BlackMask DVD from Silk Pagoda

[dhbailey]

I know that Silk Pagoda has had a supposed Sony Reader version of the BlackMask DVD of 10,000 titles for a long time, but those files were simply PDF files, and as such they had the normal problems which PDF files have on the Reader.

They are now offering a real Sony Reader version, with all the files being LRF files, and as such they can be used with all three font sizes, and they work much better than the PDF files do.

I just thought I would mention it here because it contains many of the files from PG which others are working on turning into LRF files, so that people might want to make the $25 investment and save themselves lots of work. The BlackMask DVD titles have tables of contents which work, and I am delighted with mine.

I have no relationship with Silk Pagoda or BlackMask other than as a happy customer.

[HarryT]

That's good to hear, but I'm still going to carry on with my "manual" conversions, because they will always be better than the automatic conversion which SP must be using.

I shall order one of SP's DVD's however - $25 is a great buy!

Thanks for letting us known about it.

[Bob Russell]

Thanks DHBailey. Good find. It looks like this is the URL, in case anyone is trying to find it... http://www.silkpagoda.com/catalog/pr...roducts_id=650

I already bought a MS Reader DVD with the zipped HTML, but I may also get this DVD. Not bad for a full Sony Reader library, ready to go.

But, like most people, I'll probably be reading Harry and other peoples' manual conversions first! It's the compulsive collector in me that drives this purchase more than anything... you know, to have those books ready "just in case" I want to read them!

[KlondikeGeoff]

OK, folks, this really sounds great, saving the hassle of downloading PG books, sucking them into Word, saving as .rtf, then importing into the reader.

I've been doing that for years for my old Rocket eBook, and now for the Reader.

However, I've been disappointed numerous times, buying Sony books, and finding that many do NOT permit large enough font, even at the max size in landscape mode, for me to read comfortably.

Before springing the 25 bucks for this DVD, I have to know how large the fonts are once in the Reader. I don't see any place on their site to contact them with such a question, so will somebody who has tried it on the Reader, please let me know if the largest size is big enough for people with vision problems?

I don't know how you will quantify this, but it has to be size or two larger than most of the Sony books.

[silkpag]

Originally Posted by KlondikeGeoff

OK, folks, this really sounds great, saving the hassle of downloading PG books, sucking them into Word, saving as .rtf, then importing into the reader.

I've been doing that for years for my old Rocket eBook, and now for the Reader.

However, I've been disappointed numerous times, buying Sony books, and finding that many do NOT permit large enough font, even at the max size in landscape mode, for me to read comfortably.

Before springing the 25 bucks for this DVD, I have to know how large the fonts are once in the Reader. I don't see any place on their site to contact them with such a question, so will somebody who has tried it on the Reader, please let me know if the largest size is big enough for people with vision problems?

I don't know how you will quantify this, but it has to be size or two larger than most of the Sony books.

Sorry, there was a contact on the site.

Just test it on the files here:

http://www.munseys.com/index.php

Does allow all three sizes for Sony, and the Tables of Contents and so forth.

Note, not quite the same as the PG DVD. They've several hundred books that I don't, and vice versa.

[RWood]

I have the older Silk Pagoda Sony PDF DVD and while the formatting is rather harsh and mechanical, it is very sericable. I will most likely also get the LRF version. I'm (almost) as bad as Bob in that respect.

[hn_88]

I was about to post about the Sony Reader formatted files on BlackMask.com , but this thread is dealing with the same subject - blackmask.com and munseys.com go to the same site where a large number - 10,000? - books are available for free download as eBookwise ,Plucker ,Rocket eBook, Isilo, PDF, Sony Reader LRF , Mobipocket and MS-Reader in addition to HTML. Most of the stuff from gutenberg.org seems to be here...

[LaughingVulcan]

Wow! Now I know what I'm buying next.... Having it on one DVD sounds like a convenience that the price is worth.

Now I'll have to deal with storage strategies seriously.

[RWood]

Originally Posted by LaughingVulcan

Wow! Now I know what I'm buying next.... Having it on one DVD sounds like a convenience that the price is worth.

Now I'll have to deal with storage strategies seriously.

It will all fit on 2 2GB SD cards that you can interchange as needed in the Reader.

[silkpag]

Originally Posted by hn_88

I was about to post about the Sony Reader formatted files on BlackMask.com , but this thread is dealing with the same subject - blackmask.com and munseys.com go to the same site where a large number - 10,000? - books are available for free download as eBookwise ,Plucker ,Rocket eBook, Isilo, PDF, Sony Reader LRF , Mobipocket and MS-Reader in addition to HTML. Most of the stuff from gutenberg.org seems to be here...

Let's see, it's around 17,000 books now

Depending on whether or now the t-3 is working at Montgomery College...

[Gravitas]

bear with me I'm new to all this ebook malarky and it's getting late, but lets say I bought this DVD...it contains 10,000 books I can read on my Sony Reader, and I can search for the books I want?

My Reader hasn't arrived yet, butI'd just put the CD in my PC, connect up my reader (or my SD cards) and transfer over the books I wanted and that's it?

[RWood]

Originally Posted by Gravitas

bear with me I'm new to all this ebook malarky and it's getting late, but lets say I bought this DVD...it contains 10,000 books I can read on my Sony Reader, and I can search for the books I want?

My Reader hasn't arrived yet, butI'd just put the CD in my PC, connect up my reader (or my SD cards) and transfer over the books I wanted and that's it?

It was that simple with the PDF version although the file names were a bit (ok, a lot) cryptic. However the indexing around it was very good. Maybe it was a production glitch (detailed scientific term); but I did find a few books missing from the disk that were to have been there.

[dhbailey]

I've found the same thing. What I've been doing is going through the html-page index of the Blackmask DVD and then copying/renaming the files to be more meaningful. I've just gone through the categories I'm most interested in and then moving on to the less important categories and eventually will have renamed most of the files.

The Reader will index them all by the title/author fields within the files, but trying to find the ones to load into the reader can be difficult.

On the other hand, using the Connect software, you can open the sonymax folder on the DVD and the files will list by title or by author, depending on how you sort them.

BUT -- the Connect software will choke on 10,000 titles, so if you want to go this route, my advice would be to simply copy the files into a lot of smaller folders, maybe 20 folders each containing 500 files.

Personally, I figure renaming them, while more time consuming, will ultimately provide more flexibility.

Unless some great programmer on this list can program a utility which can be added to the right-click menu in Windows Explorer and will show title/author data for .lrf files. :-)

[Gravitas]

sounds good to me - order placed

[Isles8008]

I know this is an old thread, but just in case anyone is still looking, the Blackmask Online DVD of 10,000 classic PDF eBooks is now being sold on eBay for a mere $5.98 (free S&H). Here is the link. I bought one of these a few weeks ago and it is really great. The order was shipped quickly and the eBooks will arrive on one DVD. Just open the disk on your computer and drag the "PDF ebooks" folder onto your desktop to copy the files to your computer's hard drive. They will take up 3.76 GB of space. From there, you can select the files you want to add to your reader. DO NOT try to copy the files directly from the disc to your eReader as this will most like freeze your computer (I learned this the hard way).

As a previous commenter stated, the actual PDF file names are rather obscure (abbreviations are used, like "ptart.pdf" for Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man), but the DVD includes a fully searchable table of contents on .htm pages. Just click on a genre, like fiction.htm, and a page will open up (usually your default browser page) and you will be provided with an alphabetical list of authors links and titles. Click on the author, it moves you down the page to their titles, then click on the eBook you want to download and a pop-up box will appear. It is really quite simple.

Most of these PDF files also have searchable table of contents links to each part of the book or chapter. They all have the old Blackmask Online logo and formatting. Before the site was shut down due to the unscrupulous behavior of its original owner (a DMCA notice was filed for his "backdoor" sale of copyrighted pulp fiction books, like Doc Savage and The Shadow series, and this took the website offline). Blackmask Online was one of the first popular free eBooks websites, back in the days before the Amazon Kindle. David Moynihan organized massive collections of classic eBooks, including technically OOP pulp fiction novels from the 1930s and 40s, a genre that was extremely rare to find in eBook format at the time. As Blackmask's popularity grew, a few of these titles got him in trouble where their old rights holders realized their new, electronic financial potential. Moynihan also had a habit of taking eBooks published by the community efforts of Project Gutenberg, reformatting the texts, and slapping his own copyright on them when he sold them in compilation DVDs. They did all the work, he organized the files and sold them, an action that is apparently legal, but looked down upon. This deeply offended many in the early eReading community, and if you do a Google search for his name you get a mix of "eBook pioneer" and "shameless profiteer" sentiments. The original Blackmask Online 10,000 PDFs DVD sold for $25.00. Today, similar collections are available for a fraction of that cost, but remember, this was back in 2004-2006, well before the eBooks boom of 2007 (thank you Amazon). Blackmask Online makes for an interesting story, as the future of eBook sales has been rife with legal tangles and rights controversies.

So, if you would like to step into the WayBack Machine and own one of the first massive libraries of public domain PDFs, you can still do so, and for less than $6.00. I recently did pay over $20 for an eBooks collection, but the total number of titles is over 400,000. Times have changed. I hope this can be of some help to those of you looking for large collections of eBooks, just to know that you have them. There is an incredible feeling that comes along with the knowledge that on your computer, 10,000 or 400,000 eBooks are at the ready for your reading pleasure!