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Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised no eBook Reader vendor has a Project Gutenberg "Store." Where you can just browse Gutenberg, find a book, and just grab it down to the reader. Instead, they either are actively hostile (Kindle), or require the use of Calibre (which itself is good, it is just the friction).

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I am actually working on this right now. If you would like to test it, you may download Thorium reader and add the catalog http://pgnew.pglaf.org:8000/opds/

We also have an older OPDS 1.0 (the one I sent is the newer, 2.0 standard) catalog but it isn’t the best to use. It’s still a WIP, but very close to being finished.

I've used https://standardebooks.org/ to pull nicely formatted Project Gutenberg books on any e-reader that supports a browser (in my case, Boox).

Technically, I can also just directly pull the epub from Project Gutenberg, but sometimes the formatting leaves a lot to be desired.

Once you get an e-reader that runs a semi-capable OS (ex - stock android, even an older version), it's hard to go back to something like a kindle.

standardebooks.org is great!

HTML editions from the two sites contrast interestingly:

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1513/pg1513-images.html

https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/william-shakespeare/romeo-...

Each has its particular advantages relative to the other ...

Curious, what are the advantages you see in each relative to the other?

Also one should probably compare the former to the single-page version on standardebooks: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/william-shakespeare/romeo-...

Personally I find the formatting used by the Gutenberg one to be a lot nicer/easier to read, despite (or perhaps because of) being simpler, more plain.

At least for the first few pages of content that I looked at on both versions.

To be precise, the vast majority of SE is from Gutenberg, but we also source from Faded Page, Gutenberg Australia, Wikisource and occasionally do our own transcriptions.

If you don’t strip the Project Gutenberg license from the book text (leaving only the book text, which no-one disputes is public domain and freely distributable), you are required to give “pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes”

https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

[Way back in the early days of the iPhone, I sold a book reading app which was backed directly by Project Gutenberg texts, called “Eucalyptus”. I sent 20% of the gross profits to PG - which was never less than very supportive of the app - and felt good about doing so.]

Used to be one could sort of get that with the Project Librivox:

https://librivox.org/

e-book app Gutebooks (in addition to their audio app), but it seems to have been deprecated (I'm no longer able to connect to the server on my copy (which I only got 'cause there was an in-app purchase to fund Project Librivox).

FWIW, Barnes & Noble has been plundering the public domain using a book composition/keying house in the Philippines to make their public domain books which they make available in their stores --- Amazon apparently has a similar setup for the Kindle Store:

https://www.amazon.com/Public-Domain-Books-Kindle-Store/s?k=...

Rather a shame that PG didn't monetize by putting their books up there pre-emptively.

the way I see it PG is a labor of love. Bit odd if Barnes & Noble or whoever piggyback off it. But in the end - the more people read the books, the better.

It is a public good, and it would be appropos if corporations would support it directly rather than work at cross-purposes to it.

If Amazon is going to sell public domain texts, then it would make sense to source them from PG, and fund some money from those sales to the non-profit, similarly, they could then funnel reports of typos to PG for review and correction (it was a bit of a struggle the last time I tried to get a text corrected, and the project founder/director actually stepped in on my behalf).

that would be great! Sadly I'm not very confident that that will actually happen ...

Needs new legislation where the commons/public domain have public benefit corporations appointed as the manager of said resource.

>Barnes & Noble has been plundering the public domain using a book composition/keying house in the Philippines to make their public domain books which they make available in their stores

Why is it 'plundering' for B&N to print physical books, transport them to their brick-and-mortar stores to sell? There are real costs associated to doing so. It would not have zero cost for me to print and bind a copy myself at home.

I'm working on audiobook app that integrates the Libivox catalog. Only on Windows right now - https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9n1z76ffb3fc?hl=en-US I'll release Android, IOS, Mac & Linux versions soon.

I love librivox! please add me to your ios release list. my HN username at g mail

In a similar vein to cobbzilla, I have a couple of family members (and to a lesser extent myself too) who would be keen on such an app for their iOS devices if you ever need some testers for that :)

(iPhones 15 Pro, 11 Pro, SE-2nd; and an iPad of some kind)

Most of them offer their own paid storefronts and have a perverse incentive not to offer a large area full of free books.

probably true. Maybe an true open-source eReader should exist.

Arguably

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=biz.bookdesign...

should ~~be~~ EDIT have been ENDEDIT opensource --- it does at least work to support Project Librivox (or at least that's my understanding)

Seems to no longer be available (see below)

I'm getting "We're sorry, the requested URL was not found on this server." if I go to the link

I believe the app is discontinued and the reason I can see the page is that I am on record as having downloaded it.

They do exist, since a pretty long time. I bought a pocketbook beginning 2010s. https://pocketbook.ch.

If you mean epub reader software Calibre and a bunch of others exist since pretty much the beginning of epub

I've heard that the newest Kobo e-readers have a browser that you could use to go to gutenberg.org and directly download files.

but yes, generally I agree with your point. Library of 75k books seems pretty valuable to have direct access to.

On any device you can install KOReader, PG is one of the default options in the builtin OPDS browser.

https://koreader.rocks/

You can download books directly from the Project Gutenberg website using the web browser on most eBook readers - even the Kindle supports it.

Yep! This is how I get all my books on Kindle! For me, I choose the 'older Kindles' option and it downloads directly to my homepage.

No money for them.

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