20% discount for books from 'Diesel eBooks'

[Colin Dunstan]

Thanks to Diesel eBooks for providing us with an exclusive 20% discount on any e-book purchased at their webstore. The discount is valid until 2/15/05. Just key in the following code at checkout: dieselfat53

Diesel eBooks is a new e-book store providing instant access to over 35,000 mostly commercial book titles in various formats (Microsoft Reader LIT, eReader, and Adobe PDF).

Personal experience: Diesel eBooks support is excellent. Two weeks ago I was contacted by Scott from Diesel eBooks who informed me that they had increased their e-book inventory. I was more than happy to confirm that the particular items I was previously missing (books by George R. R. Martin) are now in stock!

[Brad]

You got me interested enough to really give Diesel a good browse. I do like the category and sub-category structure they have set up.

Is it my imagination, or do they carry some commercial titles the other stores do not? Also, I noticed some very interesting military memoires available. I might try them out.

Thanks for the heads up. The layout of the site is nice. Too bad, though, most of the books I saw only have the unusable and inapproriate Adobe reader format. They need to incorporate either ereader or mobipocket into their offerings.

[Alexander Turcic]

Originally Posted by akira28

Thanks for the heads up. The layout of the site is nice. Too bad, though, most of the books I saw only have the unusable and inapproriate Adobe reader format. They need to incorporate either ereader or mobipocket into their offerings.

You're right. I first thought all e-books were offered in all three formats (ereader, pdf, MS lit). This is apparantly not the case.

If you purchase an e-book, and it is available in Microsoft .lit, I recommend you buy it in this format and than use Convertlit to reconvert it back to .html.

[Diesel eBooks]

Akira/Alexander,

I appreciate your interest in Diesel and thank you for the heads up. I'd read your post a couple of days ago about the lack of palm and .lit titles compared to Adobe and it struck me as odd, because actually ms reader is our predominant format (not by much). I did some checking and learned that a "database update" script was running when it shouldn't, causing some of the palms and .lit versions of titles to drop for certain periods of time. We've since modified the script and the times in which it runs. Hopefully, if you check now, you'll see a little more even distribution. Thanks again. This is just one of the reasons why I like these forums.

Scott
Diesel eBooks

[hacker]

I hate to be the e-book Nazi again... but diesel-ebooks is repurposing the works of "FreeELiterature.com", who appears to be in direct violation of the Gutenberg License, specifically these two parts:

1. Commercial use: The "small print" license includes a royalty schedule for commercial use of the Project Gutenberg trademark, including any sort of resale.
2. Modification: Only unmodified copies of these eBooks may be redistributed without limitation. If you make changes to eBooks (other than alteration for different display devices), you are prohibited from including the header or otherwise associating your derivative work with Project Gutenberg. Note especially that if you choose to make changes, then you must remove the header, and you may NOT use the Project Gutenberg trademark.

As stated on their About Us page:

[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Project Gutenberg is our major source of these great works (so far). Our first step is to convert their plain text files TO READY TO READE-Books for your PC, PDA or Tablet computer, then post them to our WEB SITE for free downloading. [/font][font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]
[/font]

I'm not sure Diesel Ebooks wants to associate their own company with that. The books clearly show they come directly from Project Gutenberg's archive.

Also, why are they all in .lit format, the most-restrictive and unusable format available?

[TadW]

Ok, wait a moment. The culprit here is FreeELiterature, not Diesel eBooks. You are blaming Diesel eBooks for associating with FreeELiterature? Or are you blaming FreeELiterature for something here? And my thoughts are:

1. You don't if FreeELiterature is in fact paying royalties. Or did you check?
2. FreeELiterature is not using the Project Gutenberg trademark within its e-books nor within the header of the e-books.

[TadW]

Btw, I like the .lit format as long as you can fully convert it back to html/oeb using convertlit. You cannot do this with any other format such as eReader, Mobipocket, Plucker, and iSilo.

[hacker]

Originally Posted by TadW

Ok, wait a moment. The culprit here is FreeELiterature, not Diesel eBooks. You are blaming Diesel eBooks for associating with FreeELiterature? Or are you blaming FreeELiterature for something here?

I'm saying that if FreeELiterature is in violation of the Gutenberg license, Diesel Ebooks should want to keep themselves away from that, until/unless they decide that they are indeed in compliance.

And my thoughts are:

1. You don't if FreeELiterature is in fact paying royalties. Or did you check?

Maybe they are paying royalties, but if they were, they they probably wouldn't be giving them away for free.

2. FreeELiterature is not using the Project Gutenberg trademark within its e-books nor within the header of the e-books.

Did you look closely? They certainly are. These are modified works, and they carry the "Project Gutenberg" name (original etext name as well as "Project Gutenberg" itself mentioned in every ebook).

[hacker]

Originally Posted by TadW

Btw, I like the .lit format as long as you can fully convert it back to html/oeb using convertlit. You cannot do this with any other format such as eReader, Mobipocket, Plucker, and iSilo.

You certainly can do this with Plucker format, and you always have been able to. In fact, our converter back to HTMl existed long before the .lit format was even invented. We even ship it with the Plucker source.

Unlike Convertlit, which is a copyright violation to be found using, our unpluck/explode libraries which convert Plucker documents back to HTML, are not.

[TadW]

You are probably right. Diesel eBooks should double-check if FreeELiterature is fully legit.

They aren't giving out the e-books for free though; a CD with e-books costs US $14, and it is possible that they use a percentage of the revenue to pay for royalities.

I downloaded one of the FreeELiterature e-books via Diesel eBooks and couldn't find any mentioning of "Project Gutenberg" in the e-text itself. EDIT: I double-checked and found you were right - it contains the line in the very end of the e-book. I guess that is a violation.

hacker, could you give me the link to the Plucker -> HTML? I didn't know about this one, sorry!

Btw, Convertlit is only a copyright violation if you use it on copyright-protected e-books, but certainly not on e-books from Gutenberg.

Greets

[Diesel eBooks]

Please, let me clear up some of the confusion. Diesel eBooks provides free downloads of public domain titles as a service. Since there's no profit involved, there is no problem. Same for free.eliterature (when they still had a site up) as their charge was to recoup the cost of making the CD. Just to be sure, I checked with Greg Newby, Dir and CEO of Project Gutenburg, and he assured me there were no issues with Diesel eBooks.

Interesting questions, though.

Scott Redford

www.diesel-ebooks.com

[hacker]

Originally Posted by Diesel eBooks

Same for free.eliterature (when they still had a site up) as their charge was to recoup the cost of making the CD. Just to be sure, I checked with Greg Newby, Dir and CEO of Project Gutenburg, and he assured me there were no issues with Diesel eBooks.

Agreed. I don't think anyone said you were in violation of the license at all. The question was the relationship between FreeELiterature (who was/is in violation), and your own business.

I simply made the point to keep you in the clear, from their shady business practices. You don't want to be associated with that kind of activity, especially if you are (as you seem to be) a reputable business.

No harm, no foul, as they say. It looks like FreeELiterature was shut down anyway. The Gutenebrg Project was made aware of their practices, there was a brief (online and offline) discussion of the issues, and a day or two later, the site disappeared. I'm not sure if the two incidents are related.

Glad to see you used the right channels to follow up on this issue.

[PeteHoang]

I was charged an ebook from them and never got the book. I sent countless messages to their support and management and received zero responses. They do not even have a phone number listed so you can call.

They will take your money and run.

Pete Hoang

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by hacker

You certainly can do this with Plucker format, and you always have been able to. In fact, our converter back to HTMl existed long before the .lit format was even invented. We even ship it with the Plucker source.

Unlike Convertlit, which is a copyright violation to be found using, our unpluck/explode libraries which convert Plucker documents back to HTML, are not.

What is the link to the plucker converter please?