Many of PG's very old etexts (which #76 certainly qualifies as) have considerable legalese at both the front and the back. Etexts since about #4000-#5000 have most of it at the back, with only the book's basic info at the front. Old etexts that get cleaned up and reposted have their old legalese removed and replaced with the current material. Re #76 - you must be looking at a very old version of it. The current version, reposted in 2006, has only the book's basic info at the front and all the legalese at the back. Al ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jim Adcock" <jimad@msn.com> To: "'Michael S. Hart'" <hart@pglaf.org>; "'Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion'" <gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org> Sent: Wednesday, November 18, 2009 3:42 PM Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@! Re: Re: Real Competition to PG
1. The more people PG eBooks get to, the more successful we are. Period! If our efforts are multiplied by those of Amazon, Sony, et. al. then a whole world should be better off for it. Personally, I would have the effort be one of cooperation, thanks, and reinvestment.
Not disagreeing with anything you said, but, in practice many people with E-book readers find at least the amount of some of the PG legalese at the start of some PG E-books to be off-putting -- given that when reading on E-books the legalese can run about a dozen pages. Now on some of EPUBs and MOBIs that PG distributes the bulk of the legalese is moved to the back of the book, but in other cases it's in the front. Suggest if you want greater acceptance of PG books by the E-reader crowd, PG would be better off moving the bulk of the legalese to the rear of the E-books. Further, an naïve reader who doesn't really know or understand PG can be made very nervous about the PG legalese, even if only to be afraid to share E-books with friends -- which I think is not the intent of the legalese.
For example, see Huck Finn #76 where I just counted the pages of legalese at the start of the book when read in MOBI format and it came to literally a dozen pages. Also, the legalese tends to come out not even formatted correctly, which also doesn't help first impressions.
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