Quote:
Originally Posted by RWood
It would seem that some small private publishers are cleaning the texts of the public domain books, correcting errors from the transcriptions, fixing the quotes, etc. that the others (Amazon included) leave in the e-book. Then they have the gall to price these corrected PD e-books reasonably. How dare they. 
An example would be the Father Brown Omnibus from Timeless Classics. |
Another reason to consider purchasing a public domain work, and in my opinion the most important reason, is translation! Years ago I tried to read The Divine Comedy from project gutenberg and I found it horribly banal, poorly written cruft. I figured it must've just been a matter of me not being interested in that sort of subject matter. Years later, however, someone brought it up, I made my complaints, and they asked what translator... I had no idea. I didn't even consider it. Now I have a copy from Penguin classics, and it's far more enjoyable. The differences aren't that vast if you make a comparison, but it seems to be a matter of the translator's grasp of my language that makes the biggest difference.
That said, I realize that translations of public domain works are not public domain unless explicitly made to be so. I just hope that Amazon's new rules don't prevent translation quality competition for translated PD works.