Where Are These Files Coming From?

southbym · 12-16-2010, 06:36 PM

Dumb question. I know it's not approved of but I have "seen" an ebook download that is not from the public domain and presumably put out there for people to download. A lot of these downloads have the same book in a variety of formats including .mobi, .epub, .lit etc, but always the same formats.

Where are these downloads coming from?

Regards, Mark.

frabjous · 12-16-2010, 09:50 PM

Your question is too general to have a clear answer. These could be illegally distributed books... or they could be simply books being given away for free by an author or publisher who simply wants their work to be spread as widely as possible, or used as advertising for other books, etc.

Anyway, where did you "see" these books?

southbym · 12-18-2010, 11:36 PM

They are illegally distributed books. It's just that, so often, I have seen the same book with a mobi, epub, PDF, lit and rtf version (I have forgotten some), all neatly packaged into the one file and would assume they are coming from the same place.

Just curious.

Elfwreck · 12-18-2010, 11:55 PM

Very likely, someone used a conversion program like Calibre or a set of programs (acquire original in lit, use convertlit to make html, copy/paste into rtf, print to pdf, etc.) to make quick copies in several formats, and then bundled them together.

Conversion programs are free all over the web; if they've got an ebook in one format, it's easy to offer it in half a dozen formats. Odds are, none of those are well-made; if they auto-converted, the metadata may be wrong, or the whole thing could be in plain text (no chapter headers, no bold or italics), they might not have tables of contents, and so on. Or they might all be beautifully made and carefully structured; depends on who did the conversion and how much effort they cared to put into it.

12-16-2010, 06:36 PM	#1
southbym Junior Member Posts: 2 Karma: 10 Join Date: Dec 2010 Device: Kindle 3	Where Are These Files Coming From? Dumb question. I know it's not approved of but I have "seen" an ebook download that is not from the public domain and presumably put out there for people to download. A lot of these downloads have the same book in a variety of formats including .mobi, .epub, .lit etc, but always the same formats. Where are these downloads coming from? Regards, Mark.

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12-16-2010, 09:50 PM	#2
frabjous Wizard Posts: 1,213 Karma: 12890 Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Amherst, Massachusetts, USA Device: Sony PRS-505	Your question is too general to have a clear answer. These could be illegally distributed books... or they could be simply books being given away for free by an author or publisher who simply wants their work to be spread as widely as possible, or used as advertising for other books, etc. Anyway, where did you "see" these books?

12-18-2010, 11:36 PM	#3
southbym Junior Member Posts: 2 Karma: 10 Join Date: Dec 2010 Device: Kindle 3	They are illegally distributed books. It's just that, so often, I have seen the same book with a mobi, epub, PDF, lit and rtf version (I have forgotten some), all neatly packaged into the one file and would assume they are coming from the same place. Just curious.

12-18-2010, 11:55 PM	#4
Elfwreck Grand Sorcerer Posts: 5,185 Karma: 25133758 Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: SF Bay Area, California, USA Device: Pocketbook Touch HD3 (Past: Kobo Mini, PEZ, PRS-505, Clié)	Very likely, someone used a conversion program like Calibre or a set of programs (acquire original in lit, use convertlit to make html, copy/paste into rtf, print to pdf, etc.) to make quick copies in several formats, and then bundled them together. Conversion programs are free all over the web; if they've got an ebook in one format, it's easy to offer it in half a dozen formats. Odds are, none of those are well-made; if they auto-converted, the metadata may be wrong, or the whole thing could be in plain text (no chapter headers, no bold or italics), they might not have tables of contents, and so on. Or they might all be beautifully made and carefully structured; depends on who did the conversion and how much effort they cared to put into it.

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