As mentioned in another thread, I am converting Doc Smith's Spacehounds of IPC to LRF. The book was originally published in three (3) monthly installments of Amazing Stories and PG took their text directly from this source. This means that it is complete with the monthly recap of all that has gone on before. This is great for the original readers; but, a pain for those reading it as a unified piece.

When the combined book was published in paperback these sections were removed. I plan to follow that procedure with the MobileRead version.

I don't see the point of leaving these recaps. They were removed on the version that we have on Feedbooks: http://www.feedbooks.com/discover/view_book/828

Interesting Hadrein. I just looked at the version on FeedBooks and it does look nice.

One area that did take a bit of time in the formatting was the conversion of the PG practice of indicating the italics by placing an underscore before and after the letters that are to be in italic. For example, "_Fire!_" is the PG way of formatting "Fire!" I notice that all of the italics were missing in the FeedBook version. Also, the PDF method does not provide font choices as the LRF versions do.

Now all I need to do is to find a good cover image for the book. This may take longer than the book formatting itself.

Interesting Hadrein. I just looked at the version on FeedBooks and it does look nice.

One area that did take a bit of time in the formatting was the conversion of the PG practice of indicating the italics by placing an underscore before and after the letters that are to be in italic. For example, "_Fire!_" is the PG way of formatting "Fire!" I notice that all of the italics were missing in the FeedBook version. Also, the PDF method does not provide font choices as the LRF versions do.

Now all I need to do is to find a good cover image for the book. This may take longer than the book formatting itself.

You're right, we should add this. Actually we're using BBCode for the formatting, just like you did in this post, but we could actually support both. This way the PG formatting would be transformed into italics in the PDF. Oh and the PDF does provide font choices, what it doesn't provide is a way to change the size once you've generated the file.

Why not use the HTML version of the PG book?
For cover images maybe a project should be started to have Public Domain artwork be created by volunteers. LibriVox tries this for CD covers already.

Or get tsgreer to do the cover art! :wink:

Yes, PG's HTML version definitely has the pictures. Well worth including - they really add "atmosphere" to the story.

See also "Skylark Three" where the Amazing Stories covers have been added to show the series parts.
BTW destroying the Chrysler Building seems to be the running gag of SF :-)

Or get tsgreer to do the cover art! :wink:


Hey all! I'm game for volunteering and helping with any cover art that you need. It's great to be able to help out in any way. Just PM me or drop me a line here in the forums. If doing cover art helps advance our cause of getting more people to read e-books, then I'm all for it. :)