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

[Bob Russell]

With the obvious success and popularity of the Reader Book Uploads section, it seemed appropriate to provide a place for requests. If you have that one favorite book with potentially broad appeal that you would love to see nicely formatted, you might just catch the eye of one of the generous folks doing this very cool work, and who happen to love the same public domain book you do.

Let me point out the obvious - this thread may never actually catch the eye of anyone. Your request will probably be ignored!

Remember that those who do this kind of work are doing it as a labor of love, and we are very fortunate that they so generously share the fruits of their labor. We can't expect people to spend this kind of time on random books on a whim. But you never know...

To start things off, here's one book that would be really nice to have with functional links to the footnotes...

Pilgrims Progress by John Bunyan.

At one point, it was one of the most widely read books in history, and according to Wikipedia, "this work is regarded as one of the greatest classics of literature". While it generally appeals primarily to Christian readers because it's an allegory of the Christian life, it's the kind of tale that could have wide interest due to its previous popularity and readers' general desire to expand their exposure to all kinds of famous literature.

[HarryT]

Alex - could you make this thread "Sticky"? I think it could be of general interest and use, and Bob is absolutely right about the need for a "Requests" thread.

[RWood]

Originally Posted by Bob Russell

... To start things off, here's one book that would be really nice to have with functional links to the footnotes...

Pilgrims Progress by John Bunyan.

The basic book of Pilgram's Progress will be in Volume XV (15) of the Harvard Classics series I am working on. While the text that I acquired has numbered paragraphs and inserts for the Bible references in the text, it does not have the footnotes that you seek.

Remember that there were two Pilgram's Progress books written by Bunyan -- Part One and Part Two. What is included in the Harvard Classics series is only Part One.

[friendly]

Okay, this thread is for begging. So I'm trying again.

Yes, it’s a nice idea to just collect all the perfectly formatted books here, but I think there are much more rtf-files out there which would be quite nice for many of us. I don’t know if this suggestion would cause too much trouble, but why not open another page where all those files are uploaded which are quite nice and completely satisfying for many readers? So there could be this page for “perfect” books and the other one for “okay” or “nice” books and here I come back to the beginning, I really think there are much more “nice” books ready to be uploaded than “perfect” books.

Please have a look, who has contributed so far? Yes, all the formatting so far was (more or less) done by Harry and I am grateful for that. But where are all the other contributors? I guess, most of us don't undergo the trouble creating lrf-files, but are just fine with legible RTFs and nicely arranged paragraph endings.

Thanks a lot.
Friedhelm

[ashkulz]

I don't know if this has already been requested, but I would suggest the illustrated
Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog). It's a classic. From Wikipedia:

Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), published in 1889, is a humorous account by Jerome K. Jerome of a boating holiday on the Thames between Kingston and Oxford.

The book was intended initially to be a serious travel guide, with accounts of local history of places along the route, but the humorous elements eventually took over, to the point where the serious and somewhat sentimental passages now seem like an unnecessary distraction to the essentially comic novel. One of the most praised things about Three Men in a Boat is how undated it appears to modern readers. The jokes seem fresh and witty even today.

[RWood]

Give it time friendly, give it time. These are the seed days. Now the works that have been posted will get others interested in doing the same. In time more and more people will post their LRF formatted books and most will forget that at the start there were very few posting.

The Sony Reader has been out for about six months. Think how far we have come in that six months. There are cases, lights, stands, development tools in the works, converters, and the start of a nicely formatted set of free books.

[Bob Russell]

We will also probably gain contributers if/when we can provide a tutorial in the wiki with some guidelines and at least one simple way to prepare e-books in an "acceptible" manner.

I'm guessing some people who might want to contribute are probably a bit intimidated at the learning curve, and the information is still pretty scattered at the moment, so it takes a bit of research and persistence.

[HarryT]

Would it be helpful if I were to write a reasonably detailed description of how I prepare my books? I'd be happy to do so if it would be of interest or help to others!

[Strether]

Speaking just for myself, that would be really helpful, Harry. I've found your comments really helpful, but they're scattered all over different threads. I'm in the midst of a project that involves the use of links. Thanks to your instructions, I was able to negotiate that successfully, but though I'd managed the setting that allowed user page breaks, I couldn't figure out for a while how to actually make that happen. Finally, sitting in a chair away from the computer, I tried to imagine how you could possibly do that and did eventually find the button that created those breaks. Probably that information is buried in some thread, but as far as I know, you never covered it in any of your tutorials. I mention that to encourage you not to take anything for granted while working up your instructions.

Another thing that would be helpful from the group is information about whether or not we're going to try to have consistency in the preparations. Same font size, for example? Or name of author last name first, or the other way around which is the way books were initially loaded on the Sony.

Jim

[Bob Russell]

I think that would be outstanding. Even in the remote chance that nobody uses it to contribute right away, new people wandering in will most definitely make use of it eventually.

And I think I'd be likely to personally use the info when I want to do more than simple rtf formatting on a book. In a way, it can be looked at now as a "core competency" for sophisticated Sony Reader owners!

[RWood]

I've been pulling together the stuff this week in my spare time between reading Harry's new posts and my own work. I should have something up as a start for Book Designer this weekend. There will be holes in it and Harry's mention will fit great in one of them. I have just spent the past few minutes/hours trying to format drop caps with the first letter as a graphic and failed. I leave the task to others.

I need to finish the basic Book Designer material before I move on to the Harvard Classics that all two of you are waiting for.

[Strether]

And I'm forgetting my manners: Thanks, Harry, for sharing all you've learned about this program. I wouldn't have had the courage to try BD at all but for your posts, much less tackle something as seemingly complex as a project requiring links.

Jim

[Bob Russell]

Originally Posted by RWood

I've been pulling together the stuff this week in my spare time between reading Harry's new posts and my own work. I should have something up as a start for Book Designer this weekend. There will be holes in it and Harry's mention will fit great in one of them. I have just spent the past few minutes/hours trying to format drop caps with the first letter as a graphic and failed. I leave the task to others.

I need to finish the basic Book Designer material before I move on to the Harvard Classics that all two of you are waiting for.

Yay!!!!

[HarryT]

I've created a new, sticky, "Book Creation Tutorials" thread and posted my initial attempt at a reasonably detailed tutorial into it. Comments and suggestions for improvement are, of course, very welcome!

[pitolee]

Just wanted to say thank you for all your great information. I came across this thread after finding out about the Sony Reader. Thanks to you all I was able to decide to jump in and get it. I'm overseas so am waiting for it to get to the main office and be eventually handcarried over here. In the meantime you have kept me reading this forum over and over. I've downloaded many of the recommended utilities and am really enjoying getting to know Book Designer.

Absolutely thanks to all of your efforts, I've been able to get a few things working and am looking forward to trying it on the reader when it finally arrives.

Thank you to all of you out in the forefront, spending hours on learning the machine and developing the tools for the rest of us.

P.S. You can also count me as interested in the Classics set. So, now its three...