Ebooks on bittorrent!

[Alexander Turcic]

Originally Posted by tompe

You do not notice updates with the system today. Or can you get and RSS feed or email when a book changes?

I downloaded all books by certain authors some time ago and I would really appreciate some way to know if updates are available. That would require that I can see from my copy which version I have.

I will think about this idea and how it would be possible to implement it.

I also find it to hard to find out if a book by a specific author exist here.

Couldn't you use the "Search E-Books" feature for that?

[kacir]

Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic

Nothing wrong with torrents per se, but I think we must respect the wishes of those whom I count among our most active and contributing members. Whatever their reasons may be, I don't want us to alienate anybody by officially ignoring their wishes and spreading the books through another medium.

Very well said.

[montsnmags]

Originally Posted by kacir

Very well said.

I'll second that.

It's not that I agree with those dedicated and valuable individuals that put such great efforts into the formatting and uploading so many of these great books but would prefer to not to see them torrented. It's rather that, as it appears some other good and respectful people are doing, I'd rather that these dedicated uploaders be convinced of the benefits of torrenting before it might occur, lest it dissuade them from the activity itself. If they're all not happy with it, then, in the end, the current system still leaves me happy with access to well-formatted, free books.

I really appreciate that.

Cheers,
Marc

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic

Couldn't you use the "Search E-Books" feature for that?

What feature is that? I looked for it now but did not find it.

The problem with the index is that each letter have to many entries so maybe a two level index would be a good idea?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by tompe

What feature is that? I looked for it now but did not find it.

The problem with the index is that each letter have to many entries so maybe a two level index would be a good idea?

Click the "E-Books" link on the blue menu bar under the "MobileRead logo" near the top of the screen, and select the "Browse latest uploads" menu item. On the resulting screen, at the right hand side of the 2nd blue bar (the one saying "E-Book Uploads"), is a link saying "Search E-Books". Click this, and a text box will appear in which you can type either a title or an author name, and you'll get a list of all the books in which that string matches either the title or author's name.

[Jellby]

Personally, I have no problem with the books I've created being available in packs, mass-downloads, torrents or whatever. The more people enjoying (I hope) my work, the better. But, of course, I would prefer some kind of feedback, comments, etc. (and I'm not going no include my e-mail in the books).

Maybe some kind of page/server/whatever could be set up that would make it more user-friendly for the downloader to get books from MR, something that allows searches, lists the files, lets one tick check-boxes and download every selected file (maybe in a single .zip file)... there could be even some kind of scoring for the "literary quality" of the text and for the "formatting quality" of the ebook, separately.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Click the "E-Books" link on the blue menu bar under the "MobileRead logo" near the top of the screen, and select the "Browse latest uploads" menu item. On the resulting screen, at the right hand side of the 2nd blue bar (the one saying "E-Book Uploads"), is a link saying "Search E-Books". Click this, and a text box will appear in which you can type either a title or an author name, and you'll get a list of all the books in which that string matches either the title or author's name.

Aha, I did not check under "Browse latest uploads" because I wanted to search among all books and did not expect that to be found under _latest_ uploads.

[tompe]

I had to look one minute on the page to find "Search E-books". Maybe it is possible to hide the link more but you have to really work for it. Why should I suspect that a heading (that you normally not read) is an important link?

But I do not want to search the contents of E-books. I want to search for author name. So how can I know from that search box that it really will give me all books by an author?

But it seems to work. Thanks for the instruction on how to find it.

[tompe]

Also searching for "Jane Austen" will not find any books which is confusing.

[Patricia]

Either "Austen" or "Austen, Jane" will work.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Patricia

Either "Austen" or "Austen, Jane" will work.

Yes, in in the google era that is really not very good for a system that is not targeted to professionals like librarians.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by tompe

Yes, in in the google era that is really not very good for a system that is not targeted to professionals like librarians.

Or someone that knows how to use a telephone book.

Dale

[tompe]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

Or someone that knows how to use a telephone book.

What do you mean? Jane Austen would in my phone book be listed as "Austen Jane" and the search will not find any entry with that either.

[Amalthia]

Guys, when a user comes along and lets you know the system isn't user friendly it means that possibly a lot more users had the same problem but were too shy to speak up about it, or embarrased. the fact is the downloading book section and searching isn't user friendly. It took me a bit to figure it out and I was bored at work with nothing to do for 8 hours, so I had time to figure it out. Not everyone has that time.

[Halo]

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

There are omnibus editions. Maybe we should have more,I don't know if we should. But what I'd like to see is that as we read the book we have gotten, we should really go back to its original thread and post our appreciation or comments about the works.

I agree.

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

There is an other consideration I would like to underline. A property right to the visual format of the uploader. Lots of care is worked into these books, shouldn't the uploader at least be asked permission about "torrenting"?

Are these ebooks not freely redistributable? Am I committing copyright infringement if I download a book from MobileRead and later decide to give a copy of the ebook to a friend? Please clarify as I think this is more important that the torrent issue.

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

And why should we get books that we'll never read? That's hoarding.

Why would it matter to you that other people might wish to hoard books? With electronic information there is no scarcity of goods as with physical books. If someone decides to collect a copy of every legally redistributable ebook what disservice does that do to you? Please elaborate on what the core issue is that you object to.