gardner said:
>   So there's two more random data points in BB's column.

thanks, gardner.  but there's no need to be "random".

the big sites using p.g. e-books are very easy to find,
because they are... um... big.

the first, and foremost, of course, was "black mask".
david moynihan had the scripts down to a science,
and even offered them to p.g. at one point in time,
an offer that was declined, for some stupid reason
that was not _just_ stupid, but asininely ridiculous.
(and no, i don't even know what that reason was.)

next up is "manybooks".  matthew's converters are
not nearly as good as david's, but he seems to have
many loyal users who pick up their books from him,
probably because he's always been very good about
supporting the widest possible array of machinery...

both of these providers have been using books from
p.g. going back for many years, so the fact that they
were using the plain-text versions might be due to
their history...  that is, they might just be in a rut...

but the newest big provider on the block nowadays
is "feedbooks".  and as far as i can tell, hadrien also
uses the plain-text version as his "starter" version...
makes sense, since he stores the text in a database,
so it does no good to have somebody else's markup.

the number of files being download from these sites
these days -- thanks to the kindle/iphone/ipad trio --
is downright _stunning_.  hadrien at feedbooks says
he's running at about 75,000 downloads every _day_,
with 2.5 million in march.  several individual books
have over 10k downloads, some 20k, and one 30k...

***

dakretz said:
>   Does anyone know of any epublisher other than PG
>   that *does* distribute the html we provide?

well, in a way.  apple grabs the .epubs from here.
if i'm not mistaken, marcello uses the .html file,
if one exists.  but if not, he uses the plain-text...
i'm quite sure the .epub files are full of ugliness.

and mike cook and his "epubbooks" site might use
the .html file as his "starter", you'd have to ask him.
he hasn't done books "en masse", though, and thus
hasn't had to face the problems from inconsistencies.

-bowerbird