With the obvious success and popularity of the Reader Book Uploads section, it seemed appropriate to provide a place for requests. If you have that one favorite book with potentially broad appeal that you would love to see nicely formatted, you might just catch the eye of one of the generous folks doing this very cool work, and who happen to love the same public domain book you do.

Let me point out the obvious - this thread may never actually catch the eye of anyone. Your request will probably be ignored!

Remember that those who do this kind of work are doing it as a labor of love, and we are very fortunate that they so generously share the fruits of their labor. We can't expect people to spend this kind of time on random books on a whim. But you never know...

To start things off, here's one book that would be really nice to have with functional links to the footnotes...

Pilgrims Progress by John Bunyan.

At one point, it was one of the most widely read books in history, and according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pilgrim's_Progress), "this work is regarded as one of the greatest classics of literature". While it generally appeals primarily to Christian readers because it's an allegory of the Christian life, it's the kind of tale that could have wide interest due to its previous popularity and readers' general desire to expand their exposure to all kinds of famous literature.

Alex - could you make this thread "Sticky"? I think it could be of general interest and use, and Bob is absolutely right about the need for a "Requests" thread.

... To start things off, here's one book that would be really nice to have with functional links to the footnotes...

Pilgrims Progress by John Bunyan. The basic book of Pilgram's Progress will be in Volume XV (15) of the Harvard Classics series I am working on. While the text that I acquired has numbered paragraphs and inserts for the Bible references in the text, it does not have the footnotes that you seek.

Remember that there were two Pilgram's Progress books written by Bunyan -- Part One and Part Two. What is included in the Harvard Classics series is only Part One.

Okay, this thread is for begging. So I'm trying again.

Yes, it’s a nice idea to just collect all the perfectly formatted books here, but I think there are much more rtf-files out there which would be quite nice for many of us. I don’t know if this suggestion would cause too much trouble, but why not open another page where all those files are uploaded which are quite nice and completely satisfying for many readers? So there could be this page for “perfect” books and the other one for “okay” or “nice” books and here I come back to the beginning, I really think there are much more “nice” books ready to be uploaded than “perfect” books.

Please have a look, who has contributed so far? Yes, all the formatting so far was (more or less) done by Harry and I am grateful for that. But where are all the other contributors? I guess, most of us don't undergo the trouble creating lrf-files, but are just fine with legible RTFs and nicely arranged paragraph endings.

Thanks a lot.
Friedhelm

I don't know if this has already been requested, but I would suggest the illustrated
Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) (http://www.forgottenfutures.com/game/boat/boat.htm). It's a classic. From Wikipedia:
Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), published in 1889, is a humorous account by Jerome K. Jerome of a boating holiday on the Thames between Kingston and Oxford.

The book was intended initially to be a serious travel guide, with accounts of local history of places along the route, but the humorous elements eventually took over, to the point where the serious and somewhat sentimental passages now seem like an unnecessary distraction to the essentially comic novel. One of the most praised things about Three Men in a Boat is how undated it appears to modern readers. The jokes seem fresh and witty even today.

Give it time friendly, give it time. These are the seed days. Now the works that have been posted will get others interested in doing the same. In time more and more people will post their LRF formatted books and most will forget that at the start there were very few posting.

The Sony Reader has been out for about six months. Think how far we have come in that six months. There are cases, lights, stands, development tools in the works, converters, and the start of a nicely formatted set of free books.

We will also probably gain contributers if/when we can provide a tutorial in the wiki with some guidelines and at least one simple way to prepare e-books in an "acceptible" manner.

I'm guessing some people who might want to contribute are probably a bit intimidated at the learning curve, and the information is still pretty scattered at the moment, so it takes a bit of research and persistence.

Would it be helpful if I were to write a reasonably detailed description of how I prepare my books? I'd be happy to do so if it would be of interest or help to others!

Speaking just for myself, that would be really helpful, Harry. I've found your comments really helpful, but they're scattered all over different threads. I'm in the midst of a project that involves the use of links. Thanks to your instructions, I was able to negotiate that successfully, but though I'd managed the setting that allowed user page breaks, I couldn't figure out for a while how to actually make that happen. Finally, sitting in a chair away from the computer, I tried to imagine how you could possibly do that and did eventually find the button that created those breaks. Probably that information is buried in some thread, but as far as I know, you never covered it in any of your tutorials. :happy2: I mention that to encourage you not to take anything for granted while working up your instructions.

Another thing that would be helpful from the group is information about whether or not we're going to try to have consistency in the preparations. Same font size, for example? Or name of author last name first, or the other way around which is the way books were initially loaded on the Sony.

Jim

I think that would be outstanding. Even in the remote chance that nobody uses it to contribute right away, new people wandering in will most definitely make use of it eventually.

And I think I'd be likely to personally use the info when I want to do more than simple rtf formatting on a book. In a way, it can be looked at now as a "core competency" for sophisticated Sony Reader owners!

I've been pulling together the stuff this week in my spare time between reading Harry's new posts and my own work. I should have something up as a start for Book Designer this weekend. There will be holes in it and Harry's mention will fit great in one of them. I have just spent the past few minutes/hours trying to format drop caps with the first letter as a graphic and failed. I leave the task to others.

I need to finish the basic Book Designer material before I move on to the Harvard Classics that all two of you are waiting for. :D

And I'm forgetting my manners: Thanks, Harry, for sharing all you've learned about this program. I wouldn't have had the courage to try BD at all but for your posts, much less tackle something as seemingly complex as a project requiring links. :)

Jim

I've been pulling together the stuff this week in my spare time between reading Harry's new posts and my own work. I should have something up as a start for Book Designer this weekend. There will be holes in it and Harry's mention will fit great in one of them. I have just spent the past few minutes/hours trying to format drop caps with the first letter as a graphic and failed. I leave the task to others.

I need to finish the basic Book Designer material before I move on to the Harvard Classics that all two of you are waiting for. :DYay!!!! :happy2:

I've created a new, sticky, "Book Creation Tutorials" thread and posted my initial attempt at a reasonably detailed tutorial into it. Comments and suggestions for improvement are, of course, very welcome!

Just wanted to say thank you for all your great information. I came across this thread after finding out about the Sony Reader. Thanks to you all I was able to decide to jump in and get it. I'm overseas so am waiting for it to get to the main office and be eventually handcarried over here. In the meantime you have kept me reading this forum over and over. I've downloaded many of the recommended utilities and am really enjoying getting to know Book Designer.

Absolutely thanks to all of your efforts, I've been able to get a few things working and am looking forward to trying it on the reader when it finally arrives.

Thank you to all of you out in the forefront, spending hours on learning the machine and developing the tools for the rest of us.

P.S. You can also count me as interested in the Classics set. So, now its three...

I'm eagerly awaiting the results of other peoples' book development. I'm starting to feel in a distinct minority here :grin:.

Heh, more a distinguished minority. :toff:

... or pathbreaking leader and hero! :sunny:

Yeah! "Trailblazer" -- that's got a nice ring to it. :yes:

I'd like to do some as well, but I am on a Mac (non-Intel) and I can't get BD to work in Virtual PC.

I use a great little program called Libriate that makes LRF's for the Mac, but it doesn't have the option to make table of contents. I can make a cover (being a graphic designer, it's my fav part of the process) and nicely formatted text, but little else. Works great for me personally but I know others like the working TOC. Sorry!! :(

Or how important is the table of contents to people? I can try and post some stuff but it won't have the flair of Harry's excellent books...

For most of what I read a TOC is a nice but not required feature. If it is something like Harry's massive Sherlock Holmes Omnibus then it is critical. For my recent post of the first Zorro book it is not needed. If you are posting single books it is a lot like distance signs on a road, it just allows you to know where you are along the path (and the page count at the bottom of the screen also does that.)

For me, please post them. I am sure that the cover art will more than make up for any (very) minor problem that a lack of a TOC may cause.

Thanks for the feedback. I actually never use the TOC either, but I agree that it's very useful for the bigger books and collections. I was just planning on posting individual books that I have been enjoying, so hopefully the TOC won't be missed. I'll add a disclaimer when I post so people will be aware...

My 2¢: I can see the usefulness of a TOC for a collection or something complicated, but for most novels, I don't see much point -- I'm going to start at the front and go to the end, and knowing what pages the chapters start on is mostly irrelevant to me until I get to them. :shrug:

Of course that also changes if I were doing some sort of research or review, but these days I'm not likely to do that at all, let alone trying it in the Reader. :smile:

Wanting to start with some shorter (and easier), I've formatted Trollope's first Barsetshire novel, "The Warden", with the idea of going through them all. I admit to some qualms about sending it in without someone critiquing it to see if it passes muster. Any volunteers? It's not clear, either, how it gets submitted for download.

I did do a TOC for it, mostly for practice; I have doubts about its use for a single novel, mostly because I can't ever remember using a TOC in a printed novel.

I learned a lot, thanks to Harry's tutorial. The tip about unchecking the auto refresh alone has saved me from continuing to pound my head against the wall. :)

Jim

You can always upload a new version, or replace the previous version by editing the post, as you like, Strether.

As for submitting it, basically just start an new thread in this sub-forum:
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=126

You can look at the existing ones if you'd like an idea of what others have done. It's been suggested (in the interest of being able to find stuff later) that they be posted with the thread titled in the format: Author's Last Name, Author's First Name: Book Title.


I suppose that information would make a good "sticky" at the top of the Sub-Forum. http://www.sims99.com/forum/images/smilies/y_thinking.gif

mark twain. 1601 is a gas, mostly unknown but a gas.

No request... no begging... just a heartfelt thank you to everyone working on the eBooks on this site (especially HarryT). I, for one, am thrilled to see these books posted and wait patiently for each new upload. Keep up the great work!

It's been suggested (in the interest of being able to find stuff later) that they be posted with the thread titled in the format: Author's Last Name, Author's First Name: Book Title.


Yes, if people do stick to that format for the thread title it makes life a lot easier, especially for titles that people are unfamiliar with!

I'll put together some posting "guidelines" and post it as a sticky thread here.

http://www.babblebooks.com/freebies/Three_Men_in_a_Boat.lrf

First in what I hope will be a long series of free ebooks.

More suggestions welcome...

This is a great effort to which I hope to contribute and get others to do so as well. This is far superior to the method used by Manybooks.

A Suggestion:

On the Harvard Classics, may using the title(s) and author(s) of the works in each volume and rather than the the title and author of Harvard Classics followed by a volume number. If one loads multiple volumes of the HC, he or she ends up with Harvard Classics Vol. __ as the title and Harvard Classics as the author with no real means of knowing what titles are in that volume (other than memory).

I’m loking for “Charlotte's Web” by E. B. White. I’d appreciate if somebody could upload it, in case it’s a public domain book.
THX!

That one seems to have been copyrighted in 1952, so I think you're out of luck on it, Govinda. :sad:

Ok NatCh, THX for the information.
I've bought the paper edition in spanish, but i'd love to have the english Sony Reader version.
How did you find that info so quickly?
:)

How did you find that info so quickly?Search Inside at Amazon.com: looked at the copyright page :grin2:

You're welcome, Govinda. :nice:

I would like anything by Frances Hodgson Burnett, especially A Little Princess, and the Anne of Green Gables series. Thank you to all you wonderful geeks! Oh, and Jane Eyre, please!

"Anne of Green Gables" is now available. Hope you enjoy it. Let me know if there are "problems" with it.

Don

Jane Eyre, as requested. Enjoy!

BTW, why not have a go at some of these yourself? It's great fun to create books, and very easy to do!

I am a professional librarian. I just discovered this site late last week after receiving my Sony Reader. Before you all get to far along on this project, I would like to propose some suggestions that may make your efforts of greater value. In preparing the books, why not include the Library of Congress information, at least in listing the title and author. For example, this is the full record for Don Quixote:

LC Control No.: 10002921
Type of Material: Book (Print, Microform, Electronic, etc.)
Personal Name: Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de, 1547-1616.
Uniform Title: Don Quixote. English. Part 1
Main Title: The first part of the delightful history of the most ingenious knight Don Quixote of the Mancha / by Miguel de Cervantes ; translated by Thomas Shelton ; with introductions and notes.
Published/Created: New York P. F. Collier, c1909.
Related Names: Shelton, Thomas, fl. 1612.
Related Titles: Don Quixote.
Description: 545 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.
Notes: On spine: Don Quixote, part 1.
Series: Harvard classics ; no. 14
LC Classification: PQ6329 .A2 1909
LC Copy: AC1 .A4 Copy 2.
Other System No.: (OCoLC)4247445

I specifically chose this record because it refers to the edition found in the Harvard Classics. Note, the uniform title is "Don Quixote. English. Part 1" and the author is Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de. Using a uniform system will add only a few moments if it is done at the time the ebook is created. If it is decided to do this later, it will be a Herculean task if thousands of books are otherwise completed.

You might want to have a page near the beginning that is simply a copy of the LC full record.

I would also give an indication near the beginning (after the title page and before the text) which acknowledges the source of the e-text (e.g., "lrf version created from The Project Gutenberg EBook of The History of Don Quixote, Vol. I., Part 1.
by Miguel de Cervantes available at http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5903" followed by the bibliographic record from Project Gutenberg, in this case:

"Bibliographic Record [help] Creator Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de, 1547-1616
Illustrator Doré, Gustave, 1832-1883
Translator Ormsby, John, 1829-1895
Title The History of Don Quixote, Volume 1, Part 01
Note Illustrated.
Language English
LoC Class PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
EText-No. 5903
Release Date 2004-07-27
Copyright Status Not copyrighted in the United States. If you live elsewhere check the laws of your country before downloading this ebook."

Your efforts will be of more universal value if this information is included and may make it easier for libraries to include records of your collection (including links to it) in their online catalogs, making it more readily findable and accessible to a much broader audience.

Where would one obtain that information? I've never heard of half of what you quote. I'm afraid.

My initial impression is that it all sounds a bit "heavy". We're just a bunch of Sony Reader fans sharing a few books for fun. It's really not our aim to create anything too fancy.

What do other people think?

For referencing Project Gutenberg better read about that on http://www.gutenberg.org
It is either the complete legalese from PG or no reference at all.

It actually is rather easy:

When you download the files from Project Gutenberg, I assume you do so from a page such as the following:

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5903

I simply cut and pasted the bibliographic record in my previous message from that page.

Here is another example of a text from the Harvard Classics series located at PG:

Bibliographic Record [help] Creator Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
Title Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series)
Language English
EText-No. 13674
Release Date 2004-10-08
Copyright Status Not copyrighted in the United States. If you live elsewhere check the laws of your country before downloading this ebook.

See http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/13674

Note that the title is "Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series)" In titling the work for your project, you could simply use "Chronicle and Romance," noting that it came from the Harvard Classic Series below the title or on a subsequent page. The authors, likewise, should be "Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed," not Harvard Classics. Indeed, I would think it best to break out each work from that volume as separate works, giving each of them their own titles and authors.

As to the LC record, you can simple visit http://catalog.loc.gov/, do a search for the edition you are working on, and copy and paste the bibliographic record into your ebook.

Another advantage of doing some of this is that perhaps you can induce a much wider group of editors to create the etexts. Your tutorial is excellent. If you can get some librarians interested, they'll have the 20,000+ volumes in the PG collection completed in a year or two, if not sooner. This is what we do for a living. Many of us have graduate degrees in this.

Alternatively, with the editors' permission, librarians might be induced to add the bibliographic records to the otherwise completed works before final submission.

Your efforts are magnificent. I would just like to see your final product obtain a much wider recognition and use. Why limit your work product to those who, like me, happen upon them in an effort to discover what free content is available to the Sony Reader? This should be in library catalogs everywhere. (By the way, the individual e-editor or e-editors of each work should also include that in the editions they create. E.g., "Sony Reader version created by HarryT from the etext available at Project Gutenberg . . . ."

Once a format was settled on, doing all this would not add more than five minutes to creating each work.

For referencing Project Gutenberg better read about that on http://www.gutenberg.org
It is either the complete legalese from PG or no reference at all.

Then I would include it all. Indeed, my initial impression was that all the PG legalese should be retained, on separate pages. They did a ton of work on those etext and really should be credited for it in any works derived from it, even if they do not demand such credit.

I used to work at a university library, so I can understand where the writer is coming from regarding the suggestions. However, I feel that - if all this information was in the exact same place (say at the end of Gutenburg or whatever) - then I would just copy/past and create a link and have it on the last page.

BUT.....what do we do about creating our "own" books, such as compilations and collections, etc. that do not exist in book form?

So, I would have to say, respectfully, that I'm not in favor of such a plan, as it seems like an additional load of work hunting down the material and then installing this info somewhere in the ebook.

Thanks,
Don

I agree with you, Don. The reason for imposing a standard naming convention for the threads is so that we can easily search by book title or author using the forum search facilities. My personal view is that this is really all we need. That's all I ever use when searching for books, whether it be on PG or Amazon.

I'm certainly not going to impose anything on anyone else here, by the way. I'm speaking now as an individual, not as the forum moderator.

I understand.

Then I have a follow-up. As a site policy, would you all have an objection to libraries creating item records linking to your e-copies on this site and/or downloading the e-copies and making them available through our own servers with appropriate attribution to this project (along with PG or other sources) and adding certain bibliographic records to the copies which were downloaded and stored on the library servers.

Heavens no - not the slightest objection. That's what all these books are here for - to be shared!

If you're copying the books onto your own servers, however, please note that a few of these books are not out of copyright in the US, although all are out of copyright elsewhere in the world (I'm sure you're aware that copyright restrictions in the US are somewhat more "draconian" than elsewhere). Please do check their copyright status before loading them onto your servers if you are in the USA.

Harry,

Thanks for the heads up on the copyright. I am also a law professor and teach a course in cyberlaw in an American law school. I think you just gave me an exam question. ;-)

good show

Here's a question for you all.

As you may have noticed, I'm a big fan of detective stories. I've "done" Sherlock Holmes for the Reader, done "Raffles", done "Father Brown". Question is, who else is there to "do" that's out of copyright (at least somewhere in the world)?

I notice that Dorothy L. Sayers died in 1957, which means that her stuff will be eligible for PG Australia next year ("Lord Peter Wimsey" stories). There are a few out-of-copyright Agatha Christies I could tackle too.

Who am I missing? There must be some detective authors who died before 1950 or so, mustn't there? Any thoughts?

All suggestions gratefully received!

Who am I missing? There must be some detective authors who died before 1950 or so, mustn't there? Any thoughts?

How about Ernest Bramah who wrote the Max Carrados Detective stories?

Or

Anna Katharine Green - The Second Bullet
Anna Katharine Green - The Golden Slipper

Edgar Allan Poe - The Murders in the Rue Morgue

Dashiell Hammett (as Peter Collinson) - Arson Plus

:cool:

I know there are many mysteries from way back. I've run into a lot. I wish I had taken notes. My interest is in funny mysteries and gumshoe books. I've seen lots of lists, and can't find the one I was looking for, but here's another. Maybe someone can recognize some older authors in it?
http://members.aol.com/funnybutfatal/mysteries.html

I'll add that other (and better) list if I find it, and maybe people will be able to spot more older ones.

Maurice Leblanc (http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/l#a1358)'s Arsène Lupin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsène_Lupin) series.

These sound absolutely wonderful. Someone needs to bring back the TV series, "It Takes a Thief"

What are you waiting for, Harry?? :)

unfortunately, they're in RTF.

They are an acquired taste and they're fun, especially the way in which Bramah tells his stories. (Oops! I meant the Kai Lung series. Maybe I should work on those.)

Don

Okay, here's the link I was looking for, and some older detective stories from it that are supposed to be funny private eyes...

The mini-list is excerpted from www.thrillingdetective.com/trivia/humour.html
(I only listed the old stuff in hopes they were public domain by now. Not sure where the general cutoff is. Is the date of the author's death that starts things, or the date of the book?)

-----------
Bill Crane Created by Jonathan Latimer:

* Headed for a Hearse (1935; AKA. The Westland Case)
* The Lady in the Morgue (1935)
* Murder in the Madhouse (1935)
* The Dead Don't Care (Doubleday, 1938)
* Red Gardenias (1939; AKA Some Dames Are Deadly)

-------------
Max Latin Created by Norbert Davis (1909-49):

SHORT STORIES

* "Watch Me Kill You" (July 1941, Dime Detective)
* "Don't Give Your Right Name" (December 1941, Dime Detective: also The Hardboiled Dicks)
* "Give the Devil His Due" (May 1942, Dime Detective)
* "You Can Die Every Day" (December 1942, Dime Detective)
* "Charity Begins at Homicide" (October 1943, Dime Detective)

Maurice Leblanc (http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/l#a1358)'s Arsène Lupin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsène_Lupin) series.
I have posted The Hollow Needle: The Further Adventures of Arsene Lupin and have six other titles of his to post over the next few days. Since there are twenty total books of Lupin and I only have 7 total books from Leblanc, there is no reason to publish them together.

(I only listed the old stuff in hopes they were public domain by now. Not sure where the general cutoff is. Is the date of the author's death that starts things, or the date of the book?)


As you might expect, it's somewhat complicated.

In most of the world, it's pretty straightforward - things enter the public domain (PD) a certain number of years after the death of the author. In most countries that number is 70 years, in a few (eg Australia) it's 50. That means that, for example, all works of authors who died prior to 1937 are currently PD in Europe; prior to 1957 in Australia, and that advances, year by year, as you would expect it to (eg next year it'll be 1938/1958).

In the US, the rules are rather more complicated, largely due to the political lobbying done by companies like Disney who are desperate that M. Mouse and co should NEVER enter the public domain.

Basically, in the US:

- Anything published prior to 1923 is PD.
- Anything published between 1923 and 1963, with a copyright notice, for which copyright was NOT specifically renewed, is PD.
- Unpublished works: Author's death + 70 years.
- Pretty much everything else: publication date + 95 years (and this date keeps getting extended as the "danger" approaches of anything new entering PD)

The net result of this is that some stuff is in the PD in the US, but not elsewhere (early works of authors who had LONG lives - eg Agatha Christie), and a LOT of stuff is PD outside the US but not in the US (works of authors published after 1923 who died before 1937/1957).

As the years go by, the balance is shifting - what is PD in the US is a static set of works, whereas elsewhere new material is entering the PD every year.

Hope that's at least a partial explanation!

Very, very helpful. In fact, maybe someone will add that explanation to the MR wiki for us?

I've copied it into the "Book Uploads Posting Guidelines" sticky thread. That should make it readily accessible to people.

Great! :)

It is also added to the Wiki in a new section off the main page called "uploads"

With luck we can also start to list the available books by author with links to their threads. (I know, I thought of it therefore I volunteered to do it.)

How about Pilgrims Progree by Bunyan?

I love that book.

How about Pilgrims Progree by Bunyan?

I love that book.
Pilgrim's Progress will be in Harvard Classics volume XV. I have the raw files for that volume and will move it up in the queue. Also in volume XV will be The Lives of Donne and Herbert by Izaak Walton. (This has been a shameless plug.)

Thanks. I assume it will just be the one file then in that volume? Or Progress and other books in the same file? The name of this thread is begging so.. I beg you to make a seperate file.. With Pilgrims Progress only.

I've got to figure out how to do this myself!

I've got to figure out how to do this myself!If you'd really like to (and it's certainly not so difficult that you should let it dissuade you), you might find this thread (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7897) and this thread (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10313) to be informative. :nice:

Thanks. I assume it will just be the one file then in that volume? Or Progress and other books in the same file? The name of this thread is begging so.. I beg you to make a seperate file.. With Pilgrims Progress only.

I've got to figure out how to do this myself!
It will be one volume for all of HC XV. I will, for you, put PP in a solo volume. (Although the other part of XV is excellent. Trust me.)

Rwood. I would like to learn to do this. I just spent the last hour finding an online version in HTML and through copying and pasting, got the text into notepad, then I pasted that entire text into Word. Changed font size to 16 arial font type. justified the text, then saved it as a rtf file.

Do you think this will read on my reader?

I've got an excellent old copy of Progress I bought from the rare book room at Powells in P{ortland. Beautiful woodcut illustrations and Illustrated manuscript type pages. Cost me 50 bucks 20 years ago. I suspect its worth a little more now. I dont dare take that book and read it on my lunch break in my dirty old fedex truck!

Hmm. While I was typing this I looked at those links you posted Natch and I am downloading that book designer program and the update right now. Dial up so it will take an hour... :uhoh2:

This book designer program looks like it might be just what I want. I gather that the rtf files arent as good as the Sony irf files?

I downloaded the Word file Harryt posted on how to use Book designer to make an IRF file. He should be a technical writer for software companies explaining to users how to use their program. Thats the best tutorial I've ever read and i have NO doubt I'll be able to use it to create the books I want! I enjoy the.. (I'll reveal a guilty pleasure brain candy addiction here...) Harry Potter series immensely and the fanfics. Especially the fanfics written by Barb (I dont know her last name) I will certainly use this tutorial and program to create her fanfics into useable Sony REader files! Maybe I will post them after I create them? Since they are internet fanfics there isnt any copyright issues... Are there?
(Sorry I know I'm a bit off topic here... )

Plus I'd like to use the Book DEsigner program to create a one year Bible with text uploaded from here... http://eword.gospelcom.net/year/49/njan01.htm

I realize it will take some time to copy and paste 365 pages of HTML into theis book designer program but it seems well worth it to me! I understand they still have a copyright on the NASB so I cant share my work here but Since you can download it to your computer why shouldnt you be able to create a Sony reader file with this?

I just checked with God. He said its ok...

Roy: As a fan of the early work of Don Imus (read prior to 1974), one of his characters was the Right Rev Dr Billy Sol Haggis who sold a Bible with every page blank.... :D

Its great that you are starting to experiment with BookDesigner. It is a powerful program that creates great books. There is also a program by Kovid Goyal called html2lrf that is adding features on an almost daily basis. I have played around with it but I am still more comfortable with BD.

For sources of Progress I used www.gutenberg.org. They are great and everything there is copyright free in the USA.

Now for something quick and dirty that I will never read again or something that I don't (or can't) share, RTF files are not bad. They will scale font sizes just like LRF files but they do not have graphics (on the Sony Reader), they have no chapter breaks, and there is not a Table of Contents. For a short story they are not bad, for a novel they are acceptable (sort of.) For a collection like Harry puts out or your proposed one year Bible, LRF is the best way to go.

Now the same book in RTF and LRF (via BD) will be significantly smaller in LRF as it is a compressed format and there are a lot of format tags in an RTF document. The Reader does a lot of compression when it loads an RTF file so the file size reported in Windows is more than the space occupied in the Reader (if loaded under the Connect software.)

I look forward to seeing books by you in the Reader Upload section.

Don Imus ROX! But The Bible is the all time bestseller and always will be!!! But I think in a cage match God would take Imus to the MAT! :happy2:

I just downlaoded that BD program. hmm.. A little more complicated than Harry's document indicates.. Learning curve here. I may go back to RTF files.. I dont have this kind of time. My wife is getting a little peeved. It sounds as if I can use rtf to get text onto my reader so I can read in a slightly messy format the H'Potter fanfics and bible text... or blogs or whatever. (Which is really all I want to do) but it wont be 'fancy' like the book designer program. So I guess I'll probably, because of time constraints, just use it to create the 'books' of just constant text and leave it up to you experts to create the works of art!

I'm looking forward to the Pilgrims Progress book by the way.

If I devoted a few days I could be cooking on that Book Designer program but why duplicate all the hard work others have already done? Most of the books I want on Gutenburg are already in sony files at Manybooks, and you guys have done more books than I'll read in 5 years.

It reminds me a bit of the program Microsoft links 2001 golf. It came with the 'course desingner tool' the exact same program the microsoft programmers use to create golf courses to be played on the program. Enthusiasts then created some unbelieveable courses and posted them online to download. I downloaded dozens and one day tried the program myself. It takes 5 to 6 hundred hours to create a golf course and the program was immense. I gave it up after 5 hours realizing my pathetic attempts could never come close to what people were posting. So.. I just enjoyed the fruits of their labor instead.
I'm afraid thats what I'll probably do here. :o Until I retire....

Many thanks to all who do work so hard on all these books. I'm not going to give up on book designer just yet but I've been on the computer WWWAAAYYY more than I usually am these last few days.

Roy

Well, 5 hours is a good deal longer than it ought to take you to get BookDesigner ticking for you. That being said, I did give up about 4 different times myself, before I got it where I wanted it.

The secret is to get the basic settings where you want them, and then just press the buttons. :wink:

If you don't care about Tables of Contents and such, you can mostly ignore the title/subtitles business, and just run it through the creation routine. I do like to use the element browser to quickly check for things that BD thinks are titles or subtitles which aren't (one word exclamations like "ARRRRRGGGGHHH!" tend to get read that way), but I really don't do anything other than that and adding cover art to the books I put through it. I've mostly put Baen titles through it myself. :nice:

I have PART ONE only, if someone would like. Let me know and I'll post it.

I have PART ONE only, if someone would like. Let me know and I'll post it.
When people talk of Pilgrims Progress with no other reference, they are referring to Part One only. Part Two was written many years later and IMHO is not half the book the original was.

If you don't post it then I will post it on Tuesday. Roy needs this book for when his Reader arrives. :D

Dr drib. Thanks for the Pilgrims P. I'm gonna make it the first book I read on my reader. I have read part two and .. well.. skimmed it anyway. Its alot like Part one except Pilgrims wife goes thoguh the Sanctification process this time. Same stuff mostly. I dont really need it. However.... Here's another beg...

Les Miserables? Oops. Never mind... Just found it on Manybooks... This is awesome. I'll NEVER read all the books I want to read!!!

I love the character development of ValJean as he walks with God through all that suffering.

Wuld it be possible when making books to not ZIP or RAR them when attaching? LRF is a pretty efficient format as is and the RAR and ZIP process just makes it one more step to get the books on our reader. There really is no need for further compression.

Now for those of you who do like to have line spaces between paragraphs, would you please create two copies of the book? One with the line spaces and one without. The spaces make more pages and lower battery life and I am not really find of them. And if the book is supposed to have spaces at some points in the book, then the line spaces after every paragrph make it look confusing.

Thank you all for your work!

Ok. Here's one... I worked and worked on my version of Book Designer trying to make this happen but every time I try to click 'make book' The program crashes... aaaarrrgggghhh.... Anyhow my Dad's favorite poem is Tennysons 'Charge of the light brigade.' He would qoute the entire poem relishing every phrase when I was a kid.

He's in heaven now....

Anyhow I'd love to have this poem in a portavble reader when i'm in the mood to remember Dad. I'll probably make it as a RTF file but I found some great photos on the web to put in there....

Any artists out there?

Wuld it be possible when making books to not ZIP or RAR them when attaching? LRF is a pretty efficient format as is and the RAR and ZIP process just makes it one more step to get the books on our reader. There really is no need for further compression.

The reason for using ZIP (or RAR) is not really for compression; it's more due to the fact that it's a file extension "known" to web browsers, mail gateways, etc. I quite often download stuff from work, and e-mail it to myself at home. Our corporate mail gateway (along with many other virus scanners) will remove any attachments that it considers to be potentially dangerous. ZIP goes through just fine - LRF gets stripped off as potentially risky. ZIP is by far the safest way to "package" an attachment, regardless of compression. It's only a couple of mouse click to unzip it on a Windows system.

Another reason I personally ZIP all my books is that in the LRF I use file names with spaces, but I replace the spaces with "_" in the ZIP.

Eg "The Old Man in the Corner.lrf"

but:

"The_Old_Man_in_the_corner.zip"

Some systems have problems with filenames with spaces in them.


Now for those of you who do like to have line spaces between paragraphs, would you please create two copies of the book? One with the line spaces and one without. The spaces make more pages and lower battery life and I am not really find of them. And if the book is supposed to have spaces at some points in the book, then the line spaces after every paragrph make it look confusing.

I really think you're going a little far in dictating formatting requirements to people who create books :grin:. They are giving up their time (and it takes a fair few hours to create a nice book) to create these books, and they are formatting them the way that they personally think is good. If you want a book formatted to your exact requirements, the answer is to do it yourself :).

I happen to share your preference for no blank lines betwen paragraphs, but that's just my personal preference. If someone wants to upload a book which has blank lines between the paragraphs, I'll still be grateful to them for that.

It's not always a trivial job to remove blanks. It depends on the source format.

Ok. Here's one... I worked and worked on my version of Book Designer trying to make this happen but every time I try to click 'make book' The program crashes... aaaarrrgggghhh.... Anyhow my Dad's favorite poem is Tennysons 'Charge of the light brigade.' He would qoute the entire poem relishing every phrase when I was a kid.

He's in heaven now....

Anyhow I'd love to have this poem in a portavble reader when i'm in the mood to remember Dad. I'll probably make it as a RTF file but I found some great photos on the web to put in there....

Any artists out there?
If "hack" is a type of artist, ok. It has been posted.

The reason for using ZIP (or RAR) is not really for compression; it's more due to the fact that it's a file extension "known" to web browsers, mail gateways, etc. I quite often download stuff from work, and e-mail it to myself at home. Our corporate mail gateway (along with many other virus scanners) will remove any attachments that it considers to be potentially dangerous. ZIP goes through just fine - LRF gets stripped off as potentially risky. ZIP is by far the safest way to "package" an attachment, regardless of compression. It's only a couple of mouse click to unzip it on a Windows system.

Another reason I personally ZIP all my books is that in the LRF I use file names with spaces, but I replace the spaces with "_" in the ZIP.

Eg "The Old Man in the Corner.lrf"

but:

"The_Old_Man_in_the_corner.zip"

Some systems have problems with filenames with spaces in them.
I never knew the LRF extension was used for other things. So yeah it makes sense then to ZIP them.

I really think you're going a little far in dictating formatting requirements to people who create books :grin:. They are giving up their time (and it takes a fair few hours to create a nice book) to create these books, and they are formatting them the way that they personally think is good. If you want a book formatted to your exact requirements, the answer is to do it yourself :).

I happen to share your preference for no blank lines betwen paragraphs, but that's just my personal preference. If someone wants to upload a book which has blank lines between the paragraphs, I'll still be grateful to them for that.

It's not always a trivial job to remove blanks. It depends on the source format.

It really isn't that much of an effort to strip the extra lines using word (IMHO). But one thing I shall be doing for the next book I convert will also be to post the BD source so others can see how it looks and maybe it'll help with learning to use BD. Plus it also means if someone wants to change how I've done something, he/she can easily do so. No, I'm not trying to dictate how things be done. Only suggesting. There is an option in BD for adding a line space between paragraphs when making the LRF. So I was thinking that was what was being used in the books that have line spaces. And in that case it's just a matter of not selecting it when writing out the book.

I just counted and we already have over 240 books (unique titles) available for download at MobileRead. Even if we assume a low sale of the century price of $4.99 per volume this is still over $1,200 (US) worth of books and many of them are omnibus editions that may easily sell for ten times that price.

I think we all owe Harry a great deal of thanks for starting this upload section on 28 March 2007 with his first book, Complete Sherlock Holmes.

Here, here! Bravo! To HarryT and the several others who have done a lot of hunching over keyboards to make it happen. :yes:

Absolutely! This is really spectacular stuff, and not only are there great books, but they are done so very well. Not to mention that reading them is going to be a thousand times more fun because they come from our very own MR friends!

Thanks so much to Harry and Wood and Roy and Dr Drib and Travis, and not just them, but a bunch more of the "less prolific" contributers also! (It's always dangerous to mention names, though, because I probably left some people out... thanks so much to everyone who has participated, and forgive me if your name is missing!)

Plus, don't forget the incredible custom artwork that Travis has added. Just unbelievable! In the midst of all the depressing copyright and DRM news, this emerges as a delightful ray of sunshine in the content world!

P.S. I hope you guys are keeping all your BookDesigner files for that day when we want these books in other formats for other devices! Not only are there folks now with other devices that are probably very jealous, but we may all find that in less than 5 years from now there will be another star format for the newest and greatest generation of e-book readers!

Of course, this library of books is so nice, that I think the Sony Reader is guaranteed to remain important to each of us in combination with any spectacular future e-book devices. Not just because of the sentimental attachment that reading so many books on it brings, but because it's worth keeping the Reader around long term just for access to this library. Like Wood says, it's already like a $1200 library of nicely formatted works.

Plus. Once you figure out how to do it... Its a little addicting!

I spent about an hour, maybe an hour and a half yesterday going through the text of Les Miserables. I was using the book element tool to find the titles. And Book Designer had assigned the "Chapter 1" etc. (Text in the raw TXT file I got from gutenberg) as Chapter titles. (Which means that on the bottom of the reader, (Chapter 1) Would appear... Unacceptabe, (To me) and first and foremost I'm making these for me and sharing them here.... because i didnt want to take the time to delete the "Chapter 22" text, (I made the compromise of leaving the text so it would appear on the reader but i didnt want it on the bottom of each page in the chapter) ((I hope everyone is following)) I was using the 'subtitle button to change the Chapter 1 text into subtitles, then going to the REAL chapter titles below, highlighting it and clicking "Title so THAT would read at the bottom of each page in that chapter in the reader.. A long tedious process indeed. Finally when i finished i clicked make book and had too many other programs opened. the program crashed, I lost EVERYTHING!!!!!!!! I almost said a bad word! My wife was waiting patiently to go on a motorcycle ride so i left to go.. When i came home i thought. Ok.. I'm just going to make the book so i can read it and i will deal with the stupid Chapter 16 at the bottom of the page on the reader.. I opoened elements again just for the heck of it and noticed a button at the bottom of the element window that said. "Change element to... " A bell rung. So.. This is awesome.. I had the element finder find all the titles, They were listed as the hated 'Chapter 77" etc on the element window. (And in les miserable theres about 15 million chapters because Hugo wrote every 6 paragraphs and started a new chapter in this book) I selected the top one, held down shift, selected the bottom one highlighting them all.. Then clicked the drop down list at the bottom.. found delete.. Clicked.. Dudes and dudettes. ALL those stupid "Chapter 44 etc, dissapeared at one fell swoop! Then... I had the element tool find all Subtitles... (The REAL chapter titles) Selected all, then CHANGED THEM TO TITLES at one fell swoop. Walla! in exactly 28 seconds accomplished what took me over an hour!!!! A west texas yell flowed out of my mouth! The dogs barked for blocks around my house.

I hope those of you who dont care about the PROCESS skipped reading all that but to those of you who want space between paragraphs and etc..

You can see, besides rewriting the etire text, how difficult that would be and most of the books I've done so far, I havent read yet, or I've read parts of, or heard about that book and have it on my "To read" list.

And this reader is AWESOME because now i dont have to truck down to the library to find, then check out, and return!!!

So...

I'm happy to make em... But the finest details...
Hopefully I can keep finding fast ways to fix them like I did with the "Convert elements tool"

Maybe that Convert all elements trick will work good for some of the rest of you who are using Book Designer?
You prolly already use it.

Roy

Well. Those of you who dont like empty paragraphs. I've got good news. You can use the element browser part of Book Designer to find empty paragraphs aaaannndd.. Delete them en masse!

Totally sweet. It also works for all the other mistakes and mis0guesses Book Designer does on raw text.

Book Designer geeks take notice!

Thanks Bob! And thanks to everyone for contributing stuff and making this forum so great! We have such a great selection on here now! Many great authors who I haven't heard of or tried before. I have a LOT of reading to do.

My Reader is full of great stuff. I don't even have any current authors on there because of all the great stuff that has been posted to this forum. Great reading to be had here...

Who says you can't get anything good for free anymore?! :) Well, OK, if you don't count the price of the reader...BUT I think we have the Sony connect store beat when it comes to price and ease of use...

One of my co-workers just bought a Reader and she was wondering where to get content since she was having problems with the Sony store. I pointed her here and said "start there, they have all the info and content you need to get started..."

if you could find all of it in paper editions i'd figure over 3000. toured a few used shops and the cheapest stuff was 5.00 for she by haggard. the zorro was 25 and beat up. there was a sherlock holmes, used, nice, 149.

both of my friends in the computer biz keep talking about total cost of ownership so it seems to me if i understand them right these books just made the sony reader the cheapest game in town.

thanks guys, there will be extra doughnuts and karma all around today. summer is in the air and the ac is on high. when twilight comes i'll be at an outdoor coffee house with my sony in one hand, a cigar in the other hand, and a coffee in another hand.

just got back from the bread lines giving out doughnuts and karma, still got a few doughnuts left but the karma ran out, should have some more in stock in a day or so

thanks to all who post, i couldn't do, i'd spend all my time reading and never get anything done

catch you on the flyleaf

i saw one by mencken posted here, how about 'in defense of women' too?

is ellory queen stuff available? sam spade? sure its pulp, but its high quality pulp

is ellory queen stuff available? sam spade? sure its pulp, but its high quality pulp
Not from PG US or PG AU. Sorry.

I’m looking for Euclid's Elements books. Although they are available in gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/21076 , it seems a hard work to convert the book into lrf format (because there are 263 images).

I wonder whether anyone has already done this conversion.

Thanks.

I’m looking for Euclid's Elements books. Although they are available in gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/21076 , it seems a hard work to convert the book into lrf format (because there are 263 images).

I wonder whether anyone has already done this conversion.

Thanks.
Give that the book is in PDF or Tex, you won't find it here. If you can come up with an HTML version, then someone might have a go at it Or you could use one of the various PDF conversion tools to strip off the excess margin and see how it looks on the Sony as is.

Anyone feel like doing some poetry? I'd love to have Kipling and/or Robert Service on the reader.

If nobody else takes me up on that, I might have a look at doing some of these when I get some extra time a couple months from now...

Cheers,

ScS

Robert Frost is on my list of to-do;s!

I definitely will be working on his stuff soon.

I would personally love to see the rest of F. Scott Fitzgerald's writings. I'm pretty busy this week, but I may try to do a few this sunday.

I would personally love to see the rest of F. Scott Fitzgerald's writings. I'm pretty busy this week, but I may try to do a few this sunday.

http://www.feedbooks.com/discover/view_author/201

Quite a lot of short stories available on our side.

http://www.feedbooks.com/discover/view_author/201

Quite a lot of short stories available on our side.
Thanks. I hadn't seen that site before!

Yes, I enjoy his short stories, too.

Don



I would personally love to see the rest of F. Scott Fitzgerald's writings. I'm pretty busy this week, but I may try to do a few this sunday.

Hi all,

As my hobby is reading WW1 classics, memoirs and such like.
And one of the reasons that I bought a PRS500 was the content on Gutenberg.
But I am struggling on converting the files as some have photo images.
Has anyone out there converted any?
I would love Bullets and Billets by Bruce Bairnsfather, but any first world war book would be great.
Hope someone can help.

Ian.

Although I'm having trouble with inexplicable chapter breaks on the TOC.

I can see why you like this book: for one thing, the illustrations are wonderful.

So, I suppose I'm about 1/3 into working on it. The only real trouble I see is trying to figure out why these screen breaks are occuring in the various chapters. The links all seem to work, so that's good.

But Right now, it's time for my obligatory cup of coffee at Border's and a chance to continue reading Robin Hobb's wonderful "Ship of Magic" novel on....what else?.....THE READER!!!

Don



Hi all,

As my hobby is reading WW1 classics, memoirs and such like.
And one of the reasons that I bought a PRS500 was the content on Gutenberg.
But I am struggling on converting the files as some have photo images.
Has anyone out there converted any?
I would love Bullets and Billets by Bruce Bairnsfather, but any first world war book would be great.
Hope someone can help.

Ian.

How about some:

Walt Whitman Song of Myself
Arnold Bennett (How to Live on 24 hours a day), plus his novels
Trollope's Barchester Towers

I read 24 Hours... a while ago and still have the text around here someplace (electronic copy) so I'll post it soon.

New member here. Applied for sony card last week, and in process of getting a Sony reader. The aim is to use my love for gadgets to develop a healthy reading habbit.

The first set of reading I plan to do is short stories by Saki. ( I have planning to do the same for more than a decade :).

Just curios if anyone has any of these books by Saki in the works:
1) Beasts and Super-Beasts
2) The Chronicles of Clovis

Both are available on Gutenberg, but would be great if there is a more readable format.

Looking forward to be more involved with mobileread.

....I'm a fan of Victorian literature and admire Anthony Trollope very much.

These two shouldn't take more than 2 hours total.

Don


P.S.: These two titles are the first two in the series.


How about some:

Walt Whitman Song of Myself
Arnold Bennett (How to Live on 24 hours a day), plus his novels
Trollope's Barchester Towers

How about some:

Walt Whitman Song of Myself
<snip>

OK, I've got a pre-alpha of Leaves of Grass ready to roll. There's at least one problem with formatting that I've got to solve; and it's hard to make the title structure come alive (beyond the book level.) I might make an index of each title.... At any rate, it'll be a few days before it's ready for release except as the crudest alpha version.

OK, I've got a pre-alpha of Leaves of Grass ready to roll. There's at least one problem with formatting that I've got to solve; and it's hard to make the title structure come alive (beyond the book level.) I might make an index of each title.... At any rate, it'll be a few days before it's ready for release except as the crudest alpha version.

Sounds great to me!

What problems are you having with the "title structure"? Can you be more specific, as someone here may be able to offer some assistance.

On the Toc [Table of Contents] that you allude to, let me offer some help, if you're not aware of it. If you already know this, I apologize in advance. Ok, the Toc:

Anything designated as "Title" has the ability to be turned into a ToC and a ToC can be quickly and automatically generated. So, if you've got a book with a 100 poems, and each poem is titled, then you can have a ToC done practically instantly.

It will even produce, as part of the ToC, a "Table of Content." [Notice that there's a bug in the program, and that you need to add an "s" to the word "Content."]

I hope this helps.

Let us know if you have some questions.


Don

I'm interested in doing some more of Voltaire's novellas. We've already got Candide and Zadig. I would like to do The Princess of Babylon and L'Ingenu ('The Innocent' or 'The Child of Nature'). Despite some searching, I've been unable to find an english translation on the web.
If anyone finds one then I would be very pleased if they point me in its direction. (I'm happy to convert the book myself.) If not, I may well have a go at the original French.

i'd love to have some reference books, like dictionary/encyclopedia/travel guides etc
thx :)

i'd love to have some reference books, like dictionary/encyclopedia/travel guides etc
thx :)

Really? Suppose you had a dictionary on the Sony Reader. How would you look words up in it?

What HarryT is getting at, is that the Reader's relatively slow screen refresh time, and the absence of a search function means that you'd spend a really long time trying to look up say, the words "sarcastic" and "sardonic" to figure out the differences between them. That would tend to limit how useful a reference such as a dictionary can be in practical terms. :shrug:

Right HarryT? :grin:

What HarryT is getting at, is that the Reader's relatively slow screen refresh time, and the absence of a search function means that you'd spend a really long time trying to look up say, the words "sarcastic" and "sardonic" to figure out the differences between them. That would tend to limit how useful a reference such as a dictionary can be in practical terms. :shrug:

Right HarryT? :grin:

Precisely. The lack of a "search" function on the Reader makes such books of extremely limited value. I suppose that some people might want to read a dictionary or an encylopaedia from start to finish, but the majority would - I suspect - wish to look up entries in them. That's why I was wondering why ns66 was expressing an interest in such books.

Hi Folks

I love political books etc and was wondering if anyone gas a copy of American Legacy by C. David Heymann they woudl kindly share

Many thanx

Shiney19

I'm not familiar with that one, Shiney19 -- is it Public Domain? Hmmm. It would seem not as it was published last month. :(

I think that pretty much means that you won't find it here, I don't know if there are any legit e-copies of it available in any of the stores. We're pretty careful to avoid passing around the other variety here at MobileRead. :nice:

Precisely. The lack of a "search" function on the Reader makes such books of extremely limited value. I suppose that some people might want to read a dictionary or an encylopaedia from start to finish, but the majority would - I suspect - wish to look up entries in them. That's why I was wondering why ns66 was expressing an interest in such books.

i like encyclopedia and travel books, when i don't have much to do and not in the mood to read 1000 page books, i like to browse and just read a few items in encyclopedia and hopefully learn something :D

I'm interested in doing some more of Voltaire's novellas. We've already got Candide and Zadig. I would like to do The Princess of Babylon and L'Ingenu ('The Innocent' or 'The Child of Nature'). Despite some searching, I've been unable to find an english translation on the web.
If anyone finds one then I would be very pleased if they point me in its direction. (I'm happy to convert the book myself.) If not, I may well have a go at the original French.
I have an almost finished version of Letters on England (in English) that I will post shortly. Other than that I am out of English language Voltaire works except for the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad and Socrates.

As the number of e books have increased would it be possible to sort them into categories first. A section for what's new would also be great.

Cheers,
Chris.

Hey, CJBarrow, I can't do anything about categories, but you can see the latest book postings on the Front Page (http://www.mobileread.com/) (it's on the right hand side, third little boxey thing down). :nice:

Sounds great to me!

What problems are you having with the "title structure"? Can you be more specific, as someone here may be able to offer some assistance.

On the Toc [Table of Contents] that you allude to, let me offer some help, if you're not aware of it. If you already know this, I apologize in advance. Ok, the Toc:

Anything designated as "Title" has the ability to be turned into a ToC and a ToC can be quickly and automatically generated. So, if you've got a book with a 100 poems, and each poem is titled, then you can have a ToC done practically instantly.

It will even produce, as part of the ToC, a "Table of Content." [Notice that there's a bug in the program, and that you need to add an "s" to the word "Content."]

I hope this helps.

Let us know if you have some questions.


Don

Sorry for not seeing this earlier, Don!

The problem I had was that the structure of Leaves of Grass have "Books", individual poems, and then some of the poems had numbered stanzas as well. So BD was labeling some of the stanzas as Titles, some as Subtitles, some as Paragraphs. Then some of the poems were titles, some were subtitles. (And with close to 400 poems, that was something to get through.) I think all of the Books (38) were Titles. Anyway, it was a long time to get through, only to discover that BD wouldn't generate hanging indents....

Oh, and I was trying to figure out whether or not to try and incorporate every poem in the TOC, just the Books, or what. (Eventually, my in-book TOC which is not hyperlinked lists all of them. As Phil Ken Sebben might say, "Ha! Ha! Long!!!" :) )

Eventually Kovid was good enough to incorporate hanging indent support into HTML2LRF, and now it's available. (Also, this was my first experience with HTML2LRF - it took me a little while to figure it out, even though it's very nice and easy to work with.)

OK, off to see what the next book request to fulfill is.

Well. Those of you who dont like empty paragraphs. I've got good news. You can use the element browser part of Book Designer to find empty paragraphs aaaannndd.. Delete them en masse!

Totally sweet. It also works for all the other mistakes and mis0guesses Book Designer does on raw text.

Book Designer geeks take notice!

Is there a link on how to use the element browser, especially to pull empty paras???

And I'm now picking up Saki from ankitj's request above.

Also, I ran through the whole thread (yep, all of it! *whew*.) Unless I missed something, and I don't think I did, all specific book requests up through that one have been fulfilled. :D :crowngrin

So, of course, the next question would be, who's got more requests??? :) -And, of course, if I'm wrong, please corrct me.... ETA: erm, correct me... :lol:

New member here. Applied for sony card last week, and in process of getting a Sony reader. The aim is to use my love for gadgets to develop a healthy reading habbit.
<snip>
Just curios if anyone has any of these books by Saki in the works:
1) Beasts and Super-Beasts
2) The Chronicles of Clovis


I did both of these, but Project Gutenberg lists five other works for Saki in their archive....

# Reginald (English)
# Reginald in Russia and other sketches (English)
# The Toys of Peace, and other papers (English)
# The Unbearable Bassington (English)
# When William Came (English)

So if you'd like to work on those, be my guest.

Is there a link on how to use the element browser, especially to pull empty paras???
:

In BD:
1. Open the element browser (in the tools menu).
2. Set it to show empty paragraphs.
3. Select the first empty paragraph that you wish to delete. Press the shift key. then select the final empty paragraph that you wish to remove. This highlights all the intervening empty paras.
4. Use the little box at the bottom of the element browser to delete the selected empty paragraphs and they are gone.

Some people have been requesting books because they haven’t been able to find them easily online, particularly if they are not in Project Gutenberg. They might like to try one of these sites.

The Online Books page at:
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu

Also

Digital Book Index at
http://www.digitalbookindex.com

Both have very reliable search facilities and search PG and a number of other archives and libraries.

I'd like to have "In Pursuit of Valis: Selections from the Exegesis" by Philip K. Dick
It's a fairly rare out of print book that I own and would like to read but I'm afraid I'll damage it.

I'd like to have "In Pursuit of Valis: Selections from the Exegesis" by Philip K. Dick
It's a fairly rare out of print book that I own and would like to read but I'm afraid I'll damage it.

Is this book in the public domain, or, if not, do you have the permission of the copyright holder to reproduce it? Please don't ask for copyrighted material to be posted here - this is a "legit" site.

The book is rare and no longer in print.
It sells from between $90.00 to $1250.00 on abebooks.com
Like I said, I already own it but I am afraid of messing it up so I haven't read it.
I didn't ask anyone to steal it.
I just said I would like to have it.
I have not been able to find it in ebook form.
If you can find it for sale somewhere in ebook form please let me know.

This forum section is for requesting books to be uploaded to MobileRead. It is strictly for out of copyright material, or material posted with the permission of the copyright holder.

We have to be very careful about what's posted, or we risk the site being closed down.

The book is rare and no longer in print.
It sells from between $90.00 to $1250.00 on abebooks.com
Like I said, I already own it but I am afraid of messing it up so I haven't read it.
I didn't ask anyone to steal it.
I just said I would like to have it.
I have not been able to find it in ebook form.
If you can find it for sale somewhere in ebook form please let me know.

I think this was just a case of being "unclear". Next time he will be more careful.

Hi, wizards! I see "Three Men in a Boat" and "Les Miserables" uploaded here, but I'd like to read them on a Kindle (when it arrives). I'm a mac person, so I don't have the PC conversion tools. If anybody could easily make kindle-able formats of the above, I'd love it! MOBI, RTF, TXT .... I'm not picky. Even if it has to be "part1" and "part2" for the longer of the above books.

Meanwhile, I've downloaded 130 some OTHER classics, for my spare reading time!

Hi, wizards! I see "Three Men in a Boat" and "Les Miserables" uploaded here, but I'd like to read them on a Kindle (when it arrives). I'm a mac person, so I don't have the PC conversion tools. If anybody could easily make kindle-able formats of the above, I'd love it! MOBI, RTF, TXT .... I'm not picky. Even if it has to be "part1" and "part2" for the longer of the above books.

Meanwhile, I've downloaded 130 some OTHER classics, for my spare reading time!

Hi :)

If you're not picky, you can get them both in text format at Project Gutenberg.

Three Men in a Boat
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/308

Les Miserables
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/135

I think Project Gutenberg is about the bestest site on the internet.

Hi, wizards! I see "Three Men in a Boat" and "Les Miserables" uploaded here, but I'd like to read them on a Kindle (when it arrives). I'm a mac person, so I don't have the PC conversion tools. If anybody could easily make kindle-able formats of the above, I'd love it! MOBI, RTF, TXT .... I'm not picky. Even if it has to be "part1" and "part2" for the longer of the above books.

Meanwhile, I've downloaded 130 some OTHER classics, for my spare reading time!Try looking on Manybooks.net and Munseys.com. Both sites take stuff like that and transform it to a variety of different electronic formats.

For instance:
http://manybooks.net/titles/jeromejeetext953boat10.html
http://manybooks.net/titles/hugovictetext94lesms10.html

http://www.munseys.com/book/7494/Three_Men_in_a_Boat
http://www.munseys.com/book/5897/Les_Miserables

Conversions posted here are likely to be better over all, but if you don't see it here, those are excellent places to look.
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Dennis

Hi, wizards! I see "Three Men in a Boat" and "Les Miserables" uploaded here, but I'd like to read them on a Kindle (when it arrives). I'm a mac person, so I don't have the PC conversion tools. If anybody could easily make kindle-able formats of the above, I'd love it! MOBI, RTF, TXT .... I'm not picky. Even if it has to be "part1" and "part2" for the longer of the above books.

Meanwhile, I've downloaded 130 some OTHER classics, for my spare reading time!

Use the Feedbooks download guide: http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17465

Easiest way to get public domain books on your Kindle, you don't even need your mac !

Hi, wizards! I see "Three Men in a Boat" and "Les Miserables" uploaded here, but I'd like to read them on a Kindle (when it arrives). I'm a mac person, so I don't have the PC conversion tools. If anybody could easily make kindle-able formats of the above, I'd love it! MOBI, RTF, TXT .... I'm not picky. Even if it has to be "part1" and "part2" for the longer of the above books.

Meanwhile, I've downloaded 130 some OTHER classics, for my spare reading time!

I've posted Three Men in a Boat in BBeB, Mobi, and EB1150 formats.

BBeB: http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=139727
Mobi: http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=139735
EB1150: http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=139732

May I have an official ruling, please? I would love to post the English translation by Mahadev Desai of Gandhi's autobiography. It is not at Project Gutenberg and Google Books won't show it with an unlimited view either. But it is very widely available on the internet including, for example, at Wikisource here (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/An_Autobiography_or_The_Story_of_my_Experiments_wi th_Truth). But their "source" page, which is here (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Talk:An_Autobiography_or_The_Story_of_my_Experimen ts_with_Truth), does not read like a sound justification for posting it. So I ask: should I or shouldn't I? Thanks in advance for your help.

May I have an official ruling, please? I would love to post the English translation by Mahadev Desai of Gandhi's autobiography. It is not at Project Gutenberg and Google Books won't show it with an unlimited view either. But it is very widely available on the internet including, for example, at Wikisource here (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/An_Autobiography_or_The_Story_of_my_Experiments_wi th_Truth). But their "source" page, which is here (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Talk:An_Autobiography_or_The_Story_of_my_Experimen ts_with_Truth), does not read like a sound justification for posting it. So I ask: should I or shouldn't I? Thanks in advance for your help.

Sorry, but no. The fact that "the copyright holder doesn't mind" is not an excuse for copying it.

Sorry, but no. The fact that "the copyright holder doesn't mind" is not an excuse for copying it.

Isn't that the same thing that the copyright holder has given permission? And shouldn't it be OK then?

Have you read the page linked to, Tommy? It all sounds very "dodgy" to me. I'd really rather not take the chance here at MR.

Have you read the page linked to, Tommy? It all sounds very "dodgy" to me. I'd really rather not take the chance here at MR.

Well, I looked at it fast but did not find any statement at all about that the copyright holder did not mind or any opinion about copyright at all. But maybe I just looked in the wrong place.

Take a look at the second link in vivaldi's message :).

I'd really rather not take the chance here at MR.

That is most probably a good policy.

But what then about the Share Alike things that are distributed here without stating the license that I mentioned in another thread? As I read the Share Alike licence you have to distribute it under the same terms as the thing you started with.

That is most probably a good policy.

But what then about the Share Alike things that are distributed here without stating the license that I mentioned in another thread? As I read the Share Alike licence you have to distribute it under the same terms as the thing you started with.

Yes, I agree with you. Please let the uploader know if you come across anything like that so it can be fixed.

Sorry, but no. The fact that "the copyright holder doesn't mind" is not an excuse for copying it.

I agree with Harry. Unless the copyright expiration rule applies here or the author gave his explicit consent for reproduction, we should not publish it here. He may not mind today -- but he could mind tomorrow. :chinscratch:

May I have an official ruling, please? I would love to post the English translation by Mahadev Desai of Gandhi's autobiography. It is not at Project Gutenberg and Google Books won't show it with an unlimited view either. But it is very widely available on the internet including, for example, at Wikisource here (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/An_Autobiography_or_The_Story_of_my_Experiments_wi th_Truth). But their "source" page, which is here (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Talk:An_Autobiography_or_The_Story_of_my_Experimen ts_with_Truth), does not read like a sound justification for posting it. So I ask: should I or shouldn't I? Thanks in advance for your help.

I see that the translator died in 1942, and Gandhi died in 1948. Canadian copyright law is life+50. We can host this ebook.


P.S. I don't usually read this thread, so if you need a second opinion on a copyright question, please pm me.

I see that the translator died in 1942, and Gandhi died in 1948. Canadian copyright law is life+50. We can host this ebook.


If those dates are correct, then yes, it's OK to have here. Thanks for that, Nate - hadn't spotted the dates. In many cases, as you know, even if a book in another language is out of copyright in its original language, a translation isn't, because a translation gets its own separate copyright.

If those dates are correct, then yes, it's OK to have here. Thanks for that, Nate - hadn't spotted the dates. In many cases, as you know, even if a book in another language is out of copyright in its original language, a translation isn't, because a translation gets its own separate copyright.

That's terrific! Thank you both very much for your time. :)

Has anybody got Longfellow's "The Children's Hour" and perhaps other poems available in mobi (Kindle) format? I would think that's out of copyrite by now.

I just wanted to put in a heartfelt thank you to all those that format the ebooks so we can download and read them. Thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart!:iloveyou:

Has anybody got Longfellow's "The Children's Hour" and perhaps other poems available in mobi (Kindle) format? I would think that's out of copyrite by now.No one seems to have created a Mobi version here.

It is out of copyright: PG has a plain text version of Longfellow's collected poetry (including The children's Hour" here: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1365/1365.txt
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Dennis

Thank you! I looked for them -- but was having trouble spelling "gutenberg". Oh well.....

I still have nightmares about plays and verse from formatting the Harvard Classics. Either is enough to drive me to Distraction (a small town in Arizona. :D)

I'm about to upload the Longfellow collection, 'Birds of Passage', which includes 'The Children's Hour.'
I hope that you enjoy it.
As Wood point out, poetry is a bit time-consuming to format, but does make a pleasant change from prose. If you want some more Longfellow then ask again in a week or two -- I'm looking at some Milton next.

Speaking of Indian writers, I'd personally love to see a nice copy of Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramhansa Yogananda made up, in case any of you fine ebook makers are sitting on your hands. The first edition of it up at Gutenberg with the original pictures. http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/7452

Keep up the good work!

Patricia, there is "Milton's Complete Poems in English" in Harvard Classics #4 and a lot of prose in #3. #4 was one of the first books of verse that I did and it could be done better. I welcome your version. As I remember Bob Russell is a big Milton fan.

Thanks. Roy White wanted a version with the Gustave Doré illustrations. I've now assembled the stuff and will put it together, probably this weekend.

Speaking of Indian writers, I'd personally love to see a nice copy of Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramhansa Yogananda made up, in case any of you fine ebook makers are sitting on your hands. The first edition of it up at Gutenberg with the original pictures. http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/7452

Keep up the good work!

Now uploaded in three formats.
I hope you enjoy it.

Thanks. Roy White wanted a version with the Gustave Doré illustrations. I've now assembled the stuff and will put it together, probably this weekend.
Sometimes the Doré illustrations were better than the text that surrounded them. I once had a Dover reprint book of just Doré illustrations without any distracting text.

Here's a question for you all.

As you may have noticed, I'm a big fan of detective stories. I've "done" Sherlock Holmes for the Reader, done "Raffles", done "Father Brown". Question is, who else is there to "do" that's out of copyright (at least somewhere in the world)?

I notice that Dorothy L. Sayers died in 1957, which means that her stuff will be eligible for PG Australia next year ("Lord Peter Wimsey" stories). There are a few out-of-copyright Agatha Christies I could tackle too.

Who am I missing? There must be some detective authors who died before 1950 or so, mustn't there? Any thoughts?

All suggestions gratefully received!

i am also a huge fan of detective stories so any you want to do are most welcome, I will see if i can think of any which are not already available here...

i would like to make a special request for Dorothy L. Sayers, she's absolutely brilliant (i have read all of them but only in french, i would love to have the original versions !! only "whose body" is available so far, that i know of), and also Agatha Christie...

If you could make these available in imp format (for the eb1150) that would be brilliant ; if you can't but have the texts available in html or text format, i could format them in imp and post them, just let me know.

i would like to make a special request for Dorothy L. Sayers, she's absolutely brilliant (i have read all of them but only in french, i would love to have the original versions !! only "whose body" is available so far, that i know of), and also Agatha Christie...The Sayers stuff doesn't appear to have hit the public domain, so posting them here would be problematic.

Of the Christies, the only ones I've seen are "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" (http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/863) and "Secret Adversary" http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1155
______
Dennis

The Sayers stuff doesn't appear to have hit the public domain, so posting them here would be problematic.
______
Dennis

Sorry, forgot to mention : i saw here (http://www.copyrightwatch.ca/?p=49) that Sayers' works are in public domain now in countries where the copyright law is death+50, so they may become available soon on PG Australia. hoping ! I found the link to copyrightwatch on one of the forums here i can't remember who posted it... [EDIT : pff, i saw it in this very thread, and i quoted the post in my original post... it was HarryT who mentioned it.]

Another request : does anyone have the Maurice Leblanc Arsène Lupin books in French ?? I can only find them in english, and i would rather have the original version... i have several of the paperbacks but scanning them is far too much work for me.

thanks in advance...

Sorry, forgot to mention : i saw here (http://www.copyrightwatch.ca/?p=49) that Sayers' works are in public domain now in countries where the copyright law is death+50, so they may become available soon on PG Australia. hoping ! Well, we can hope. It will require someone to prepare electronic editions, which is time consuming. I grabbed the Philo Vance stories from PG AU, and I was starting to wonder whether one book in the series ("The Greene Murder Case") was ever going to appear. The Van Dine enthusiast who had been doing them finally finished it, and I have the complete set, but it can take a bit.
______
Dennis

HarryT has done the Philo Vance books in LRF and PRC. All that's needed is IMP.

HarryT has done the Philo Vance books in LRF and PRC. All that's needed is IMP.
I have them all in Plucker format if anyone can use it.
______
Dennis

i have just made one Philo Vance book, The Bishop Murder Case, in imp format with the illustrations etc. which you can find here (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19971), i can do the rest of them as well no problem since i see i am not the only one who likes SS Van Dine... however it may take me a little while, i am just learning to use the ebook Publisher software (that book was my first ever successful one).

I've already uploaded Dorothy L Sayers's 'Whose Body', which is available at PG Australia. It's her earliest novel and was the only one available.

I'd love to see some more. If anyone finds a legal source then point me to it and I will convert it.

is there any way of making a request to PG Australia ? or maybe just to let them know we're interested ? i have no idea how they choose which books to do but maybe they're interested to know what the reading public likes... or what we are eagerly awaiting...

The gentleman who runs PG Australia has been very responsive in the past. (The exact case was the posting of Doc Savage titles that he believed to be in the public domain but were in fact not. He removed them within a day of confirming that they were still in copyright.) Like all boards, he is limited by the available time the volunteers contribute. Perhaps you can make the suggestion to them.

The Sayer works weren't hosted at PG Australia. Her work is not yet out of copyright in Australia. A few years back Australia switched from a death+50 to death+70. The new rule applies to deaths after 1954.

The Sayer works weren't hosted at PG Australia. Her work is not yet out of copyright in Australia. A few years back Australia switched from a death+50 to death+70. The new rule applies to deaths after 1954.

oh, arg... :( i thought australia was death+50. and Sayers died in 1957... if only they had changed the law 3 years later...

so where is it death+50 then ? canada, right ? is there a pg canada ?? or some equivalent site in a country under the death+50 rule ?

is there any way of making a request to PG Australia ? or maybe just to let them know we're interested ? i have no idea how they choose which books to do but maybe they're interested to know what the reading public likes... or what we are eagerly awaiting... The chap who runs the PG Australia site is a good guy and quite responsive. But he's simply the webmaster for the site. Books hosted on PG Australia are transcribed and uploaded by volunteers, and he's at the mercy of what the contributors choose to do.

His particular interest is promoting works of Australian history and literature by Australian writers. The selection of works in the public domain in Oz but not here gets the most interest from us, but is not the focus of the site.
______
Dennis

oh, arg... :( i thought australia was death+50. and Sayers died in 1957... if only they had changed the law 3 years later...

so where is it death+50 then ? canada, right ? is there a pg canada ?? or some equivalent site in a country under the death+50 rule ?

Do not forget, please, that you need to consider the copyright law in YOUR country too. You live in France, where the copyright law is "life + 70". You are committing an offence if you personally download a book which is still in copyright in your country. You need to decide for yourself whether or not this is an issue for you.

Do not forget, please, that you need to consider the copyright law in YOUR country too. You live in France, where the copyright law is "life + 70". You are committing an offence if you personally download a book which is still in copyright in your country. You need to decide for yourself whether or not this is an issue for you.

That is a good point HarryT, however in the case of Dorothy Sayers specifically i have already bought her books in french and also one or two in english, and given that the work is now in the public domain (even if not in France...) i feel that getting PD versions in the original english can be equated with format shifting (which i think is a completely fair use, as long as it is for personal use only) and i would not feel that i was being terribly immoral in downloading them.

i don't want to launch a debate about copyright laws, but i will add that i like to read a lot of classics and old books which can often be very hard to find because they are out of print and / or there is not a big demand for them (even used, especially in reasonable condition, or else only as a "collector's item" which is very expensive, especially since i don't want to keep a book wrapped up in tissue paper, i want to read it. and if i buy a used "collector's" book, it does not benefit in any way the author, only the person who is selling it and who had no hand in making it. that seems more of capitalistic interest than cultural, and capitalism and culture tend to make very poor bedfellows) . there have been many times when i have looked for a book that i want to read and been unable to buy it anywhere for these reasons, even though i was perfectly ready to pay for it. in these cases, if could find the book in the public domain (even if it's technically not in PD in France yet) i think i would be perfectly justified in downloading it and i would not hesitate.

i buy a lot of books and i feel that authors absolutely should be remunerated for their hard work, which i appreciate (the same goes for musicians and all artists ; i want to show my thanks to them for making something that i enjoy and i the obvious way to do this is to pay for it ; it goes beyond a legal question for me and is more a question of respect or ethics). however if the author has been dead for decades *and* i *cannot* buy the work because the publisher doesn't make it available, i think that the survival of cultural heritage becomes more important than jurisdiction.

i read somewhere that the Disney estate is preventing *any* new works from falling into the public domain in the united states because they don't want mickey mouse to fall into the public domain, so the rules continue to be extended every time that is in danger of happening. this seems to me a clear abuse of the concept and dangerous to the survival of other cultural artifacts which are affected by it (especially since, let's face it, Walt Disney is dead and his heirs are surely rich enough already).

public domain should be a compromise between rewarding the creators of works and making cultural heritage available to the population, for the survival of the precise things the laws supposedly want to protect. if a book is not in PD but is out of print and impossible or very very difficult to find, the end result can easily be that it becomes completely forgotten and lost to future generations.

preserving cultural works and allowing them to be transmitted to future generations seems to me to be just as important and for the same reasons of respect to the creator of them as monetary compensation when the author can benefit from it.

hm, now that i have wandered far far off topic i think i will end this post ! sorry for the long digression...

I don't disagree with anything that you say, zelda. Just trying to provide information that some may have been unaware of.

Yes, of course, it's an important point to make. i think i just wanted to be clear that i'm not downloading willy-nilly without consideration !

Yes, of course, it's an important point to make. i think i just wanted to be clear that i'm not downloading willy-nilly without consideration !

Actually I believe Will-nilly is in the public domain :)

Actually I believe Will-nilly is in the public domain :)

:p hee ! that's a relief !!

As for the original question, what mystery authors can be converted: I just finished reading Mary Roberts Rinehart's "The Man In Lower Ten" and I've also downloaded "The Circular Staircase". Her stuff is GREAT --- I remember her name from my high-school reading. Surely there must be more of it that can be found?

She wrote in the 19-ought-something time period, so it should be fair game.

As for the original question, what mystery authors can be converted: I just finished reading Mary Roberts Rinehart's "The Man In Lower Ten" and I've also downloaded "The Circular Staircase". Her stuff is GREAT --- I remember her name from my high-school reading. Surely there must be more of it that can be found?Well, yes, a bit:
http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/r#a183

And if you'd like already converted:

http://manybooks.net/authors/rinehart.html

http://www.munseys.com/detail/mode/author/rinehart
______
Dennis

i will take a look at