Gutenberg ebooks

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by jadhvaryu

What is any extra advantage of epub (except may be rights mgmt) over HTML format?

EPUB is mostly a subset of HTML+CSS. It provides encapsulation, metadata, a (more or less) clear specification of which part of HTML+CSS a reader must support, an offline (i.e, out of the book content) toc.

With plain HTML you don't have the toc, and you'll probably be tempted to use fancy features that are not supported by e-readers.

Now, if your question is whether to use HTML or EPUB from Gutenberg. Well, note that in the vast majority of cases (I guess), the EPUB is an automated conversion from HTML, so you probably don't gain much... The best would be to start from HTML and manually create the EPUB, but that's a lot of work, and it's what has been done with many of the books in our (MobileRead's) library.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by jadhvaryu

We had started looking at epub format first and found toc.ncx to content html mapping bit complicated, especially it seemed to end not necessary at the end of the chapter (a typical logical unit).

Do you mean that HTML files are not split at chapter boundaries? That's probably a consequence of the automated conversion (and the fact that older readers had a rather strict limitation on the maximum file size, so sometimes long chapters had to be split). Any sensibly created EPUB will have HTML files split at chapter (or similar) boundaries, with maybe additional toc targets (e.g. sections/subsections) inside each file.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Jellby

Now, if your question is whether to use HTML or EPUB from Gutenberg. Well, note that in the vast majority of cases (I guess), the EPUB is an automated conversion from HTML, so you probably don't gain much... The best would be to start from HTML and manually create the EPUB, but that's a lot of work, and it's what has been done with many of the books in our (MobileRead's) library.

I suspect they start with the Kindle/Mobi as it seems best to import to Calibre. Converting that to epub works better than downloading the epub.

Oddly Amazon is often the other way round. Best KDP upload format is epub followed by docx. Then Amazon convert that to ALL the Kindle formats and you get what Amazon thinks best suits the Kindle registered and selected.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by jadhvaryu

Truly appreciate your guidance, Quoth. We had started looking at epub format first and found toc.ncx to content html mapping bit complicated, especially it seemed to end not necessary at the end of the chapter (a typical logical unit).

But will look again.

Thanks!

Not all books have chapters.
Some chapters need split as they are too large.
Generally epub is the best format to download when there are choices. But Gutenberg seems to do Kindle format better. Many of their ebooks to need the TOC fixed, quotes fixed or paragraph style changed. Calibre is good for this and has a tool in Editor to edit the TOC.

Some books need two levels. More than 2 can be a problem for some ereaders. More than 3 levels is a disaster. Calibre is simple to use to fix this.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by jadhvaryu

Hi BobC,

I will look up the LoC classes. You mention gutenberg biblio records. Are they embedded in the ebook itself or separate data. Could you point me to them?



Best regards

Apologies for the delay in answering. The LOC Classes forGutenberg books appear when you locate the book using a browser; if you scroll down below the various download formats there is a section headed Bibliographic Record. If a LoC class has been assigned that is where you will find it. The info does not appear as metadata in a downloaded EPUB.

BobC

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by jadhvaryu

Hi Quoth,

I am part of team working on a purpose-built reader around Gutenberg free books. And need enriched metadata to help in books searching and selection. Essentially: we need title, abstract/summary, author(s), publisher(s), genre(s), keyword(s)/tag(s) and ISBN#. For now, we only care for English books.

Also, the book format we prefer is HTML.

And like i mentioned earlier, I randomly checked more than 100 books and found the completeness of meta data is consistently poor.

And hence need a way to enrich it.

I played with Calibre a bit. But seems it allows:
- search results to be only 25 books
- only interactive download of one format at a time
- and metadata gathered still seems limited. (I tried the popular book "Complete Works" by William Shakespeare but still metadata was not enough.

Also, i have already downloaded big set of gutenberg ebooks (HTML version zip file). Can i 'import' these books into calibre?

Lastly, the purpose built reader will be priced for profit. We will not charge for the Gutenberg books, just the reader. If we end up using Calibre to maintain our books and update metadata, who can we talk to to understand usage / licensing terms.

Many thanks!

Kind of reinventing the wheel, aren't you? I mean...why? Why not just use Calibre for Gutenberg books, or any other eReader? (Does FF ePUBReader still exist? It was fantastic for my use, early on in the aughts.)

It feels...kludgy, like you're trying to find a solution for a "problem" that doesn't exist really.

That's my only comment on that front. On the second front, for the love of heaven, unless YOU are going to then convert the files from HTML into some other, new and improved (?) eBook format, stick with ePUB or MOBI or both. ePUB is vastly superior to HTML only and yes, I really would know. Everybody here knows. As someone said, that's WHY ePUB and MOBI exist, and the world isn't reading HTML-only eBooks.

Hitch

[Quoth]

Also few people will pay for a software eReader. There are plenty of excellent free ones for iOS, Android, Mac OS, Windows and Linux.

The competition is very stiff on hardware eReaders, which is the only way to make any money other than selling actual books. Sony was one of the best and first. They pulled out years ago.
Amazon, Kobo and Barnes & Noble run shops. That supports their eink based ereaders. Amazon has about 90% of the English speaking market and some expertise is needed to read an Amazon supplied book on anything other than a Kindle, Fire (really an Android Tablet with an App) or Kindle App.

Almost everyone can use Gutenberg with a free App or their dedicated eink ereader hardware. So unless the plan is a decent hardware ereader with most of Gutenberg reformatted to be a bit better and included and brilliant library management this is sort of doomed. You might as well be trying to sell copies of Wikipedia on an SD Card!