[bgalbrecht]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

Thanks for informing/reminding us about this.

The cynic in me says that that the situation is not surprising. No one ever accused these publishers of made-over public domain books of pursuing excellence. There may be some publishers operating with a similar modus operandi which do try to provide excellent products (there's always at least one black sheep in every family), but I'm hard-pressed right now to think of any names.

However, the economist in me injects a dose of common sense. Companies with a business model of providing excellence in quality + selling at fire-sale prices are probably not going to last long. Something is going to get short shrift, and it's usually quality.

I've been known to "buy" a bunch of Amazon PD freebies, and the daily Open Road Media ones, too, and wonder why I bother when I know that most all of them are available at PG, or here at MR, or a couple other volunteer sites with PD material. The Open Road ones are never illustrated. I think some of the PD publishers even start with the PG material, and still drop the illustrations. I guess part of the problem is that it's so easy to be lazy and click on a bunch of buttons at Amazon than it is to go over to PG, do a search, and download it.

I tend to roll my eyes when I see people get excited at some PD publisher making a dozen or two PD books free for a limited time, when I know that the same books are free all the time here, or at PG, or Google. While Google has the largest collection of free PD material, I won't download it to dedicate ereaders because the Google conversions to ebook formats are total crap. The scanned images on the Google Books website are readable on a PC though.

I try not to bring this up very often. I realize people are just trying to be helpful, and in some cases the temporarily free PD may actually be superior to (or at least more convenient for Kindle owners than) the always free versions elsewhere. However, some people get quite upset if they feel they're being told their contribution isn't all that useful, and then nasty flame wars erupt. I don't think it's ever happened in this thread, and I hope it never does.