- gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

FW: [gutvol-d] Fw: [gweekly] 15, 000th Project Gutenberg eBook Released
by John Hagerson 09 Jan '05

09 Jan '05

Steve Harris said: It also raises a difficult issue: If we are going to do a significant chunk of the public domain in a reasonably short period, it probably doesn't matter in what order we do the books. If we are only going to get to 50K over the next 5 years or to 100K over the next 10 years, we should probably give some thought to where we should put our efforts (e.g. what is the relative value of "The Yale Shakespeare" on top of the several versions of each play we already have?) We are all volunteers. You can lead volunteers by inspiring them; an effort to "herd" volunteers by dictating what they can and cannot do can easily cause them to scatter (or disappear). If you would care to share your grand vision, please do -- I could use a dose of inspiration today. Cloudy in Chicago, John Hagerson

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Re: [gutvol-d] Project Gutenberg Original Directory Structure
by Joshua Hutchinson 09 Jan '05

09 Jan '05

----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Hart" <hart(a)pglaf.org> > > > On Thu, 6 Jan 2005, Joshua Hutchinson wrote: > > > No disrespect, but ... > > > > That seems like a collosal waste of time. > > It's not your time, or much of our time, it is the time of voluneers who > have asked to do this project, and there have been multiple requests. > I agree. However, Jared was basically asking for comment on the idea, which I provided. Personally, I see it as effort that would be better spent elsewhere. I am the last person to dictate how a volunteer should spend his/her time, though (since I'm sure plenty of people see TEI as a waste of time as well, which is my pet project). I apologize, Jared, if I sounded like I was trying to stop you from working on this. I was simply stating my opinion of the project. Josh

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no flame. suggestion, comments, apology
by Gutenberg9443＠aol.com 09 Jan '05

09 Jan '05

First-- As everybody seeks to get copyright laws revised, I have a suggestion that will warm the heart (and the cooking fire) of every writer on earth. I recommend that regardless of how long a period of time a copyright extends, the first year that a publisher does not pay the writer at least $2000 in that year, the book should be considered effectively out of print, and the copyright should automatically revert to the writer. During all those years that the publisher is sitting on a book it's not making an effort to distribute, it's often the case that the writer could do other things with that book, even--in some cases--turn it over to PGLAF. Someone asked me what my longest-surviving book has been. It is SCENE OF THE CRIME, from Writer's Digest Books, and it has been in print since 1992. The first printing sold out before the official release date, because of the Writer's Digest Book Club. After that, it remained viable, though the entire rest of the series it was part of died, as a result of three unexpected events: (1) A lot of police officers bought it on the grounds that it was more thorough and less boring than their official police science books; (2) The O. J. Simpson trial showed a lot of people what happens when a crime scene is worked by total idiots, and I was asked to comment on that fact on nationwide television; and (3) the CSI shows have been a success. My most recent royalty check, though, was pretty small, and I doubt it will make it through another year. It needs to be thoroughly revised and I'm not up to doing the work, and WD people don't want it revised anyway. They prefer to kill it. It has earned me a total of about $18,000. I spent an entire calendar year working on it. Despite the fact that crime scene work had been my job for years, I was determined to be totally correct and up-to-date with my research. At times I had as many as 75 library and ILL books in my office; as I also slept in my office at that time, things got pretty crowded. The last year I worked for the telephone company I earned $30,000. Admittedly I would far rather write a good book than sell telephone systems to businesses, but since when did it become improper for people to have a job that they like rather than a job that they don't like? I really loved my police work. I'd wake up in the morning and think, "Oh, darn, I can't go to work today." I was one of the best fingerprint examiners on earth. I could do stuff the FBI couldn't do. I was called in to help FBI agents, Secret Service agents, postal inspectors, Marine Corps CID, and various small-town police agencies. It gave me an incredible feeling of power when I had just made a nonsuspect ident--that is, identified a criminal by no clue at all except fingerprints made in a place only the criminal could have made them, by cold-searching the prints through all the fingerprint cards we had--but there's no way on God's green earth that I could do that work now. I also cannot possibly sell telephone systems to businesses, at which I was marginal at best, or teach students to learn how to write, at which I was fair to middling competent. So I'm back where I started when I was seven years old. I can write. I can edit. I can wash the dishes if I can stay out of bed long enough to do it. I apologize for recent outbursts on my part. I hope at least some of you can understand why they have occurred. Now I am going to crawl back into the woodwork and resume anonymity. Anne

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Re: [gutvol-d] Is this a Project Gutenberg violation?
by JBuck814366460＠aol.com 09 Jan '05

09 Jan '05

I usually prefer either .txt or .html myself, LOL. PDF is also good (the new version coming out soon will offer Linux support, so I have heard. I run Red Hat Linux 9 on my machine in a dual-boot environment (alongside Wincrap XP) and will shortly upgrade RH9 to Fedora Core 3 once I finish downloading and burning the ISOs to CD-R next week. I LOVE my new DSL connection, it's very handy ;) Jared

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Re: [gutvol-d] Is this a Project Gutenberg violation?
by Aaron Cannon 09 Jan '05

09 Jan '05

Sorry I never got your discs to you. I found your original message, but I'm not sure what happened and why you didn't get your discs. If you would like me to send you a large quantity of discs, please e-mail me off list and let me know how many of each and which address to send them to. Thanks. Sincerely Aaron Cannon At 10:15 PM 1/8/2005, you wrote: >>PG offers CDs AND DVDs of its etext collections for FREE without you >>needing to pay a cent. This company, IMHO, is just trying to rip people >>off by making them pay for something you can get free of charge from PG >>just by asking. > > I've actually asked PG several times (via email) for copies of > the DVD so I can hand them out at my LUG[1] (I'm the president). It's > been a few months, and I haven't heard a single peep or reply to those > emails yet. > > That's partly why I'm mirroring it on my own here now. > > >David A. Desrosiers >desrod(a)gnu-designs.com >http://gnu-designs.com > > >_______________________________________________ >gutvol-d mailing list >gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org >http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > > >!DSPAM:41e0ae6489551659916029! >_______________________________________________ >gutvol-d mailing list >gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org >http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d -- E-mail: cannona(a)fireantproductions.com Skype: cannona MSN Messenger: cannona(a)hotmail.com (Do not send E-mail to the hotmail address.)

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in case you're interested . . . .OT but not totally irrelevant
by Gutenberg9443＠aol.com 09 Jan '05

09 Jan '05

I'm starting an e-publishing company. The only thing it will use any time soon from PG is one book which I put on PG myself, stating that it was copyrighted but that I was giving PG a permanent non-exclusive loan of the copyright, provided that nobody used it for profit. That last clause didn't work till the water got hot--I found it a few weeks later on somebody's for-profit site, with my copyright notice still on it. I spent about six months on that book and have yet to receive a penny for it, which in that case is okay because I wasn't doing it for profit. Well, I take that "not a penny" back sort of, because the guy who had it on his for-profit site agreed to give me a different book he had there in return for the use of my copyrighted book. He couldn't have asked the author of the other book if that was okay due to the fact that the author of the other book is dead, though not long enough for his book to be public domain unless the first copyright wasn't renewed. If I ever chance to use anything else from PG, I will reedit it and probably rewrite it somewhat; and it will be at least a hundred years old and therefore not subject to even the most insane copyright laws. I have taken that Amazon thing out of the Webpage about six times but it comes right back without permission. That ticks me off considerably because the only things I sell through Amazon are used treebooks (that I wrote, and they aren't really used at all but I have to sell them as such), and I don't have any even posted there at the moment. At least when I'm selling my own books through my own publishing company I can set the price myself, which is somewhat less than the company that originally published them set. If the author had any say-so on the price of the book, nobody would ever have expected anybody to pay $30 for something that came out of my head. They would have sold a lot better if the price had been a lot more reasonable, but authors have no say-so whatever on jacket design, price, release date, sneaky and usually artless rewriting behind the author's back, and so on and so forth. Also, authors very rarely get much over 10% of the selling price (not the marked price). Besides my own books, I have six-and-a-half good fantasy novels from a dead friend (signed on that with her literary executor last week, and have to finish writing the last book), two collections of literary short stories coming in when they're finished, a grammar reference book to be written by the best grammarian I have ever met, and so forth--I've asked my husband to write a book about how value is created but he doesn't have time right now and I don't want one by anyone who is not in the Ludwig von Mises camp of economy--last time I checked I'm committed to 50 books, about a third of which I have to complete, or write, or rewrite myself besides editing. So that'll run to at least two years, maybe three, combined with time used for other for-pay work I'm doing and need not discuss. And by the way, I DO discuss jacket design, price, and release date with my authors, and I don't rewrite without permission from the author or his/her estate unless the book is over a hundred years old. I will NEVER treat any of my writers the way my publishers treated me. If you wish to comment, send to the address given in the Website. It's at _Live Oak House_ (http://hometown.aol.co.uk/utahliveoak/myhomepage/business.html) , also known as _http://hometown.aol.co.uk/utahliveoak/myhomepage/business.html_ (http://hometown.aol.co.uk/utahliveoak/myhomepage/business.html) . I'd have a better Website if I could afford it, but I can't, and this is the best I can get. I have quit reading _gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org_ (mailto:gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org) except for Michael's newsletters. If you wish to tell me how terribly unreasonable I am for expecting to be paid for my work (exclusive of volunteer and pro bono work, which I prefer NOT to be paid for), please go where it doesn't snow and leave me the h*** alone. I have yet to meet a landlord who quit charging his tenants rent as soon as he had paid for the construction costs of his rental property, or who then cut the rent back to only enough to cover maintenance and taxes. Oil well owners get a "depletion allowance" in their taxes because eventually the wells will run out of oil. The possibility of authors running out of brain-power is not considered. My grammarian is in the early stages of Alzheimer's and she's going to be writing her book as fast as she can while she can still think. In the highly unlikely event that any of you have something you want published for profit and lack the contacts to do it yourself, submit it to me in the usual fashion, and tell me you're part of PGLAF and I'll have a look at it. I just don't want to be barraged by manuscripts that should have been used for kitty litter, which happened some years ago when we were trying to do an e-publishing company. Anne Husband, seeing flock of birds seated side by side on electric wire: "Look, even the birds have gone online."

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Re: [gutvol-d] Is this a Project Gutenberg violation?
by JBuck814366460＠aol.com 09 Jan '05

09 Jan '05

I got a PG DVD myself here at home :) sometimes it just takes a little while, Aaron Cannon is a little busy sometimes. If you haven't gotten the DVD yet, email him and let him know the situation, he'll get you a copy :) You also might want to appraise Mike Hart of the situation, he can probably get ahold of Aaron and see to it that you get your DVD. Jared

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Re: [gutvol-d] Is this a Project Gutenberg violation?
by JBuck814366460＠aol.com 09 Jan '05

09 Jan '05

Acrobat's ver. 7.0 should be out in a few months, will have new features (I'm not entirely up to spec on what's new, but I read it will have enhanced Linux support). New ver. of Reader will come with that too. Jared

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Re: [gutvol-d] Is this a Project Gutenberg violation?
by JBuck814366460＠aol.com 09 Jan '05

09 Jan '05

You bet it is - these ebooks cannot be redistirbuted unless the FULL header is included somewhere in the etext, either at the beginning of it or at the end. At least, that is what I gather from having read through the header many times. PG offers CDs AND DVDs of its etext collections for FREE without you needing to pay a cent. This company, IMHO, is just trying to rip people off by making them pay for something you can get free of charge from PG just by asking. Jared

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Re: [gutvol-d] Is this a Project Gutenberg violation?
by JBuck814366460＠aol.com 09 Jan '05

09 Jan '05

I should also mention that you can convert etexts to .lit format yourself with software on the net or from microsoft, and with pretty much either free or minimal cost to yourself. Not all PG etexts are in .lit format, but if you want to submit a copy of the etext in .lit format to be uploaded to the PG servers, anyone is welcome to do that, etexts in just about ANY computer-readable format are welcome :) Jared

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