Content Best source for "Classics"?

[ziegl027]

So, I am eagerly anticipating my new DXG. What's the best place to get "Classic" literature? Right here from the MobileRead downloads? Kindle store's classics selections? Project Gutenberg? I know for the more obscure stuff (out of copyright crafting stuff, for instance), I will probably have to just take whatever I can find. But how about the "Old Standards" like Austen, Dickens, Cervantes, Aesop? Do the MobileRead ones tend to have better formatting since they are "hand-crafted" so to speak?

[desertgrandma]

HERE HERE HERE!!!

Our books are different in that they come hand formatted by our own members.......ready to read.
No excess pages, and proofed for errors......

Click on the link below.....

[TheKindleWorm]

I would say try here first and then if you can't find what you want here try manybooks.net and feedbooks.com which are both very good sources.

[curstpriest]

Feedbooks has good formatting of PD books, TOC with working links, and also they use tabbing and stuff that many other books don't. Their .mobi is good like this. Still there are some books that have special formatting, I can think of Alice in wonderland - the illustrated version has one part where the text winds down like smoke, the only way I have seen this preserved properly is in a PDF. I guess they could use special tabbing or something in a .mobi, or an image file, but I usually just see it as a block of text, without the formatting =(

I would highly suggest against the kindle store, most of their books are just repurposed OCR/scans and have lots of errors and no TOC.

[JeremyR]

Originally Posted by TheKindleWorm

I would say try here first and then if you can't find what you want here try manybooks.net and feedbooks.com which are both very good sources.

Indeed.

I had loaded up my Kindle's download thing with a bunch of free classics from Amazon. When they arrived I was very disappointed at the poor quality of them.

Here is where you should look first. It's sort of a toss up between manybooks and feedbooks after that. Probably look on feedbooks first. Their selection isn't the biggest, but some of the older manybooks books for Kindle don't actually have TOC or chapters (like from 2008?), only the recent ones do.

For obscure stuff try the internet archive (archive.org). They have a lot of books scanned in for various projects. Generally these are just OCR dumps, but generally they are readable. (They also typically have the image files they were scanned from, so that might be an option on a DX)

In a few cases, Gutenberg is the best. For some of the old SF magazines, they will have the interior artwork for stories, while feedbooks/manybooks often omit them. But as a tradeoff, you get somewhat weird formatting from there.

[gertblij]

Originally Posted by ziegl027

What's the best place to get "Classic" literature?

Definitely Google :-)
The result of googling "Title Author epub" is amazing. And it doesn't only work for classics, it works for recent releases as well.

Especially for the popular classics, more often than not you get multiple options. Grab one if you are impatient, try them all for the best result if you are not. Hey, they are free.

Don't worry about the format. A free product called "calibre" converts just about any e-format to MOBI, which works great on the Kindle

[neonbible]

I asked the same question a month back. Definitely check Mobileread first. As desertgrandma said, they are hand edited by members and often end up looking excellent. I still find the odd one which doesn't have proper TOC support in Kindle, but thats easily fixed with Sigl/Calibre.

[ziegl027]

I will definitely look here first. I know using my Sony I've been disappointed in the formatting and editing of many books, even commercial releases that I've gotten from the library or as freebies. I'm particularly driven nuts by the HUGE margins in some books. I guess that won't be as much of an issue with DX, but I remember I got "Unseen Academicals" as a freebie, and if I tried to use any font larger than "S" in portrait orientation there were, like three words per line of text in a teeny little strip down the middle. I don't think publishers understand that the aesthetics of the format are different for ereaders vs a print page; the bezel of the device essentially replaces the margin.

[JMikeD]

Originally Posted by ziegl027

I don't think publishers understand that the aesthetics of the format are different for ereaders vs a print page; the bezel of the device essentially replaces the margin.

Well, not for everybody. I still like a small bit of white space between the text and bezel.

[mlewis78]

I've had that problem with epub books from the library too -- huge margins, so little text on 5" screen (cybook opus). Thank goodness I haven't had that empty space with my kindle books.

[ziegl027]

Originally Posted by JMikeD

Well, not for everybody. I still like a small bit of white space between the text and bezel.

Emphasis on the "small", though. I've had some books that have margins well over a centimeter, leaving less than 6 cm of width of the reading column. Then it's almost as bad as reading on my phone (and yes, I know many people routinely read on their phones, I gave it a good college try and it's not something I want as a routine thing )