Hopefully the direct inclusion will help throttle the iPhone's constant listings of Romeo and Juliet, Sherlock Holmes, and other popular copyright free books. Personally, I love Sir Arthur Connan Doyal's books as much as the next person, but how many copies of the 'Hound of the Baskervilles' do we need in the Books section of the App Store? Now I can look forward to seeing more original books I haven't seen or read before.
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iBookstore to Include 30,000 Free eBooks From Project Gutenberg?
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I'm not buying one of these iPads. I was sceptical from the beginning. But slowly I get the impression these things could be useful in everyday work after all.
Stanza has had books from Project Gutenberg available for as long as I can remember. People can, and HAVE.
30,000 free books out the gate plus major publishers (except Random House) seems like a good way for the iBooks Store to get off the ground. I'm excited to start a book collection on my iPad that I can take with me anywhere. Especially thick textbooks and computer books. Bleh! No more! I'll even pick up a few mag subscriptions if there is anything good and the price at least competes with print. Speaking of which, Print magazine would be a nice place to start. Make this happen!
I feel like Sony also offers Gutenberg integration with their e-reader software, but I switched to calibre almost immediately and can't remember for sure.
LOL at people who think this is a drain on Project Gutenberg. The whole point of PG is to make the world's literature freely available. Yes, freely in every sense of the word. What Apple is doing here is an unalloyed good for PG.
It may not have been hard to do, but it wasn't free either, and it won't be free for Apple to host the book files for download (I'm assuming they would be) or the bookstore catelog.
[JGowan's 2¢]
Quite a good thing, actually -- and I truly can see Apple donating to the cause and also adding Donation options to Project G. It's good publicity and truly the right thing to do.
What I think would be neat would be a pledge option: "I pledge $X for every 5 Free Books I download." Then a person just starts downloading as he feels like it, knowing he is contributing to the process without having to constantly be trying to track his donations.
[/JGowan's 2¢]
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Question: I wonder if Apple will somehow alert you when book files have been updated for corrections in spelling, punctuation and formatting? Anytime you have volunteers (God bless them), you're getting less than a professional handling a very arduous task with vast Chasm of the possibility for perfection.
Quite a good thing, actually -- and I truly can see Apple donating to the cause and also adding Donation options to Project G. It's good publicity and truly the right thing to do.
What I think would be neat would be a pledge option: "I pledge $X for every 5 Free Books I download." Then a person just starts downloading as he feels like it, knowing he is contributing to the process without having to constantly be trying to track his donations.
[/JGowan's 2¢]
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Question: I wonder if Apple will somehow alert you when book files have been updated for corrections in spelling, punctuation and formatting? Anytime you have volunteers (God bless them), you're getting less than a professional handling a very arduous task with vast Chasm of the possibility for perfection.
I'm thinking I've got a foot in both camps: on the positive side, it'll be nice to see the Gutenberg effort integrated tightly into the emerging wave of e-book reader domination -- that is, since it'll be a wash between picking a free Gutenberg edition or a $6 Penguin edition, Gutenberg will finally get some needed lift, especially in the academic realm. (Of course, the pessimist in me says that profs will start bundling titles and requiring the bundles to be purchased.)
On the other side of the fence, the pessimist in me says that Apple will use these titles to boost their marketing effort: "35K titles available on day 1!!!!"
On the other side of the fence, the pessimist in me says that Apple will use these titles to boost their marketing effort: "35K titles available on day 1!!!!"
Even better, I hope they put a good deal of work into improving the quality of the Project Gutenberg library. They could create software that improves the formatting, they could donate scanning labor/tools or they could donate access to not yet scanned public domain work. I am sure there are many documents in private collections that are not scanned because the owners do not want to risk damage to their collection. Apple could provide highly trained workers skilled in restoration and handling of old documents to do the work.
PS. I love Project Gutenberg.
This would undercut a small cottage industry that's developed for the iPhone, of repackaging public-domain books as cookie-cutter apps. Personally, I'm OK with that, but I could see those developers being miffed by this.
Revamping
Given that the original books are mostly in plain text ASCII format, and Apple are a tad picky when it comes to things like styling and typefaces, I'm going to guess that they've manually converted all the books they're offering. Seeing as it's Apple, I'm not going to be so bold as to guess whether their versions of the books will be truly free (as in freedom) or whether they've somehow DRM encumbered these so that no one except their customers can read these re-styled versions of public domain books.
Given that the original books are mostly in plain text ASCII format, and Apple are a tad picky when it comes to things like styling and typefaces, I'm going to guess that they've manually converted all the books they're offering. Seeing as it's Apple, I'm not going to be so bold as to guess whether their versions of the books will be truly free (as in freedom) or whether they've somehow DRM encumbered these so that no one except their customers can read these re-styled versions of public domain books.
I completely agree. It offers some interesting implications. By Apple including free and public domain books, it really puts approprate downward pressure on book publishers.
It should also help to ease Copyfraud. Which does run amok in the land of the big publishers.
Now, I'd just like to see Apple issue a huge donation to Project Guttenberg. Considering their cash reserves, it wouldn't hurt them. AND they are including it into the store. How long to you think it'll be until Apple issues a commercial stating that their iBookstore has have 30,000+ titles?
I would love to have this on my iPhone. Anyone know news on that?
Unclear, but probably not in the immediate future.Anyone thinkwould remove "single book" apps after opening the book store under the "limited functionality" perspective?
It won't happen right away since there is no Apple ebook reader for the iPhone and iPod touch. People who want to read those must use the current ebook reader apps (like Stanza) or purchase the standalone book apps for the time being.
Apple gets their customary 30% cut from book sales at the App Store, so I don't see why it should be much different from a revenue generating standpoint.
Since the iPad hasn't shipped yet, we don't know all of the features of the iPad ebook reader. It is possible that it has functionality beyond that of your typical standalone ebook. In the end, it may be easier for ebook publishers to publish to the iBookstore because the iPad reader offers some additional value that is hard to duplicate in a standalone apps.
No-one is complaining about Apple offering the content. However, in my opinion, if a commercial entity takes something that some community has worked on, the right thing to do is to give something back in return. I'm not saying Apple won't do that because they have done done it in the past, eg with Darwin, WebKit etc. I'm rather surprised some people have difficulties grasping the concept.