e-Book Requests and Begging (Public Domain Books Only!)

[RWood]

It is also added to the Wiki in a new section off the main page called "uploads"

With luck we can also start to list the available books by author with links to their threads. (I know, I thought of it therefore I volunteered to do it.)

[Roy White]

How about Pilgrims Progree by Bunyan?

I love that book.

[RWood]

Originally Posted by Roy White

How about Pilgrims Progree by Bunyan?

I love that book.

Pilgrim's Progress will be in Harvard Classics volume XV. I have the raw files for that volume and will move it up in the queue. Also in volume XV will be The Lives of Donne and Herbert by Izaak Walton. (This has been a shameless plug.)

[Roy White]

Thanks. I assume it will just be the one file then in that volume? Or Progress and other books in the same file? The name of this thread is begging so.. I beg you to make a seperate file.. With Pilgrims Progress only.

I've got to figure out how to do this myself!

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by Roy White

I've got to figure out how to do this myself!

If you'd really like to (and it's certainly not so difficult that you should let it dissuade you), you might find this thread and this thread to be informative.

[RWood]

Originally Posted by Roy White

Thanks. I assume it will just be the one file then in that volume? Or Progress and other books in the same file? The name of this thread is begging so.. I beg you to make a seperate file.. With Pilgrims Progress only.

I've got to figure out how to do this myself!

It will be one volume for all of HC XV. I will, for you, put PP in a solo volume. (Although the other part of XV is excellent. Trust me.)

[Roy White]

Rwood. I would like to learn to do this. I just spent the last hour finding an online version in HTML and through copying and pasting, got the text into notepad, then I pasted that entire text into Word. Changed font size to 16 arial font type. justified the text, then saved it as a rtf file.

Do you think this will read on my reader?

I've got an excellent old copy of Progress I bought from the rare book room at Powells in P{ortland. Beautiful woodcut illustrations and Illustrated manuscript type pages. Cost me 50 bucks 20 years ago. I suspect its worth a little more now. I dont dare take that book and read it on my lunch break in my dirty old fedex truck!

Hmm. While I was typing this I looked at those links you posted Natch and I am downloading that book designer program and the update right now. Dial up so it will take an hour...

This book designer program looks like it might be just what I want. I gather that the rtf files arent as good as the Sony irf files?

I downloaded the Word file Harryt posted on how to use Book designer to make an IRF file. He should be a technical writer for software companies explaining to users how to use their program. Thats the best tutorial I've ever read and i have NO doubt I'll be able to use it to create the books I want! I enjoy the.. (I'll reveal a guilty pleasure brain candy addiction here...) Harry Potter series immensely and the fanfics. Especially the fanfics written by Barb (I dont know her last name) I will certainly use this tutorial and program to create her fanfics into useable Sony REader files! Maybe I will post them after I create them? Since they are internet fanfics there isnt any copyright issues... Are there?
(Sorry I know I'm a bit off topic here... )

Plus I'd like to use the Book DEsigner program to create a one year Bible with text uploaded from here... http://eword.gospelcom.net/year/49/njan01.htm

I realize it will take some time to copy and paste 365 pages of HTML into theis book designer program but it seems well worth it to me! I understand they still have a copyright on the NASB so I cant share my work here but Since you can download it to your computer why shouldnt you be able to create a Sony reader file with this?

I just checked with God. He said its ok...

[RWood]

Roy: As a fan of the early work of Don Imus (read prior to 1974), one of his characters was the Right Rev Dr Billy Sol Haggis who sold a Bible with every page blank....

Its great that you are starting to experiment with BookDesigner. It is a powerful program that creates great books. There is also a program by Kovid Goyal called html2lrf that is adding features on an almost daily basis. I have played around with it but I am still more comfortable with BD.

For sources of Progress I used www.gutenberg.org. They are great and everything there is copyright free in the USA.

Now for something quick and dirty that I will never read again or something that I don't (or can't) share, RTF files are not bad. They will scale font sizes just like LRF files but they do not have graphics (on the Sony Reader), they have no chapter breaks, and there is not a Table of Contents. For a short story they are not bad, for a novel they are acceptable (sort of.) For a collection like Harry puts out or your proposed one year Bible, LRF is the best way to go.

Now the same book in RTF and LRF (via BD) will be significantly smaller in LRF as it is a compressed format and there are a lot of format tags in an RTF document. The Reader does a lot of compression when it loads an RTF file so the file size reported in Windows is more than the space occupied in the Reader (if loaded under the Connect software.)

I look forward to seeing books by you in the Reader Upload section.

[Roy White]

Don Imus ROX! But The Bible is the all time bestseller and always will be!!! But I think in a cage match God would take Imus to the MAT!

I just downlaoded that BD program. hmm.. A little more complicated than Harry's document indicates.. Learning curve here. I may go back to RTF files.. I dont have this kind of time. My wife is getting a little peeved. It sounds as if I can use rtf to get text onto my reader so I can read in a slightly messy format the H'Potter fanfics and bible text... or blogs or whatever. (Which is really all I want to do) but it wont be 'fancy' like the book designer program. So I guess I'll probably, because of time constraints, just use it to create the 'books' of just constant text and leave it up to you experts to create the works of art!

I'm looking forward to the Pilgrims Progress book by the way.

If I devoted a few days I could be cooking on that Book Designer program but why duplicate all the hard work others have already done? Most of the books I want on Gutenburg are already in sony files at Manybooks, and you guys have done more books than I'll read in 5 years.

It reminds me a bit of the program Microsoft links 2001 golf. It came with the 'course desingner tool' the exact same program the microsoft programmers use to create golf courses to be played on the program. Enthusiasts then created some unbelieveable courses and posted them online to download. I downloaded dozens and one day tried the program myself. It takes 5 to 6 hundred hours to create a golf course and the program was immense. I gave it up after 5 hours realizing my pathetic attempts could never come close to what people were posting. So.. I just enjoyed the fruits of their labor instead.
I'm afraid thats what I'll probably do here. Until I retire....

Many thanks to all who do work so hard on all these books. I'm not going to give up on book designer just yet but I've been on the computer WWWAAAYYY more than I usually am these last few days.

Roy

[NatCh]

Well, 5 hours is a good deal longer than it ought to take you to get BookDesigner ticking for you. That being said, I did give up about 4 different times myself, before I got it where I wanted it.

The secret is to get the basic settings where you want them, and then just press the buttons.

If you don't care about Tables of Contents and such, you can mostly ignore the title/subtitles business, and just run it through the creation routine. I do like to use the element browser to quickly check for things that BD thinks are titles or subtitles which aren't (one word exclamations like "ARRRRRGGGGHHH!" tend to get read that way), but I really don't do anything other than that and adding cover art to the books I put through it. I've mostly put Baen titles through it myself.

[Dr. Drib]

I have PART ONE only, if someone would like. Let me know and I'll post it.

[RWood]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

I have PART ONE only, if someone would like. Let me know and I'll post it.

When people talk of Pilgrims Progress with no other reference, they are referring to Part One only. Part Two was written many years later and IMHO is not half the book the original was.

If you don't post it then I will post it on Tuesday. Roy needs this book for when his Reader arrives.

[Roy White]

Dr drib. Thanks for the Pilgrims P. I'm gonna make it the first book I read on my reader. I have read part two and .. well.. skimmed it anyway. Its alot like Part one except Pilgrims wife goes thoguh the Sanctification process this time. Same stuff mostly. I dont really need it. However.... Here's another beg...

Les Miserables? Oops. Never mind... Just found it on Manybooks... This is awesome. I'll NEVER read all the books I want to read!!!

I love the character development of ValJean as he walks with God through all that suffering.

[JSWolf]

Wuld it be possible when making books to not ZIP or RAR them when attaching? LRF is a pretty efficient format as is and the RAR and ZIP process just makes it one more step to get the books on our reader. There really is no need for further compression.

Now for those of you who do like to have line spaces between paragraphs, would you please create two copies of the book? One with the line spaces and one without. The spaces make more pages and lower battery life and I am not really find of them. And if the book is supposed to have spaces at some points in the book, then the line spaces after every paragrph make it look confusing.

Thank you all for your work!

[Roy White]

Ok. Here's one... I worked and worked on my version of Book Designer trying to make this happen but every time I try to click 'make book' The program crashes... aaaarrrgggghhh.... Anyhow my Dad's favorite poem is Tennysons 'Charge of the light brigade.' He would qoute the entire poem relishing every phrase when I was a kid.

He's in heaven now....

Anyhow I'd love to have this poem in a portavble reader when i'm in the mood to remember Dad. I'll probably make it as a RTF file but I found some great photos on the web to put in there....

Any artists out there?