MobileRead Free Ebook Section Reaches 8,000

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by astra

8000 books is a total number of all formats correct?
Does it mean it is safe to assume there are about 2000 titles?

it's safe to assume there are fewer than 8000 distinct titles, but more than 2000, because many are not available in all formats.

[mjh215]

If it was 8k distinct titles, MR would be challenging PG in the near future for total books. But it is still nothing to scoff at.

-MJ

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

it's safe to assume there are fewer than 8000 distinct titles, but more than 2000, because many are not available in all formats.

Well, it could be less than 2000 if every book were available in mobi, lrf, lit, imp, html, pdf, epub... There are also a few duplicated books (different formatting, illustrated or not...). But I'd say it's more than 2000 anyway.

[lilac_jive]

Wow, thanks for all of the hard work everyone!

[mtravellerh]

Originally Posted by ProDigit

I think there's a credit race going on between 3-5 users on the top.
They press e-text files through a program,that outputs in all formats (mobi, LRF, lit, prc,...).

Though my concern is that many books that are been automatically formatted, usually also have lousy formatting.

This is absolutely not true and I am deeply offended by this statement.

Don (Dr.Drib), Patricia, Crutledge, nrapallo and Harry T are my friends (and I do not count that many in this community yet) All of our books are handmade and with great love for those books. We make books in multiple formats, that's true. But we do that because YOU people want and use different formats.

As I see it, there is not one of our books that is "lousy" formatted (gr!!). Nobody that I know is doing this for any "credits", that is absolutely sure and certain (perhaps YOU should check your motivation). There is no gain in this, neither financially nor is there any fame to be gained. If there really is a problem with us posting in multiple formats or too many books, there may be a simple solution for that, at least for me.

Whenever I have a book to upload, I check if this has been uploaded before. If it has been uploaded and mine does not have a real plus value, I won't post it in that format. Basta. And most of my "colleagues" do the same.

PS: If you download a book with "lousy" formatting, just delete it, it hasn't costed you anything at all. Make a new, better version.

[astra]

I don't know about others, but my gut feelings tell me that Patricia is very diligent/good quality ebooks producer.

P.S. I have not read a single book from the forum so far.

[mtravellerh]

Originally Posted by Jellby

Mtravellerh's frenzy, mainly

Thanks. I take that as a compliment.

I Do want to explain why I have that frenzy as some seem to misunderstand my motivation: First, I love books. Second, there were and there are not a lot of books in French or German here. I like to make people happy and I like to make books.

As, for reasons I don't want to insist on, it is quite impossible for me to be outside for a longer period of time and I have to live in controlled conditions, I do have lots of time on my hands. So I make books.

As these books are mostly nicely formatted to begin with (Athelstane for instance) creating those books is a rather straightforward thing that does not take too much time. As furthermore, I prefer my books to have a nice but not too fancy interface and ravenne is creating fantastic covers in a flash, making a few books a day is not a big thing.

I do not want to be in any Top Ten posters or anything the like and I wish those charts wouldn't be there. I was, in fact, made aware of their presence a few days ago.

[ShortNCuddlyAm]

All the books I have read from this forum have been very well formatted.

I am in the process of deleting the ones that came with my Sony to replace them with ones from here because of that.

I also know that people do go back to the books they've uploaded and re-upload them if they've improved the formatting, which to me suggests care and pride in what they're doing.

[RWood]

Originally Posted by nrapallo

Of which RWood's ebook contributions (if you haven't already noticed) are a HUGE reason MobileRead.com is THE place for free nicely-formatted ebooks.

About six months ago, I posted MobileRead-Top 100 ebook downloads by format-June2008 and RWood's .prc/.lrf ebooks contributions, collectively, have been downloaded Tens of Thousands of times.

Kudos to RWood as well!

Thank you Nick. For those that do not know, Nick has translated and posted most (all?) of the REB 1200 IMP books available including many books that I originally produced in other formats.

I am saddened to see that at least one of the members thinks there is a race b etween the top posters. Speaking as one of them, that is completely wrong. If it were true you would see only mechanical translations like ManyBooks provides with no human intervention, short stories would be extracted from collections and posted on their own to increase the post count, and no one would waste the time to create custom covers for the books.

Most books are available in one to three formats only. The rest of the formats are, at the moment, experimental. We have tested the water to see if there is any demand for that format. Some like FB2, RB, and Psion have garnered no interest. Others like ePub have attracted a growing following.

[mtravellerh]

Originally Posted by RWood

Most books are available in one to three formats only. The rest of the formats are, at the moment, experimental. We have tested the water to see if there is any demand for that format. Some like FB2, RB, and Psion have garnered no interest. Others like ePub have attracted a growing following.

Go, epub! But seriously, I like that format very much and it is very promising. I humbly propose that we should create an epub section.

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by mtravellerh

Go, epub! But seriously, I like that format very much and it is very promising. I humbly propose that we should create an epub section.

it should be coming very soon.

[nrapallo]

Originally Posted by mtravellerh

Go, epub! But seriously, I like that format very much and it is very promising. I humbly propose that we should create an epub section.

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

it should be coming very soon.

And a testament to that is that I've starting working on an ePub2IMP conversion utilty, much along the same lines as my Mobi2IMP (it will have the same look and feel).

However, whatever I may produce (and finally release) will be short lived as the next release of eBook Publisher (the software from eBooktechnologies.com that facilitates the actual creation of the .imp format) WILL support the loading and saving of .epub ebooks. I just don't know WHEN they will be releasing it.

I have already MANUALLY been able to convert your (calibre produced) .epub ebooks to .imp as well as those finely hand-crafted .epub's by Jellby. There are a few incompatiblities that I'm trying to iron out (on the .imp making side) and will post my findings soon to the EPUB forum.

Personally speaking, I think .epub is here to stay, but the tools that make/support it will evolve into better quality ones as time goes on.

[pilotbob]

What would be cool, and perhaps Alex is already working on something, would be rather than having to upload each title/format as a separate "book" there would be a way to add a format to a title (sort of like calibre does) so that we could have a total "title count" and also a total book count.

It might make searching/navigating the ebook section a bit easier too.

BOb

[mtravellerh]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

What would be cool, and perhaps Alex is already working on something, would be rather than having to upload each title/format as a separate "book" there would be a way to add a format to a title (sort of like calibre does) so that we could have a total "title count" and also a total book count.

It might make searching/navigating the ebook section a bit easier too.

BOb

Awesome idea, Bob. So people would stop pestering about my multiple format postings.

[vivaldirules]

Originally Posted by astra

P.S. I have not read a single book from the forum so far.

(shudder) Oh, the humanity of it all!