Book People Archive

Re: Press Release: 2 Months To 1/3 Million eBooks

In a message dated 5/8/2006 10:09:14 AM Mountain Daylight Time, 
jon@[redacted] writes:

> One question I have is what format will these ebooks be in? Will they
> be PDFs containing page images, or are there plans to produce proofed
> digital texts of these works? If the latter, who will do these works?
> DP?
> 
> Another question is what is the definition of a book?  Other comments
> I've heard, which may be off-base, is that in WEBL a lot of its books
> are not books in the traditional sense.  Also, there is claimed to be
> a large number of duplicates.
> 
> Hopefully Michael will address these, and other questions.
> 
> Jon Noring

Jon, Jon  sometimes you seen like a broken record.....see now I've dated 
myself.  I would never use pdf files for any reason other than to convert
them to text or Html files with illustrations.  That is all they are good
for.  I know that many people who come from a university/education/publishing
back ground love them.  There are many mentally challenged DRM proprietary
format lovers in the world today. I can't begin to understand why nor do
I wish.  I presume that those who want to convert them will and those
that don't wont.  If worst comes to worst then there will be a lot of
reinventing the wheel with rescanning the pdf books. The production of
etexts/ebooks doesn't rise and set with DP although I much admire their
work and dedication to quality.  As I do you Jon. I admire anyone who puts
their ideas and opinions on the line.

As for a definition of a book I consider anything larger than about 20 k of 7 
bit ascii text  to be a book.  The UN definition as I recall without looking 
it up is about 15 pages.  Or maybe we should use the Supreme Court definition 
of porn modified to a book.  I know it (a book) when I see it.

Have you ever thought to consider Jon, that there are a large number of 
duplicates in most public libraries.  Various editions as well.  In my home
library I have duplicated of most of my favorite books as I have a tendency
to read them to pieces.  And I have noticed that quite a few books have a
tendency to change from edition to edition.  Heinlein is probably the best
example I can recall off the top of my head.  But Edgar Rice Burroughs
is probably a close second.  

It would be a major tragedy if Project Gutenberg, Michael Hart or DP were to 
go off the web but somehow public domain books would still find themselves on 
the web.  I don't intend to stop putting them out even though I have a 
commercial etext project as well. My life would have been so much simpler
if I had not made the jump from a hobbyist to a commercial producer of
etexts and libraries.