On Wed, 14 Dec 2005 Bowerbird@aol.com wrote:
robert said:
AFAIK, we don't simply repackage existing text-only copies available on the web.
because i would think that someone at project gutenberg would be quite happy to "repackage" offered .txt books...
Interesting conversation. Yes, there certainly are texts that are "harvested" from other sites in plain text, or html, etc. format and then proofed and reformatted for PG. I know this as most of the texts I have contributed to PG have been of this type. Altogether in time and effort, it takes less than creating a new ebook from scratch. For more information about this process see: "I've found an eligible text elsewhere on the Net, but it's not in the PG archives. Can I just submit it to PG?" http://www.gutenberg.org/faq/V-62 As Josh said: "The hard part is making sure it is well proofed and to our formatting standards and that it is clearable by our standards." I have access to a decent-sized university library, so I am able to get clearances for many titles which might otherwise be quite difficult to track down. Currently I have as an "in process" a couple lesser-known shorter works by the French-Canadian Laure Conan. These are being adapted from a site that has a collection of about 20-30 French-Canadian texts. As for bb's comment that: "i would think that someone at project gutenberg would be quite happy to "repackage" offered .txt books." that is not quite accurate. I have an ever increasing list of web sites with full texts of books that could be cleared for PG, but nothing like the time and enthusiasm that would be needed to work through them. (which does need to be done by someone familiar with PG formatting conventions) Doing picky reformatting and proofing of this type is not as "glamorous" as the distributed proofing process, and understandably will not attract as many people. Most recently on this topic, I received an email saying this: "I have been making Mary E. Wilkins (Freeman) stories available on my website, and have completed proof-reading her novels. At one point, you had an interest in making them available on Project Gutenberg. I am still amenable to the thought." http://home.comcast.net/~jkaylin/jeff/Book/Book.htm Although it may take quite a while before I am able to get around to it... Anyone else interested in this? Andrew