenberg_ _the_good_ project gutenberg is officially using a light-markup format! _the_bad_ the implementation uptake at d.p. will likely be _very_slow_... _the_ugly_ this change proves that it is now marcello making p.g. policy. *** i'll elaborate on this summary in the coming days... in the meantime... as you can imagine, over the many years, i have been an advocate of light-markup all over cyberspace, so now i can go out and tell the world that project gutenberg has finally endorsed my position and is using light-markup! of course, this leaves considerable egg on the faces of people like walter, who -- just last december 26th -- posted that i was a "hopeless fool" and that my proposals for light-markup were "fundamentally impossible". looks like you were wrong, walter. way wrong. way way wrong. even marcello has given it all up. -bowerbird

9 14