Google's Library Up and Running

An anonymous reader writes "It seems that Google Print results are beginning to appear on searches. For those who don't know, Google has been scanning from libraries from some of the world's greatest universities in order to compile a freely accessible online library. An easy way to turn up these results is to simply type "book", and then whatever you want to search for. For instance, book origin of species will turn up the full text of Charles Darwin's controversial treatise. 20,000 leagues, Oliver Twist and Pride and Prejudice and m o r e are all there in full. It'll be interestin to see how publishers deal with this if demand for these books declines. In the meantime, would anyone like to point out any good books?" Hopefully, Google can also start to index some books that are being released in the Creative Commons/alternative open licenses.

Comments

Out of print

[BWJones]

It'll be interestin to see how publishers deal with this if demand for these books declines. In the meantime, would anyone like to point out any good books?"

Here is a hint that will help and not hurt the publishers. Put online out of print books. I would like to make the same argument for out of print music and movies and scientific journals as well which ironically, could hold huge profits for studios and publishing houses. After all, this is the ideal for long tail businesses, right? if these businesses could release for nominal fees all of the movies, music and books that have already paid for themselves, Google (or iTunes or iMovie or iPub or whatever) could serve as the front end which would allow for the finding of said information and then the publishing houses could make money on products that long ago had paid for themselves and created profits. This is almost like free (as in beer) money for them and low cost media for us.

Re:Out of print

[pbranes]

Out of print books online is a great idea, but what I can't understand is why google doesn't have a page that just lists the books they have in full-text. They compare it to a bookstore, but in a bookstore you can see books you have never heard of. You can't do that with google's library because you can only search for books that you know.

Re:Out of print

[Total_Wimp]

Out of print, copyrighted, whatever. This is how google has chosen to deal with the subject:

Thank you for using Google Print.

You have either reached a page that is unavailable for viewing or reached your viewing limit for this book.

Google protects works that are under copyright by restricting access to certain pages and restricting the number of pages you can view. You may continue to take advantage of Google Print by clicking on About this Book. Thank you for using Google Print.

I had thought that they were putting "books" online. Turns out they're just putting the ability to search through books online.

BTW, this came up when I hit next page too many times on "Origin of Species" who's original text, I presume, is not copyrighted.

TW

Re:Out of print

[AyeRoxor!]

When people stop equating Shakespeare's timeless epics with 7th grade, simply because it's the only time they were 'made' to 'hobble through' some of the greatest writing of all time, then I'll be excited.

Alas, poor Yorick...
OMGWTF, it's GRENDEL!

Re:Out of print

[Wiwi Jumbo]

I might be wrong about this, but I think that the copyright might be in relation to the text (appearing to) having been scanned from a book printed in 1996.

For Google to offer it for free would mean that they'd have to scan it from a printed source which is also out of copyright??

Well, I think that's the case....

Anyone who says they fully understand copyright is either a fool or a liar... or worse. ;-)

Re:Out of print

[duckpoopy]

A book about AutoCAD??? RTFM.

Re:Out of print

[micromoog]

Project Gutenberg's got it in plain text, which is better in almost every way.

Re:Out of print

[johnnyb]

What about Linux assembly language?

http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/pgubook/

Or, you can buy a printed version from here.

The next issue of Free Software Magazine will likely have a list of many of the good free books available.

Re:Out of print

[AyeRoxor!]

Try replying to the parent next time. That wasn't my post.

Re:Out of print

[ComputerSlicer23]

Project Gutenburg is a pretty good source for copyright info. Here's what he has to say:

FAQ entry on books with updated copyright dates

So there you go.

It's my understanding that they can't re-copyright the actual text. However, they can copyright the presentation, line editting, page breaks and whatnot. So you could take the actual text from them, you couldn't take the text in that presentation from them.

Fun huh?.

Kirby

Re:Out of print

[bcrowell]

The issue isn't Google, it's the publisher. The editorial work that went into that particular edition of The Origin of Species is probably copyrighted.

I have some of my own books going through the Google Print pipeline. Mine are copylefted, and in fact they're available as complete PDFs online, for free, so unlike many participating publishers, I didn't have any concerns about limiting access. In my Google Print account, I have a settings page that includes this:

• Percent browsable [ edit ]
• 
  Google protects your content by limiting the number of pages that are shown to users. Although users will be able to search over 100% of each book, you can set how much of each book will be shown using the edit link above. For example, setting the Percent browsable to 20% will allow a user to view up to 20 pages of a 100 page book each month.
  % of book users can see: 100%

I have it set to 100%, but presumably the publisher who owns the copyright on that edition of The Origin of Species has set theirs lower than 100%.

BTW, it looks like Google is bringing everything online slowly and gradually. For several months now, the status of my books has been

• Processed: your book has been scanned and the file has been sent to be processed and included in our index

At first it said that it would appear in the index in about two weeks, but then a few more months went by, and they changed the message so it no longer gave the ETA. Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing whether inclusion in the index really drives traffic to my site.

Re:Out of print

[smittyoneeach]

Dunno. History is a fairly reliable critic. If the daytime soaps you equate with Shakespeare are still in circulation in 100 years, as Bill S. will presumably be, then you may be right.

Re:Out of print

[rpdillon]

Where do you think those daytime soaps got all their ideas? Sure, there's the bible and others old "literature", but Shakespeare hammered out a lot of the classic plot elements that have been copied ever since. Pointing out that they're not that great "because everyone is doing it" doesn't rate as insightful. That is a bit like saying that Ford was overrated because "everyone has an assembly line". Well, no one has an assembly line when he had his. That's what made Ford special. Likewise with Shakespeare and his stories.

And, unlike Ford, whose inventions have been vastly improved upon very quickly, Shakespeare's wit is pithy, and has aged extremely well. Not only were his ideas fresh at the time, but his manner of conveying them unusually adept, both then and now. If you think the essence of what he is lauded for is related to some snobbish appeal of the mechanics of the language, you should perhaps go back and read some of his work again. Most, if not all, are available free of charge on Project Gutenburg.

Drama? Absolutely. On par with soap operas? I think not.

Re:Out of print

[k96822]

Any story where the main characters suffer because they are in love with each other and eventually kill themselves in the end is great reading for kids of all ages.

textbooks

[TedCheshireAcad]

It would be great if textbooks were on there. $120 is too much for a calculus book.

Re:textbooks

[Silver Sloth]

I'm sure this is going to be an unpopular viewpoint and may get modded flamebait but I've seen the other side of achedemic publishing.

The problem with pricing on text books is the very limited market. Even if Proffessor Plum sells a copy to every student on his course he will only sell ~100 per year. Compare and contrast with the thousends of copies sold of the average novel. Moreover the calculus book requires specialist typesetting, less of a problem nowadays but the average printing house isn't set up for printing sigmas. All these force the price up.

Just because students are poor(ish) doesn't mean that they can be excempt from market forces.

Re:textbooks

[Roger_Wilco]

Moreover the calculus book requires specialist typesetting, less of a problem nowadays but the average printing house isn't set up for printing sigmas.

That's why most textbooks nowadays are formatted using LaTeX. Besides, most printing houses for textbooks require camera-ready, so it's the author's problem to get those wacky symbols onto paper.

Re:textbooks

[halber_mensch]

As already mentioned, typesetting isn't an issue since we have electronic typesetting with LaTeX, roff, etc. The brand-new-off-the-shelf price is extreme because
a) the Ph.D. that wrote the sucker wants his big fat check for his doctorate status - he didn't earn three degrees and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to rake in a measley 22 grand a year
b) the publishing company wants their share of the big fat check because that's what they do
c) the campus bookstore and other textbook dealers know that kids have to buy the books in order to complete their classes. The demand therefore is garaunteed.
d) the bookstores also know there is an annual flood of used books that students must get rid of, and use that opportunity to replenish their supplies at a low cost.

Because of these factors, the new price on the book is large, since the new books have to compete for sales not only with other textbooks but also with the used copies in circulation, and the resale value of the books is low for the student, and high for the vendor. That's what's most alarming to students. When you spend $750 on ragged used books for 5 classes, you feel a little jipped when you sell them all back and the most you can get is $30. Then you go back to the bookstore for next semester, and see that each of those used books you sold are back on the shelf for $80 a pop.

Re:textbooks

[Qzukk]

Here's a less popular viewpoint, at least amongst professors.

Quit using your class to sell your textbook.

Look, I don't care how many PhD's you have in Math, your personal Calculus textbook is no different than any other. In fact, you didn't even make any stunning breakthroughs in the field of undergraduate integration and derivation, so quit writing a new version every year!

Students wouldn't have to pay $120 a textbook if the professors didn't want it to be that way.

Re:textbooks

[Slack3r78]

And my retort is this: Why does every professor feel the need to write and publish their own textbook? It's not the dificulty about it so much as the ridiculous duplication of effort that annoys me so much about it. While there are exceptions to any rule, some of the *worst* textbooks I've ever used were written by the course's instructor.

So yes, writing textbooks is hard work and deserves compensation, but every professor writing their own textbook that all have the same information and requiring *THAT* text book for the course is what makes it both unreasonably expensive and unfair for the students.

Re:textbooks

[TGK]

Three words "publish or perish"

If the professor can get someone to publish his textbook, even if it has to sell at $300 a copy to post a profit, he gets to toss another publication on his resume.

If he's tenure track, he needs those publications for job security.

Further, lots of profs are aware that, if they write the text book they don't have to worry about changes in the course materials. Any new versions they put out (no matter how minor the changes) are versions they control. Thus, no being blindsided by changes in the text. In other words, it's less work to acutualy plan and teach the class once the text is out there.

Re:textbooks

[Ibanez]

I can order on from Amazon UK and have the books shipped over here, still only paying half the price of the same book over here.

Its price gouging plain and simple.

Re:textbooks

[NardofDoom]

There's a reason they charge $120, but there's no reason you should have to buy the latest version of the Calculus book written by the professor every semester, other than the professor said you had to have it.

The free market works when the consumers are, well, free to buy what they want. If people didn't have to have a specific textbook, the price would drop because there was competition. As it is now, professors dictate the textbooks, so the campus bookstores are able to charge whatever they want because they know people have to have the books.

You can get around this two ways. First, if you absolutely must have the most recent copy of the book because the professor is going to be suing problems from specific pages; get together with a bunch of classmates to chip in and buy the book. Then make copies of the problems the professor wants you to do. Or you could bypass the campus bookstore and get the book through an online retailer. Froogle is an excellent resource. And if you think you're good enough, you can get through the course without every buying a textbook. I've done it a bunch of times.

Re:textbooks

[bcrowell]

Quit using your class to sell your textbook.
Stop and think for a second. How do you think any textbook gets written for the first time? Do you think the publisher has a bunch of mathematicians sitting in the basement, waiting to be ordered to write their next textbook? No, sorry, the only people who are competent to write a good textbook are people who are actually teaching the subject, and once they've written it, it needs to be tested on real students, just like software needs to be tested before it's released. This has been going on forever. It used to be that the professor would run off an initial draft of his book on a mimeograph machine and sell it in the bookstore. The modern equivalent is to put it up on your web page for your students to download in pdf format.

Of course there's a conflict of interest if the book is not available to the professor's own students for free in digital form. That's completely unethical.

In fact, you didn't even make any stunning breakthroughs in the field of undergraduate integration and derivation, so quit writing a new version every year!
Actually, accrediting organizations won't let schools use books that are more than a certain age (5 years, IIRC), and they don't care if it's a rapidly changing field like astronomy molecular biology, or a slowly changing one like freshman calculus. The publishers do tend to work on a time scale that's even shorter than that, typically 3 years, and yes, their motivation is to kill off the used book market. If it bothers you, just buy the old edition used. Some of the homework problems will of course have been renumbered, and you'll have to figure out the numbers by comparing with the new edition.

You also need to realize that very few professors make any significant amount of money from textbooks. The only textbooks that are really profitable (enough to buy a vacation home, etc.) are a few of the really big-selling books that are used at lots and lots of schools (e.g., Halliday and Resnick's physics text). Nearly all of of the difference between the $20-30 cost of paper, printing and binding (for a four-color book) and the $130 retail price is eaten up by the publisher. Some of that is legitimate (it costs money for editors, salespeople, etc.), and some is just pure greed and inefficiency. (My mother used to work for McGraw Hill, and when there'd be a big meeting in New York with the corporate bigwigs, she said they always showed up to the meeting in stretch limos. Pretty pathetic.)

Re:textbooks

[momoe]

As a new PhD in molecular genetics and evolutionary biology (not yet a prof), I fully empathize with students on the exorbitant prices of today's college textbooks in ALL subjects.

But I have a unique and advantageous perspective on the root causes of current textbook pricing.

As an undergrad in the mid-80's, I worked for both my college bookstore (independently owned by the Student Union as are many in the western US) and one of a handful of "used book" companies that existed nationally at that time.

At that time, the average life expectancy of a college text was ~ 5 years. Certainly, the cost and effort to make changes to a current edition was far greater than it is today, given the ease of electronic typesetting and page layout, but more importantly, the used book market at that time was low with few players and the publishers were still selling new books and making profits.

Today, the market is saturated with used books within 3 years, and since it is far easier to move material/chapters electronically, many "new" editions involve little more than cover art changes with minimum content editing (including error carry-over from one edition to the next) and have a shelf life of 3 years.

Markup on textbooks has always been very low compared to the tradebook markets and current pricing is the result of pricing established by the publishers and not the retail outlets (whether that is the college bookstore or an off-campus competitor). As is the case with most other markets, big online retailers such as Amazon get price breaks from their vendors and can exist on very low profit margins.

If SprawlMart decided to get into the college text market, students could walk in and pay the same low prices found at the online retailers (unless of course, their local community hadn't already purged themselves of the evil that is Sprawlmart... but that's another topic).

In the Life Sciences, few profs write their own texts and I know many profs in Chemistry, Entomology, and Computer Sciences, none of whom have written their own textbooks. The commitment required to write a college-level textbook of any merit is enormous. Even profs wholely dissatisfied with the textbook options available for some courses usually settle for the least worst book rather than undertake authoring a textbook.

So IMO, ultimately the cause of the current state of college text prices falls on the used book market (who legitimately found a profitable niche) and the publishers.

Re:textbooks

[ad0gg]

$20 to $30 to print a book? You gotta to be kidding. 0.10 a cents page? For that price I could go down to Kinkos and color photocopy it for cheaper and thats more than 4 colors. Those textboxes are probably $5 to $7 to produce. At $130 retail price, the professor is probably taking half or $50. My freshman calc class probably had 500 people in it, and there were 3 classes a day. 1500 students a semester, 3000 a year. $150,000 a year. Not bad for changing the questions every other year, so people have to buy a new book in order to complete the assignments. And I'm willing to bet the professor didn't even write questions but paid some grad student min wage to do it.

Re:textbooks

[bcrowell]

At $130 retail price, the professor is probably taking half or $50.
A typical royalty is about 10 to 12 percent of "net" (i.e., wholesale), which works out to be about 7.5-9% of retail, not 38%, as you seem to be assuming.

and thats more than 4 colors.
"Four colors" refers to the number of colors of ink, not the number of colors that can be produced by mixing them, which is theoretically infinite.

$20 to $30 to print a book? You gotta to be kidding. 0.10 a cents page?
The textbooks that are $130 typically have a page count of about 1000-1100 pages, rather than the 200-300 pages you seem to be assuming. The ppb (paper, printing, and binding) cost for black and white upper division physics textbooks is typically about 3 dollars. Four-color printing costs four times more than one color, and the $130 color undergrad textbooks are typically about twice the page count of a graduate text, so 3x4x2 gives about $24. The price is really a setup cost; once you've got the press running, the cost to make one more copy is very small. This is all going to depend a lot on the length of the press run.

one cliche, one other

[yagu]

I know this is cliche, but Grapes of Wrath is a classic, and one of my alltime favorites. I've read it four or five times, and it gets better each read. Yeah, it's always in the "list", but it deserves to be.

Another favorite of mine is more related to what /.-ers are about. Read Player Piano by Vonnegut. It's not his most well know work, but it is, I think, maybe one of his best, certainly one of his most perceptive. Just my $.02.

Re:one cliche, one other

[Neop2Lemus]

You got modded down because you recommended books that the mods hadn't read, and it hurt their feelings.

Let me join you.

I recommend Homer. The Iliad or The Odyessy are two of the greatest books ever written, start with the Odyssey.

Following in the grand-parent posts' steps, I can recommend Timequake by Vonnegut as an underrated book. But back to the public domain.

Aristiophanes is the only comedian as funny as Monty Python, check him out though you'll have to read up on your mythology and other Greek lit. But there is nothing like Aristophanes, he is outrageous. Lysystrata [The Breaker of Armies] is placed in the [historical] war between Athens and Sparta, and the women of Greece declare a sex strike till peace is made.

I've also enjoyed the Tragedians (Euripides, Sophocles, and Aeschylus), you'd think they are boring but it's pithy and exciting exciting, nothing near as depressing as Million Dollar Baby.

In fact, check out any of the Greco-Roman stuff, you'll be blown away.

Highlighting is annoyuing

[PhilHibbs]

So once you've got "Origin of Species" up on the screen, how do you prevent it from highlighting every occurrence of the words "Origin", "of" and "species" in yellow? It's very annoying.

Re:Highlighting is annoyuing

[_xeno_]

On that note, how do you jump to a specific page?

There are some features that are apparently only possible by editting the URL. The user interface could use some work.

I'm getting the strong impression that Google does not want you actually reading entire works through this service.

popular public domain classics are already online

[tverbeek]

A lot of these books have been available online (and easily findable via search engines) for years, courtesy of Project Gutenberg and others. Granted, Google gives them a little higher profile, and maybe they'll be more accessible, but it's not like the publishers of Shakespeare and Stevenson are facing something really new here.

Copyrighted material?

[sisukapalli1]

I clicked on Pride and Prejudice -- the page is an image (dynamically generated with search phrases highlighted). My gripes: (1) context menus are disabled (so, may be difficult to save the image from the page), and (2) there is a big "copyrighted material" sign on the side. In my opinion, they should have scanned the public domain version of the novel -- like what Gutenberg does...

S

Holy copyright imbroglio!

[bigtallmofo]

From the Harvard FAQ at: http://hul.harvard.edu/publications/041213faq.html ...

Will this include books still in copyright? Google will be scanning books that are in as well as out of copyright from the Harvard collections. Harvard-owned books in the public domain will be available in the search results. Google may choose to display descriptive catalog information for books that are still under copyright. We believe that Google's treatment of in-copyright works is consistent with copyright law.

If I'm reading this correctly, that Google is placing the text of copyrighted works into a freely searchable and viewable database, it's an amazingly brazen step. It's also incredibly useful, but I can't imagine book publishers lying down for this. Add to this Disney's propensity for lobbying for extending copyrights everytime Mickey Mouse comes up for entering the public domain and I think we're headed for an interesting copyright showdown.

Re:Holy copyright imbroglio!

[daniil]

f I'm reading this correctly, that Google is placing the text of copyrighted works into a freely searchable and viewable database

You are only half-correct. While they the database is freely searchable, you can't (fully) view the texts of copyrighted works -- you are only given access to a few pages of a given book.

Holy Bible?

[OAB_X]

Surprisingly enough, they have not scanned the Holy Bible yet. You think with it being the #1 best selling book of al time they would have, but I guess not.

Holy Bible missing

Re:Holy Bible?

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably because it isn't just called the Holy Bible in the collection.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=book+King +James&btnG=Search

However, I'm pretty sure you were just trolling.... Otherwise you would look for a specific VERSION of the bible!

Re:Holy Bible?

[Total_Wimp]

Thanks for the info, but he wan't trolling. It was one of the first books I checked for and amazingly "bible" and "the bible" do not yeild the desired results either. It's a little surprising to have to be so specific for this particular book.

TW

Re:Holy Bible?

[Stonehand]

Try 'book king james version'. There's an 'Authorized King James Version with Apocrypha Bible'. Why that specific version, and not another?

*shrug* Google might know.

Re:Holy Bible?

[OAB_X]

Surely there is a Bible somewhere in Harvards library. There is no Koran listed also. Ferhaps thef are staying away from scanning religious books so far?

Re:Holy Bible?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

It was one of the first books I checked for and amazingly "bible" and "the bible" do not yeild the desired results either.

That's what Christians get for naming their authoritative religious work "The Bible." All of you looking to start a new religion take note. Bad titles for your religious text include: The Book, The Writing, The Text, and The Bound Stack of Paper.

P.S. The number of older texts that include the word "bible" is similar to the number of contemporary works that include the word "book."

Re:Holy Bible?

[PantsWearer]

It's a little surprising to have to be so specific for this particular book.

Actually, I'm not surprised at all. If a google just returned some random version of the Bible, what kind of message would some fundie think was being said? "Google is evil because they don't think my version of the Bible is the real one!"

When it comes to versions, there are so many different versions of the Bible that it nearly makes dictionary printings look tiny by comparison. Think of how many different translations into how many different languages there have been. Then there are all the revisions of those translations.

When you do a search for "Catcher in the Rye", you're basically limited to a single work written very recently. Just the English versions of the Bible over the last few hundred years dwarf it.

Re:amazing!

[CSMastermind]

That's correct, if you read http://print.google.com/. They only uploaded books from publishers who granted permission and university liberaries. That's only fare in some ways, as long as a book is recent enough it would really hurt sales to offer it online.

Re:Now the question is...

[m0rningstar]

...well. Will many people read them, on-line? Even working in the IT industry; even with good LCD monitors, laptops, eBooks and whatever I've still noticed a strong tendency (and one that I'm very guilty of) to destroy great swathes of forest to generate the paper to print out the on-line doc so I can digest it better.

what full text???

[wes33]

when I clicked the link for "origin of species" the google-book results are links to books you can **buy** with a small number of sample pages to look at.

After the google-books results, you get the ordinary google results, some of which *do* link to online texts.

To find Darwin's book on line to read, rather than buy, just use regular google. Book search seems to be just a commercial venture.

Or am I missing something?

Am I Missing Something

[BaltoAaron]

I'm not able to see more than a few pages of each of the books linked in the article. Am I missing something?

No Right Click

[Luke Psywalker]

{if (event.button == 2) return false;}

The source is ugly too. Would be nice if it was xml.

Can't read these books in full

[ilyaaohell]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I just browsed around and these books are not actually "available" to read in full. The only pages you can get at are those with matches to your search. You can't just choose to go to page 1, and click "next page" until you get to the end of the book. If you want to actually read these books in full, try something like http://www.online-literature.com/

not Full-Text!

[LMCBoy]

Not one of the linked titles contains the full text of the book! Each shows only a few pages.
From the "About Google Print" page:

(you can view the entirety of public domain books or, for books under copyright, just a few pages or in some cases, only the titles bibliographic data and brief snippets)

However, it seems to consider every title to be "under copyright". I mean, Romeo and Juliet is centuries old, and surely in the public domain. If it's considered copyrighted, then just about everything will be.

Anyway, if you want free e-texts, Project Gutenberg is a great resource.

Re:Highlighting is annoyuing- google the ISBN #

[Morph233]

http://print.google.com/print?id=LDrPI52uFQsC&prev =http://print.google.com/print%3Fq%3D019283438X&pg =3&sig=stLCn4Uuh5uCKQVXgVetpjRD5T8 google the ISBM number of the book

No copyright infringement...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you go to Google and read about this project, you'll quickly notice that unless the books are in the public domain, you won't be able to read the entire book online. This purpose of the project is the enable people to quickly _find_ books, not read them entirely online. Once you've found a desired book by using Google, you'll most likely have to go to a library and check the book out or buy it...

Annoying but cool.

[tgd]

Those are clearly scanned images.

I think its pretty nifty how they are able to highlight search terms within text pages they've clearly OCRed or something.

Re:Now the question is...

[xSauronx]

I won't....at least the entire text. I will, however, take advantage of this should i wish to find certain quotes or passages.

When it comes to reading a full book i'm not comfortable sitting in front of the pc and scrolling through the pages; I read to get away from the computer. I like to take a book on a car ride, or outside or to lay on my couch and relax while i read.

In fact...i recently bought "The Origin of Species" because I didn't want to sit in front of a screen and read it; even though i could easily go to project gutenberg and do so. I can take a book to the kitchen with me and read it as im cooking, or browse over a text as i watch the kids or just before i go to sleep.

Another thing i like about solid texts is that i can write in them...highlight things of interest that i would like to look up further, or things that stand out to me as interesting in some way. If I want to show part of a book to someone i can just...grab the book, without having to bother to print it, or get them to check their email, or i can lend a book to people who arent comfortable reading the whole thing on a pc screen over a period of several hours.

In summary: i prefer books, not screens, when it comes to lengthy reading. I'll take a book any day over most any e-reader someone may come up with (unless its damn durable, damn cheap, and damn easy to get any book ill ever want onto it for a fair price).

Oliver Twist is copyrighted?

[WareW01f]

Last I checked Oliver Twist was written by Charles Dickens whose been dead for over 125 years. I was sure this fell under public domain, but I could be wrong.

Makes you wonder. At some point here there's going to start to be battles over who owns the rights to sections of the bible! Where will it end? (might clean up the 10 commandments issues as a simple copyright infringment. :)

*if*

[ecotax]

It'll be interestin to see how publishers deal with this if demand for these books declines.

That's a very big if indeed - I wouldn't want to read a 300-page book from screen if it's still available in print.
The decrease in sales to people who would (will) do so, could very well be compensated by the increase in sales from people who wouldn't have known about a certain book otherwise.

I'll never read online

[WankersRevenge]

Reading books in an experience for me. For me, reading is more than just scanning my eyes over text. I love the feel of a book. Especially the smell of an old one. I love to underline favorite passages and write down any thoughts that come to mind about them. I love bending the pages back so I can read while walking. And when I'm finished, I usually give my book to interested friends. My only requirement is that they write in them as well. You can't get that online.

Re:Now the question is...

[Bohnanza]

With all of these great works online, will the masses bother to read them?

Do they read those from Project Gutenberg? I'm not sure how many do.

While I get excited about the prospect of "free" literature, I find that I don't take advantage of it. The main reason is that I don't feel like reading a novel while sitting in front of the computer. This is especially difficult to do while sitting on the toilet, or on a plane or train, or on a toilet on a plane or a train. Sure, I could bring a laptop, but it's a lot more cumbersome than a paperback.

I've considered printing them out, but this would be much more expensive than just purchasing a paperback (or, in a lot of cases, hardback) edition, even using my antique laserjet. This might make some sense for rare OOP books, that's about it.

What we need is a really cheap, really good e-book reader that accepts multiple and non-proprietary formats.

Re:Books with no cover

[Rightcoast]

It isn't being purchased.....

Re:Now the question is...

[jnik]

What we need is a really cheap, really good e-book reader that accepts multiple and non-proprietary formats.

Any PalmOS device, plus Plucker for HTML and Weasel for text. Weasel's screen-wrap autoscroll is hands-down the best way I've ever found to read e-texts. Plucker's autoscroll isn't as pretty IMO.

Then there's of course the proprietary readers for DocBook and MobiPocket and I would guess PDF, although I haven't bothered with that.

I can carry about ten books on my 8MB Visor, which keeps me busy for quite awhile. Only problem is what to do during takeoff/landing--I usually carry a single dead tree while I'm at it. One book+one palm is reading material for a couple of weeks.

Plain Text Please

[DoorFrame]

I don't really see the utility of this besides the ability to search within a book. First of all, you don't get a plain text version, so I can't download it and read it offline. Secondly, most of these books are already covered by Project Guttenburg which does provide plain text versions that you can download to a PDA and read at your leisure.

Now, I readily admit I'm one of the few people who enjoys reading books off a PDA, but even I hate reading books on a regular computer screen. I don't think there's many people who will sit down and read long treatises this way. I could be wrong, but it seems unlikely.

Also, the system doesn't seem to let you jump quickly and easily within a book. There's no "Go to page X" ability, you can only move slowly forward and backward from a handful of starting positions.

This just doesn't seem very helpful (again, except if you're looking for a quote within a book and you want to search for it... this while be great for that).

Controversial?

[northcat]

Charles Darwin's controversial treatise.

How is it controversial? Not all of us live in USA, you know.

Re:Can't read whole book

[SmokeHalo]

Sounds like they need the "if you found this cover without a book" notice.

"The origin of species"

[Zayin]

For instance, book origin of species will turn up the full text of Charles Darwin's controversial treatise.

I think it's sad that "The origin of species" is referred to as controversial. What's next, Newton's "Principia Mathematica" considered controversial?

Get around context menus

[DoorFrame]

You can get around the disabled context menus, but it involves a little bit of sifting through the html. For example this is a page from 20,000 Leagues under the sea. Google set the background as the image you want to see, and placed a clear gif file above that, so when you click on view image, you just see the clear gif. Anyway, they didn't do anything too sneaky to hide the original image, it's just annoying.

What happened to "don't be evil"?

ebookwise 1150 is the way to go

[rjnagle]

http://www.ebookwise.com/ebookwise/ebookwise1150.h tm

no serious readers reads from computer; they read it on pda or (more commonly) a dedicated device.

The ebookwise isn't a technological marvel, but it's cheap (129$) and relatively user-friendly. The 128 mb smartmedia cards (35$) hold about 150 ebooks.

Ebookwise is sturdy and intended for carrying around; it's a great form factor, with a rubbery outside. And yes, I've read it in the bathtub. http://www.imaginaryplanet.net/weblogs/idiotprogra mmer/?p=83398151

Controversial?

[acb]

In most parts of the world, Origin of Species hasn't been controversial for well over a century.

Hacking Google Print

[un1xl0ser]

There is an interesting k5 article caled Hacking Google Print.
Check it out.

Re:Now the question is...

[muellerr1]

I've been downloading books from Project Gutenberg for a few years now, reading them on my PocketPC using uBook Reader, Adobe Acrobat, and others. My PocketPC is handier than a paperback and can read multiple formats, even DRM like eBooks. I like to carry the thing around in my pocket anyway, and it's handy to have a small library with me in case I finish one book and want to start another. Of course, if I get bored of reading there's always the games (and with Pocket DVD Studio I can watch my dvd collection too).

You get used to reading from a small screen pretty quickly, though I was never one for getting headaches from staring at a monitor too long anyway.

Re:As is not being able to access a specific page

[angst7]

To read through an entire book, all you need to is start from the beginning. When you get to the last page it will display, search for a result found on that page, then continue the process. I just read the first 15 or so pages of Finnegans Wake this way. I'd continue further, but I value my sanity.

Defeating the pseudo-DRM

[Andrew Cady]

Hacking Google Print article on kuro5hin.org, explains how Google Print uses cookies to track your access and ensure you don't look at too many pages. Solution: acquire lots of cookies.
Firefox GreaseMonkey scripts -- scroll to "Google Butler"; it will make saving Google Print pages work without extra effort in Firefox.

Re:Now the question is...

[TurboTas]

I find the problem is that PDA screens are a bit crap. Not only that, but the feature wars between manufacturers tend to make them into constantly evolving geek toys (Sorry!). Useful, I'll admit, but not really a nice device to read a book on. I've been following the devopment of high contrast, high res EInk products such as this and it's only a matter of time before products appear which will give us crisp, 300 dpi high contrast displays (albeit at slow refresh rates) that consume miniscule amounts of power. That's when the eBook becomes a much more attractive proposition. Sony have a device up and running, but I don't think it's consumer ready yet. Soon....

Cthulhu Networking Book Found

[drkich]

Did a search for book cthulhu and one of the books listed was this one. Funniest networking book I have ever seen.

Re:Controversial?

[northcat]

Yeah, I'm a troll for stating the fact that USA is not the only country in the world.

Re:Controversial?

[David Leppik]

In most parts of the world, Origin of Species hasn't been controversial for well over a century.

That's mainly because 2/3 of the world is covered in ocean, and the giant squid don't read. Seriously, how do you define "most parts of the world?" By population? By area? By number of countries, with EU members counted separately?

The way I see it, there isn't a "most of the world" with a reliable split. The best I can do is to split it as follows:

• The United States, which is divided between religious fundamentalism and a more secular world view. In large part, this is a rural/urban split, with the suburbs as the current battleground.
• Western Europe, Canada and Australia, strongly in the secular camp.
• Mexico, Central America, and South America; former European colonies, which have a variety of conservative Christian belefs (frequently Catholic), often merged with indigenous beliefs. On topics such as gay marriage, they are strongly conservative.
• Africa, former European colonie and home to countless Christian and Moslem missionaries over the years. Like most of the Americas, lots of conservative Christianity, often mixed with indigenous beliefs. But with more Moslems.
• The Middle East. Very Moslem, very conservative.
• Southeast Asia. Lots of Buddhists, relatively little Christianity. Beyond that, as far as I can tell every country is distinct. Some have lots of Moslems. Some are secular, others less so.
• Eastern Europe. Mostly secular from what I know, but every country is different.
• Other. This isn't a complete list, but it gets at most of the populated parts of the world.

Depending on how you want to weight each region, you might find that Origin is controversial to most of the world, or you might not.

Public Domain can't be copyrighted

[dananderson]

I work a lot with putting copyright materials online. See /http://yosemite.ca.us/history/ I get a lot of resistience from librarians, but that's another story. Only original material can be copyrighted. For a reprinted book, for example, that would be new introductions or new art. It would not minor editing or line breaks. A federal court found that high-quality photographs of art do not have copyright protection. They were considered "slavish copies," without any additional creativity. Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191, 1999 (S.D.N.Y. 1999).

That said, it's always better to reproduce from an early printing, and not a new printing, to avoid any question of copyright.

Re:Controversial?

[northcat]

Nice list of all the countries mentioned on American TV channels there. And nice way of giving a separate entry for USA. You forgot India and China, the two biggest fucking countries in the world. I live in India and evolution is not controversial here. We learn evolution in our text books and we accept it. And the same case in China. And most other countries. We (non-US people) have different places for religious documents and scientific facts. We use religious documents for religious ceromonies/festivals etc., and we use science for everything else. (You're only giving reasons for why it's *possible* for evolution to be controversial outside USA. You're not giving any proof for that.) Only in USA do people take a religious document literally and try to put it over science and justify it using science. That's what we mean when we say evolution is not controversial outside USA - we don't reject evolution saying that it contradicts our religious documents. And we don't have such a huge group of people so vigorously working for the acceptance of some non-scientific crackpot theory over evolution. So when you call evolution controversial, either admit that it's only controversial in USA or go out of your mom's basement and look around - the world is not what it seems like on TV and over the Internet. Not all countries are like USA.