Quote:
Originally Posted by RobertDDL
Thank you! I am beginning to doubt that anyone else is doing something similar. I'm aware of the sites you've mentioned, but I'm afraid it would be hubris to hope they might link to my little site, which has little to do with what they are doing (Roy Glashan obviously cooperates with PGA, that's a different thing). [...]
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I think I'm missing something. How is it that these have little to do with what you're doing?
You're both producing publicly accessible editions of public domain works. Their sites seem to be concentrating on on-line readable (HTML) versions, some with epub thrown in for good measure. Your site appears to be concentrating on PDF versions* with epub thrown in for good measure.
Neither your site nor the ones in my previous post seem to be targeting special/illustrated/annotated editions, nor following some particular author, or period, or genre, or anything else that might make the libraries really stand out as having some particular purpose or objective that is different to the larger libraries at Gutenberg or here on MR. (Being carefully proof-read doesn't count, I expect that.)
Here on MR you find that some people have taken great care to reproduce epub/mobi versions of illustrated or other special editions - which demonstrates particular care and a lot of work, making them well worth grabbing over editions I have found elsewhere. In combination with the volume of books you can find here, this makes MR well worth visiting before resorting to Gutenberg. But I have trouble working out why I would extend my search beyond these two sites unless there is some particular title I can't find.
Until you can define your library as having some good purpose or distinction - give some reason why anyone would direct people there rather than to Gutenberg or MR - then, of course, you are going to have some trouble marketing it.
So you might start by working out exactly what it is you're doing, and how it is different. If that difference is PDF (as it seems, to me, to be) then work out why PDF is important. What do you expect people to do with the PDF?*
* PDF not ideal reading on diverse devices. It's not ideal for supporting searchable content. (It can be used for either, but it's not the best match.) It's great as an electronic representation of paper. It's ideal as a print-on-demand source. Is that your target here? Just add a cover and print?