Tips for finding good Kindle editions of public domain books

[sun surfer]

How does one go about separating the wheat from the chaff here? I'm not looking for the cheapest - that is extremely easy to find either here at MR (always free!) or on Amazon by organising by price. What I'm looking for is the editions that are by one of the bigger or better publishing companies with professional covers, (hopefully) less typos, professional introductions or afterwards, better formatting and such. I do sometimes download the ones here and they're often better proofread than others that cost money, but there is no guarantee of better quality even here and if I get it from here it doesn't link correctly to Kindle for the Kindle features I like to use with the ebook, so I like to look at my options on the store too.

The problem is, you search for a public domain book on Amazon and you get hundreds of the same ebook! And the publishers aren't listed on the search page so you have to go through perusing every one to find the better ones. It's onerous. What are some tips to wade through the morass and find the good ones?

[Dr. Drib]

You might do better with this if you have it moved to the Reading Recommendations Forum, where many of these types of threads live.

Say the word and I (or another Moderator) will be happy to move it there.


Don
(Moderator)

[sun surfer]

I'm fine having it wherever! I just thought if I put it there it might get moved here being Kindle-specific, ha. Go for it if you think it's better there, and thanks.

[barryem]

I used to do volunteer proofing for Gutenberg.org and I can tell you that they proof their books very, very carefully. First they scan a text and then each page is proofed at least 3 times by 3 different people before it's finally submitted. Each proofer is given a single page to proof, letting him/her focus carefully. You're not likely to find many mistakes in their books.

A lot of Amazon's books do come from Gutenberg but you can get them yourself from Gutenberg in .mobi format. I think public domain texts are probably going to contain fewer errors than more recent books.

Barry

[AnemicOak]

A few thoughts that may, or may not, be of help.

Try searching for the book you want at the publishers website for the exact edition you're looking for (such as a specific translation) instead of at Amazon. Often they link to their version of the ebook at Amazon (if available) and it will take you right to where you want to be. Penguin for Penguin Classics, Signet Classics, etc.. Unfortunately I don't think Delphi links to Amazon (even though they sell there) since they also sell direct downloads in Mobi format.

Also Amazon has an advanced Kindle book search where you may have some luck searching by both title and publisher (the publisher field can be picky about having just the right name).
https://www.amazon.com/b/ref=sv_ksto...ode=2735182011

I've noticed that a fair amount of the "higher end" versions of classics (annotated, lengthy intro's, etc.) don't necessarily seem to have ebook editions. Likely due to the publisher not wanting to compete with all of the free to $1.99 versions flooding most ebook stores and available from dozens of other sources online.

[dordale]

Another idea--check out the library here at Mobile Read. Several users here have spent a lot of time proofing public domain books and uploading them here.

[sun surfer]

Thanks barryem and dordale. I've used gutenberg before but not had much luck with good ebook quality. The texts may be good (and that's a great thing!) but the ones I've tried were sort of plops of text with no formatting, links, etc. It's been years though since my last try with gutenberg. As for the MR library, I did mention it in my post above. It's a great resource that I've used a lot but the quality can vary widely depending on uploader. Neither gutenberg ebooks nor MR ebooks work with the Kindle features I like.

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

A few thoughts that may, or may not, be of help.

Try searching for the book you want at the publishers website for the exact edition you're looking for (such as a specific translation) instead of at Amazon. Often they link to their version of the ebook at Amazon (if available) and it will take you right to where you want to be. Penguin for Penguin Classics, Signet Classics, etc.. Unfortunately I don't think Delphi links to Amazon (even though they sell there) since they also sell direct downloads in Mobi format.

Also Amazon has an advanced Kindle book search where you may have some luck searching by both title and publisher (the publisher field can be picky about having just the right name).
https://www.amazon.com/b/ref=sv_ksto...ode=2735182011

I've noticed that a fair amount of the "higher end" versions of classics (annotated, lengthy intro's, etc.) don't necessarily seem to have ebook editions. Likely due to the publisher not wanting to compete with all of the free to $1.99 versions flooding most ebook stores and available from dozens of other sources online.

Thanks, AnemicOak. It's a shame the higher end versions of classics don't all have the ebook editions, but I can't imagine the cost of transferring it to ebook wouldn't be made up eventually in sales since after transfer there's basically no cost for them.

I'll give the advanced Kindle search a try; I didn't know about it. As for checking the publishers' websites directly, that seems like it could be onerous too when I don't have a particular publisher in mind on a book, but it's an idea.

I should've mentioned this in the first post but what I've been doing off and on is trying to search the Kindle store with a title plus the name of a publisher, for example 'wuthering heights penguin' and then switching it out with each I can think of, e.g. 'wuthering heights vintage', 'wuthering heights random', 'wuthering heights oxford', etc. It's tedious though and I feel like perhaps I might miss some nice edition from a publisher I forgot so I may end up doing that as well as going through the entire list of Kindle books for a title.

The only other trick I have is sorting by price highest to lowest since most 'higher end' versions aren't 99 cents but this is imperfect since some are, so again I may end up going through the entire list this way as well. I call these tricks but neither really works all that well to make it easier to find the nicer editions hence this thread looking for some better ways.

[sun surfer]

I'll give an example of the difficulties. I usually do this for more 'literary classic' type of books where added scholarly content may be valuable, but I was recently looking at 'The Mysterious Affair at Styles'. I know there is a version here but wanted to see my options on Kindle.

Here are the results of a simple search by title- 81 versions! And I think most if not all of the first page are by those fake publishers trying to make a quick buck. So I sorted it differently.

Here are the results of sorting it by price highest to lowest. First page includes lots of Audible editions and other random junk including books that aren't this one, bundles I don't want and fake publishers trying to make a quick buck with pricier editions. So I decide to try by different publishers.

After trying over ten, most don't have any results. The ones that do include Random House/Modern Library and HarperCollins. Now I'm getting somewhere, but what if I'm somehow missing a version? So back to the longer list to check each one out, which entails having to go into each result that seems plausible as professionally done to look at the publisher and/or preview the ebook.

Here's the kicker. Both of those I just listed aren't in the initial results! What is going on there? I get 81 results for 'mysterious affair at styles' but it somehow omits the two that are actually nicer editions by a bigger publisher. Which makes me even more confused by and distrustful of all the results.

So that's a case study of my trials and tribulations, heh.

[Lady Stardust]

Have you tried Goodreads and then editions of the book?
For Wuthering Hights it looks like this

https://www.goodreads.com/work/editi...hering-heights

And then it would be safe to assume that Penguin Classics, Oxford World's Classic, BN and Signet Classics would be rather good.
You could also check all of these editions on Amazon by first checking samples.

[sun surfer]

Checking Goodreads editions first is a good idea and sounds like it could help; thanks Lady Stardust. I'm going to try that.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by sun surfer

Thanks barryem and dordale. I've used gutenberg before but not had much luck with good ebook quality. The texts may be good (and that's a great thing!) but the ones I've tried were sort of plops of text with no formatting, links, etc. It's been years though since my last try with gutenberg. As for the MR library, I did mention it in my post above. It's a great resource that I've used a lot but the quality can vary widely depending on uploader. Neither gutenberg ebooks nor MR ebooks work with the Kindle features I like.



Thanks, AnemicOak. It's a shame the higher end versions of classics don't all have the ebook editions, but I can't imagine the cost of transferring it to ebook wouldn't be made up eventually in sales since after transfer there's basically no cost for them.

I'll give the advanced Kindle search a try; I didn't know about it. As for checking the publishers' websites directly, that seems like it could be onerous too when I don't have a particular publisher in mind on a book, but it's an idea.

I should've mentioned this in the first post but what I've been doing off and on is trying to search the Kindle store with a title plus the name of a publisher, for example 'wuthering heights penguin' and then switching it out with each I can think of, e.g. 'wuthering heights vintage', 'wuthering heights random', 'wuthering heights oxford', etc. It's tedious though and I feel like perhaps I might miss some nice edition from a publisher I forgot so I may end up doing that as well as going through the entire list of Kindle books for a title.

The only other trick I have is sorting by price highest to lowest since most 'higher end' versions aren't 99 cents but this is imperfect since some are, so again I may end up going through the entire list this way as well. I call these tricks but neither really works all that well to make it easier to find the nicer editions hence this thread looking for some better ways.

First they have to buy the book, then they have to buy a scanner, then an OCR reader, then they have to take at least 2 hours to scan the book, then run it through the OCR, and then take about 30 hours to proofread and correct before even uploading.

Not to mention making sure any forward, preface and notes are also in public domain.

So while it may not "cost" much after the initial equipment and software purchases, it is still very time consuming. And with so many free classics, it would be very hard to make any money.

[Cinisajoy]

Oh and the only real way to separate is download many samples or look for an editor on the main page.

[dordale]

Originally Posted by sun surfer

As for the MR library, I did mention it in my post above. It's a great resource that I've used a lot but the quality can vary widely depending on uploader. Neither gutenberg ebooks nor MR ebooks work with the Kindle features I like.

You did indeed mention that in your first post! Not sure how I missed that!

[sun surfer]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

First they have to buy the book, then they have to buy a scanner, then an OCR reader, then they have to take at least 2 hours to scan the book, then run it through the OCR, and then take about 30 hours to proofread and correct before even uploading.

Not to mention making sure any forward, preface and notes are also in public domain.

So while it may not "cost" much after the initial equipment and software purchases, it is still very time consuming. And with so many free classics, it would be very hard to make any money.

I think you are referring to the professionally done ones mentioned in the post you quoted and not the fake publishers I mentioned in the post you didn't quote. Either way, I think you are mistaken. For the professional publishers' transfers of their public domain pbooks to ebook:

-they wouldn't have to buy their own book as they'd already have it
-they would already have the equipment to scan in the book including the scanner and OCR reader (and anyway, do you really think big publishers would be worrying about the cost of buying this equipment?)
-the forwards, prefaces and notes would be the same as the ones from their pbook so (and I'm not an expert here but this seems likely) the only legal work to do if any would be the proper transfer of their content rights to the digital realm

That only leaves the proofreading, and we all know how well the big publishers make sure to proofread their ebook versions beforehand. But even factoring in paying the proofreader and whoever's doing the labour of the transfer, then having an ebook that is almost pure profit would surely eventually make that upfront expense up at some point.

Really, I'm not even sure why you decided to discuss this point. If, on the other hand, you meant the fake publishers' versions, well, those people just take some electronic version already out there, slap an amateur cover and 'something' else to have Amazon let it stay ('annotated', a public domain picture, whatever, but usually very amateurishly and quickly done and taken from some other easily findable source), and put it up for sale to try to make a quicky scam buck. There are a very, very few semi-professional ebook publishers of public domain books that try to make more of a quality version worth paying for (such as a huge omnibus proofread and well formatted) compared to a free download from places like here or gutenberg, but even those can have errors and problems and probably also start from an already-online source. Would you care to explain what exactly you meant by your post?

[sun surfer]

Originally Posted by dordale

You did indeed mention that in your first post! Not sure how I missed that!

No problem; thanks for trying to help!