
Standard Ebooks: Free public-domain ebooks, carefully produced - BerislavLopac
https://standardebooks.org/
======
mhxion
> Other free ebooks don’t put much effort into professional-quality
> typography: they use "straight" quotes instead of “curly” quotes, they
> ignore details like em- and en-dashes, and they look more like early-90’s
> web pages instead of actual books.

True. I hope you guys get proper funding and keep this project on.

Contribute:
[https://standardebooks.org/contribute/](https://standardebooks.org/contribute/)

(I was thinking a Slack or Discord would be better than Google groups mailing
list for this?)

~~~
andrepd
Why would you force people to use nonfree proprietary software in order to
contribute to an open project?

~~~
StavrosK
That's a good point. I find Zulip better than Slack/Discord for discourse
(even better than mailing lists, with some caveats, and it's Apache-licensed:

[https://zulipchat.com/](https://zulipchat.com/)

~~~
outime
I knew about Zulip but wasn’t aware of the free hosted plan. I can truly see
it now as an alternative for orgs who can’t afford running these things
themselves.

~~~
StavrosK
I use the free hosted plan and intend to pay for it when I need more features.
It's _excellent_.

------
kevinh
It's great that these are in a consistent formatting style. When trying to
extract some contents programmatically from some Gutenberg texts, I kept
running into different formatting styles. That combined with being able to
check out the entire repository makes it much simpler to do data processing on
the works.

And, of course, fixing more errors is of course a noble goal. Are these
corrections going to make it upstream to Gutenberg?

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
> Are these corrections going to make it upstream to Gutenberg?

It's an issue worth raising to the team. In the spirit of GPL, I think
reporting any instances of clear typos in the source text upstream would be a
good idea.

The problem is that so much work is done to the text as part of StandardEbook
production that we can't exactly just submit a single patch or diff. It would
be difficult to identify the textual corrections from stylistic changes in an
automatic way, _unless_ we were to enforce typo corrections to occur in a
single commit. We're currently encouraged to use an [Editorial] tag when
modernizing spelling such as "any one" -> "anyone", so perhaps we should see
about a [Transcription Error] tag for obvious typos.

The upshot is that all of the books' sources are hosted on GH. So an
interested party could, in theory, review the commit history and pull out what
look to be typo corrections. See, for example:

[https://github.com/standardebooks/emile-gaboriau_the-
lerouge...](https://github.com/standardebooks/emile-gaboriau_the-lerouge-
case/commit/50958e4ed3cc22cf9afb26dabcd93d9f986f9b8a)

Failing that, the contributor could simply manually keep track of any typos
they fix and report them to GP.

~~~
the_duke
"Modernizing" is a very questionable thing to do IMO.

Fixing typos is fine I guess, but books are the result of an era and grammar
or writing style is an inherent part of a book that should not be altered.

~~~
robin_reala
We’re pretty light touch. For an example, the biggest change a typical novel
gets is amending “to-day” to “today”.

------
niea_11
A similar project for books in french (french books and books translated to
french) :
[https://www.ebooksgratuits.com/ebooks.php](https://www.ebooksgratuits.com/ebooks.php)

~~~
qwerty456127
Thanks! I've been looking for a website with free French ebooks for quite some
time...

------
robin_reala
A book that might be of specific interest for HN’s audience is the recent
production for Standard Ebooks I did of Charles Babbage’s autobiography:

[https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/charles-
babbage/passages-f...](https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/charles-
babbage/passages-from-the-life-of-a-philosopher)

It covers a plethora of subjects, but devotes a few chapters to the Difference
Engine and the political difficulties in getting it funded. Bonus MathML
(rendered to PNGs in most readers but real for the Kobo), and all diagrams
support both normal and white-on-black dark mode if you’re got your reader set
up like that.

------
dang
Discussed in 2017:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14570035](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14570035)

~~~
terminalhealth
Dang, could you lift vvillyd's rate limit as new user in case this still
exists?

~~~
sctb
We removed it a little while ago, in fact. Thanks for the heads up! (Emailing
hn@ycombinator.com is quicker and more reliable for next time.)

~~~
terminalhealth
Thanks.

------
jdb42
It's always great to see public domain books being made available, and
standardebooks is certainly worth a visit. However, while I read quite a lot
and in particular the sort of books that are available there, I mostly give
the site a miss purely because of its design. I don't want to seem too
sarcastic, but having huge images as a listing for books is odd when most of
the users can read quite well. I'm probably a bit sensitive about this, since
our local library does the same thing - it almost looks like there is
something about uncompromisingly textual information that provokes a reaction
from web designers.

------
GeekyBear
I just want to say that I appreciate all the effort.

I've finally gotten around to reading many of the classics using your ePub
files.

------
jarboot
Is there any way to download them all? Ebooks are very small so it shouldn't
be a problem to make an archive, or at least have a way to use curl/wget to
download them all from a directory.

~~~
simongr3dal
There’s something called opds. Sort of like a file that defines a library and
its contents.

[https://standardebooks.org/opds/](https://standardebooks.org/opds/)

I’ve never really been able to get it to work with calibre, pretty much the
standard go to piece of software for all things ebooks.

I would be interested in hearing about any tips for getting an opds working.

~~~
lainwashere
I ended up using this to download all the azw3 files for my kindle, it's
probably not the best you could do, so feel free to use it as _reference_ for
yourself if you might do something similar.

    
    
      curl -s https://standardebooks.org/opds/all | grep -oE "/(.*).azw3" | sed -e"s/^/https:\/\/standardebooks.org/" | xargs -n 1 curl -O
    

P.S. Calibre seems to only work with them and the kindle when you send over
USB (I keep my paperwhite in airplane mode, signed out, ads disabled)[0]

[0][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20596300](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20596300)

------
oraknabo
Not only is this an excellent project, I think this is also an incredible
collection of books you've chosen to feature. I also really appreciate the art
choices that have been made for the covers.

I have many of these in epub from Gutenberg, but plan to replace them with
your versions when I have some time.

I know others have already asked about bulk download--have you considered
offering a torrent of the full library or possibly one for each file format?

------
Pfhreak
This is fantastic, and immediately I want to try and contribute engineering
time to it. I've tried reading Gutenberg ebooks before and gave up because of
how inconsistent and unreadable they could be.

Is there a wishlist of tools/software out there that someone could contribute
to?

------
zajio1am
I must admire beautiful cover art selected for ebooks.

~~~
robin_reala
Thanks, it’s honestly the hardest part of the production process.

------
hombre_fatal
Are there any plans to support languages beyond English?

~~~
mfsch
It looks like they’ve decided not to publish any non-English books [1]. It’s a
pity – I much prefer reading books in their original language if I’m able to
understand it, and I was even considering contributing some German books to
their collection. Maybe it would complicate the publishing process a bit
though since different languages have different practices for things like
punctuation.

[1]: [https://standardebooks.org/contribute/accepted-
ebooks](https://standardebooks.org/contribute/accepted-ebooks)

~~~
domoritz
The tools are available. Maybe someone would be willing to make a similar
project for other languages.

~~~
trynewideas
The only one I know of is
[http://projectoadamastor.org](http://projectoadamastor.org) in Portuguese. I
can't tell whether it uses the same tooling, but the project generally
predates Standard Ebooks.

------
paulcarroty
Guess "printing by demand" will be a good source for funding such projects.

------
xrd
I'm really curious why a book ([https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/charles-w-
chesnutt/the-con...](https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/charles-w-chesnutt/the-
conjure-woman)) originally published in the US would need to include this:

"This ebook is only thought to be free of copyright restrictions in the United
States. It may still be under copyright in other countries. If you’re not
located in the United States, you must check your local laws to verify that
the contents of this ebook are free of copyright restrictions in the country
you’re located in before downloading or using this ebook."

Can anyone speak to this?

~~~
pkaye
A few countries had copyright terms longer than the US. For example Mexico is
life of author + 100 years while US is life + 70 years.

~~~
robin_reala
Most of the work is life of the author + 70 years, but the US is anything
published in 1924 or later (with a few exceptions, for example if copyright
wasn’t renewed in the 60s).

------
criddell
I wonder if the azw3 files work with the Kindle's latest display engine?
Specifically, can ragged-right be turned on? Are hyphenation hints embedded?

~~~
robin_reala
I don’t have a Kindle so haven’t tested, but I believe we build the AZW3 files
from the epub2 ones, which have hyphenation baked in using the Python
hyphenation library.

------
StevePerkins
For the Amazon-compatible "azw3" files that I'm seeing, I'm curious why the
book cover thumbnail images are a separate download from the ebook file
itself?

Unless I'm missing a trick, it seems like you have to use Calibre (or some
other application) to re-build the "azw3" file with the cover thumbnail
properly embedded. Why not just ship the ebook files like that to begin with?

~~~
sauntheninja
Kobo is far easier just download the epub on to your mobile and use the import
button from the app and it will automatically get downloaded

------
cmroanirgo
I applaud this idea & hope it goes well. I'm always a little disappointed when
I download a book from Gutenberg and the formatting makes it virtually
unreadable.

I'd also like to mention feedbooks which have a very nicely set of curated
ebooks:
[http://m.feedbooks.com/publicdomain](http://m.feedbooks.com/publicdomain)

(I have no affiliation with them)

------
lone_haxx0r
I got really excited, but then I noticed that there was no PDF option. I hate
epubs with a passion, because all epub programs suck.

~~~
pwg
Have you tried FBReader ([https://fbreader.org/](https://fbreader.org/)). The
Android version has so far met my needs, and the Linux version works well (in
my opinion).

~~~
lone_haxx0r
For reference, this is what a document viewer should look like, in my opinion:
[https://i.imgur.com/kkhk2dX.png](https://i.imgur.com/kkhk2dX.png) [#]

Notice the gray margin outside the sheet, and the padding inside the sheet.
The first one gives you a general frame of view, and also you don't want the
document to use the whole screen width when using a 16:9 monitor or similar
screen.

The padding is necessary because you don't want characters too close to a
margin, else they look like they're _escaping_ the sheet.

I haven't been able to replicate this setup with Calibre, FBReader or any
other epub reader.

Fonts are another issue. Default fonts always suck. FBReader uses Dejavu
Serif, that, in my opinion looks just bad. I changed it to Bitstream Charter,
which looks decent, but then the line justification looked wrong, I changed
that, and then paragraph margin looked wrong. There's a million little things
that look horrible by default and you have to spend an hour per book setting
up your reader so that it looks right.

I've tried generating PDFs with Calibre, the result: giant ugly fonts, zero
sheet padding, nonsensical spacing, etc.

At some point you just give up and avoid epubs like the plague.

[#] The book is called Crypto 101, by lvh.

------
Tinned_Tuna
[https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/](https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/)

------
PorterDuff
This is a great idea.

Another ebook non-profit I'd like to see is one that shepherds books through
the copyright maze. No doubt there are scads of books in the public domain
that no one has proven are actually there. Perhaps this exists already but it
strikes me as a good separate, and highly targeted, kind of effort.

------
qwerty456127
BTW does Kindle let you load your own DRM-free ebook files instead of buying
books on Amazon? I use a PocketBook (pocketbook-int.com) which emulates a mass
storage device and lets me read everything. I once considered buying a Kindle
but heard it won't let me load bare files this way. Is this true?

~~~
politelemon
You can sideload the files via USB, just copy the files over to its internal
storage and it will appear on the home screen.

You can also associate a Kindle with an email address, and email files to that
address. The file appears as part of your cloud collection.

For sideloading, the books need to be azw3 or mobi. For emailing the book
needs to be mobi. In either case epub is not accepted.

~~~
patrickk
Calibre is a great way to manage syncronisation and reformatting to Kindle-
supported file types, it even allows you to select your Kindle model to make
sure it looks well:

[https://calibre-ebook.com/](https://calibre-ebook.com/)

[https://www.howtogeek.com/73979/how-to-organize-your-
ebook-c...](https://www.howtogeek.com/73979/how-to-organize-your-ebook-
collection-with-calibre/)

------
Alex63
I'm a fan of Standard Ebooks for my Kobo Aura One reader. Their EPUB versions
look great.

------
numbers
Great project, following your progress and will be getting books from here
since the formatting is so much nicer than some other places.

Question: how is Philip K Dick in public domain already?

~~~
abbe98
Several of his works were published before 1964 and the copyright was not
renewed.

[https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Philip_Kindred_Dick](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Philip_Kindred_Dick)

------
shostack
Is there any way to browse by genre and year published?

~~~
fenomas
You can search by genre, but the only way I noticed to do it is to click on a
book with the genre you want, then there'll be a link to browse other books
with the same genre tags.

------
disease
Are there any good, open source e-readers out there?

~~~
zlsa
There's
[Foliate]([https://johnfactotum.github.io/foliate/](https://johnfactotum.github.io/foliate/))
for reading epub files on Linux.

------
buzzdenver
Any chance to provide mobi format? The azw3 files do not work on my Kindle
Paperwhite.

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
How are you sending the file to your Kindle? AZW3 should work if you're
connected to your computer via USB and dragging over manually or sending over
via Calibre, but I've seen it not work if you're trying to send it to the
email addy associated with the kindle. For that, you are correct, MOBI is
usually the preferred option.

~~~
buzzdenver
Yup, I am trying to email it.

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
Won't work, I'm afraid! And the project leader has already shot down that
request in the past. See here:

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/standardebooks/mo...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/standardebooks/mobi|sort:date/standardebooks/GyjQL1s9rAA/BsGpOnvSBgAJ)

It should still work if you transfer it over USB, but if you're trying to do
it all wirelessly, simply download the EPUB and convert it to MOBI, and you
should be good to go.

------
baalimago
This is absolutely amazing!

------
jrlandau
How many books have been produced? What is the goal/hope?

------
viraptor
This made me smile: (from the style guide)

> Do convert from logical punctuation to American punctuation where possible.

------
notadoc
Great idea.

Now consider something similar for Audiobooks.

~~~
mgbennet
Are you familiar with LibriVox? [https://librivox.org/](https://librivox.org/)

~~~
notadoc
Yes but the audiobook, voice, and reader quality has been very hit and miss.

------
eigenvalue
Unfortunately none of the formats given work with Amazon's "email to kindle"
system, which is the most convenient way to load books-- it allows you to
download a PDF on your phone and send it to a special email address associated
with your Kindle device. Considering all the work this site has already done
preparing the book files, it seems like they might as well ought to generate
PDF files using a page size roughly equal to that of the most common Kindle
readers.

~~~
tssva
Amazon's "email to kindle" system also accepts books in the mobi format which
would be a preferable to mapping pdf page sizes to Kindle reader screen sizes.

