Project Gutenberg News

Across the U.S., thousands of libraries are embracing eBooks. No longer the familiar home of tomes and periodicals only, these foundations are now using new technology for more than just computerizing their catalogues. Libraries, like so many other businesses of the book, are eager to attract the digitally savvy new generation. This downloadable wave has been a gradual transition for the library, and the books of yesterday are not yet extinct. The New York Public library currently offers over 17,000 eBook titles, just a fraction of their 800,000 circulating print titles. Comparing these numbers, it’s obvious that eBook acquisitions still represent a small percentage of their budget.

Why the seeming reticence to stock up on eBooks? It’s not only because the library still clings to the spine (pardon the pun) of its institution, which lies in the not so modern, good old fashioned pages of yester-year. The road to eBook downloads, as history has proven (i.e. Google) is often a bumpy one. One obstacle libraries face is the inability to keep up with new devices now dominating the industry. Although most libraries offer eBooks that are compatible with computers, Sony Reader and a handful of other digital devices, many of their downloadable offerings cannot be read on Amazon’s Kindle or the Apple’s iphone, both very popular e-readers. Another issue slowing down eBook acquisitions for libraries is the publishers themselves. Many publishers are thus far loath to permit eBook versions of their print copies to be allowed in libraries, due to concerns it will decrease sales of their print editions. This decision comes despite the fact that checking out a downloadable eBook greatly mirrors a checkout of a print copy. Instead of physically walking out of a library with book copy in hand, all is done at home, or anywhere else, with a digital device. The differences, in the instance of library patronage, seem more academic than financial.

Yet even in the wake of these problems, eBook circulation is expanding at an amazing rate. eBook checkouts have increased to more than one million in 2009, up from 600,000 in 2007, according to OverDrive. eBooks are quickly proving an unstoppable force, and opening the floodgates have given libraries the chance to increase readership and cater to a new age of information seekers. Downloading a book in the comfort of home is no longer just a concept for most. It’s a daily reality. For libraries, it is still a relatively new venture, riddled with many obstacles, but even more opportunities.

Those on the leading edge witnessed a watershed breakthrough milestone this week as the first reports came in indicating that the greater new mobile access to the Internet…great…greater…greatest.

The most obvious bell they heard ringing was the sound of iPhone apps, with a first time ever report that there are now more eBooks apps than game apps for the iPhone and related hardware.

This only a half year after Steve Jobs, one of my heroes, said that it was not in Apple’s interest to support eBooks because no one reads.

“The Time’s They Are A’Changin’.”

With ~4.5 billion active cell/mobile phones in the world plus the fact that laptop computer sales surpassed desktop computer sales years ago, it should have been obvious that the majority of Internet access would be from mobile devices…right?

The pundits seem to have missed this one. Sometimes even Steve Jobs.

People are reading eBooks, and doing everything else on the Net from a majority of devices that are now mobile.

If you have a web site and haven’t yet figured out that you need to do a mobile version of that website, you are probably losing traffic.

1.2 billion cell/mobile phones were sold in the last four quarters and that was even in the middle of this huge recession.

Netbooks have taken off as the next big thing.

University library employees tell me that every other student there is on a laptop computer…50%, in a building filled with books and that so much traffic is going through that it slows the huge bandwidth of a major university location down to slower that what you get at home.

Continue Reading »

Never was it so apparent to me how drastically our culture has changed then on one early afternoon at my local hair salon. I had arrived early, sat and immediately scanned the table for the most topical magazine. I found one, opened it and glanced fleetingly at my seatmates. There were four. One talked on her cell-phone, one text-messaged on her cell-phone, one stared off into space and the last well-kept lady tapped furiously on her blackberry, then stared at it as if she had discovered a long lost Rosetta stone.

It dawned on me then how much had changed. I flashed back to another era, little more than a decade prior, when I would sit at the salon and sift through magazines. The women around me did likewise, back then. We had flipped pages in solidarity, making the most of our time in limbo by perusing whatever was available, be it recent news or even, for some, simple entertaining gossip. But that was last decade, and the years leading up to this one had brought a steady decline in my witness of people casually perusing at the salon, in my physician’s waiting room, at the line in the market, or even in the bookstores I frequented. My generation, hedging insidiously over middle-age, had witnessed perhaps most closely the dawning of the digital takeover. We had found ourselves immersed in new technologies we could enjoy and grasp for the most part, although our children probably understood it better. So much speed and convenience and entertainment, but what of the aftermath? Reading and writing skills continue to decline in he United States. Could this new era come at the cost of literacy? Books may not be dead. They’re just gathering dust on library shelves. Alarmists would claim that our society is crumbling. Perhaps this is not the case, but what does the future hold when leading universities begin clearing out books to make room for computer workstations? Times have changed, irrevocably, inevitably. The cold, hard truth is that the future lies less in the written page, and more on the screens of computer monitors and handheld digital devices. I will play the role of the idealist, and say that this evolution of technology has paved the way for an evolution of literacy, or in simpler terms, an evolution of the genre of literature. Can a conduit designed to bring the printed page to a computer screen, or even a cell phone, become literature’s saving grace? Our children can still learn of Shakespeare, and still be enriched by Jules Verne, if in a way vastly different then we as children discovered them. In light of this, the future looks bright indeed. Literacy will not go the way of the dinosaur. Classic works of literature can, and have, taken a contemporary form, in an era of technology capable of delivering the wonderful stuff of books to nearly anyone on the globe in the blink of an eye, or the push of a button.

I recently had the privilege of interviewing Michael Hart, former editor and founder of Project Gutenberg. In our interview, Michael discusses the future of PG, and looks back on how it has evolved through changing times.

So why are you passing the editor torch?

This isn’t the first time. It’s mostly to get PG used to not depending on me so much. I have tried as hard as I dare, not to be a central figure by voicing my own opinions other than to balance others. I don’t really mind doing the Newsletter, but I like to see more other points of view, styles, perspectives, interest, etc.

Project Gutenberg has had a long and tumultuous road. How do you feel the face of PG has changed or evolved through the years?

Believe it or not, I never thought of it as tumultuous. Yes, there were a few years of hard times, but that’s my life’s story, but since I never let us get addicted to money it never made a difference when there wasn’t any.

How has PG evolved?

Well, from 1971 to 1988-89 no one paid any attention so it was just me with tilting at windmills, but I knew eBooks and eLibraries should be two of the great wonders of an entirely new world, so I was never tempted to give up–never. I just had to wait for the world to catch up.

Continue Reading »

We try to time this so people in all times zones can get a selection from the two million plus free eBooks or the 125  thousand commercial eBooks [just ask for a discount] right  up to the last minute of Tuesday.

At this time we are estimating one million downloads a day on the average, but because some of the books require files in multiple numbers, instead of estimating 32 million, for the 32 days from Jul. 4 through Aug. 4, we prefer to do an estimate of a more conservative nature.

100 Million Total World eBook Fair Books Downloaded

However, even with such conservative estimates, we have an overall estimate of having given away 100 million eBooks–in the three years and one month since we first began.

We will endeavor to present more exact statistics after we have had some time to work them up in more detail.

100 Million More eBooks Downloaded From Project Gutenberg

In addition to these 100 million eBooks given away in this 37 month period, Project Gutenberg has equaled this via a monthly total averaging about 2.7 million.

2.7 million/month x 37 months = ~100 million eBooks

Next year these grand totals will likely be expressed in a terminology of fractions of a billion, as 200 million is a fractional equivalent to 1/5 billion, which should surpass 1/4 billion [250 million] next year, and we should surpass 1/3 billion [333 million] the year after if we are lucky.

It might take one extra year to 1/2 billion [500 million].

This is including eBooks given away ONLY VIA TWO SITES: www.worldebookfair.org and www.gutenberg.org

It does not include: www.gutenberg.cc or any of the many other Project Gutenberg sites worldwide or any estimate of how many people who download these book titles then proceed to give them to others.

The whole point of such sites is to hand out eBooks to the world at large, with no restrictions on give them to other people free of charge.

It is our hope via this Unlimited Distribution philosophy, to put so many free eBooks into circulation that no one is ever going to be able to count them.

Given that nearly 4.5 billion people now have cell phones, activated cell phones, not counting the billion that could be used as eReaders without activation, or with WiFi, this literally accounts for one cell phone for ever person this planet contains of a reasonable reading age, and the total cell phone count continues to escalate.

Thus there is absolutely no reason an eBook may not travel to every person who might ever want to read it.

The Future Is Now!

Michael S. Hart

Many more books have been added since our initial report on the start of The World eBook Fair on July 4. As expected, Internet
Archive is keeping up with their goal of adding another ~25,000 titles, about 1,000 each business day, but another 25,000 comes
from the general readership of the patrons. We get messages to add books that our readers have compiled totally on their own–
independently of the major eBook producers.

In fact, the Internet Archive total will likely increase double what was expected, as they were just approching 1,500,000, July
4, and reached 1,545,731 texts by noon EDT, July 27. This will likely reach additional totals of ~50,000 added just during the
period from July 4 through August 4. Add to that the 25,000 or so mentioned above, and a few hundred more at Project Gutenberg
sites and others, and the grand total by the end of the fair is likely to surpass 2,500,000, as follows:

1,550,000  Internet Archive
  500,000  World Public Library
  113,000  Project Gutenberg
  130,000  ebooksabouteverything.com
   37,000  Other eBook Sites
=========  =======
2,320,000  Grand Total [Estimate]

In addition, Internet Archive offers:

191,421 movies
381,602 audio recordings
66,622 concerts [totals as of July 27]

[These are not added into our grand totals this year, but will probably be added in next year, so statistic oriented people should be advised]

The World eBook Fair is handing out a million files per day on the average with best day July 15 of 1.5 million files.

Reminder: some of the entries take more than one file so a one to one matching of files to books will not be accurate.

As you can see, our earliest most popular books were joined by some other classics, as well as computer oriented works.

Most Popular Titles At Half Way Point:

1. Emma, by Jan Austen
2. Linux Complete Command
3. Little Woman, by Lousia May Alcott
4. Nostromo, by Joseph Conrad
5. Workbook in Higher Algebra
6. A Child’s Garden of Verses, by Robert Louis Stevenson
7. A Journey to the Centre of the Earth, by Jules Verne
8. The Decameron, by Giovanni Boccaccio
9. Overview of Servlets and JavaServer
10. RedHat Linux Unleashed
11. Win XP Pro
12. Cousin Bette, by Honore de Balzac
13. The Beautiful Book Of Nursery Rhymes, by Frank Adams
14. Workbook in Higher Algebra
15. C+ Programming
16. MY SQL manual
17. Colonel Chabert, by Honore de Balzac
18. The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle
19. The Art of War, by Sun Tzu
20. The Time Machine, by Herbert George Wells

Michael S. Hart
Founder
Project Gutenberg
co-Founder
World eBook Fair

Over 3 Million Items Feted At World eBook Fair

Project Gutenberg, The World Public Library, The Internet Archive, and ebooksabouteverything are proud to sponsor the fourth edition of The World eBook Fair.

July 4 – August 4 at http://www.worldebookfair.org

eBook readers will have over 2 million to pick from:

~1.5  million from http://www.archive.org
~ .5  million from http://www.worldpubliclibrary.org
~ .13 million from http://ebooksabouteverything.com
~ .11 million from the various Gutenberg servers
~ .01 million from various other eBook sites
===== ======= ==================
~2.5  million eBooks Grand Total

Please note that archive.org and PG etc. have many audio files, movies, music files, etc. with totals of an additional ~.5 million files.

Grand Total: ~3.1 million Files of all Kinds Many of these eBooks are available for cellphones.

Approximately 1,000 titles will be added each week.

Contact information:

If you have any questions, or seek further materials, an interview or would like to confirm the schedule or contents please feel free to contact the following:

Michael S. Hart
Founder, Project Gutenberg

405 W. Elm, Urbana, IL 61801
hart@pglaf.org
hart@pobox.com
US Phone 217-344-6623
Cellphone 808-295-0615

Gregory B. Newby
CEO, Project Gutenberg

gbnewby@pglaf.org
US Phone 907-450-8663
http://www.gutenberg.org

John Guagliardo
Director, World Public Library
Director, World Public Library

Honolulu, Hawaii
john@gutenberg.cc
US Phone 808-292-2068
http://www.worldpubliclibrary.org

Catherine Hodge
eBooks About Everything

info@ebooksabouteverything.com
US Phone 760-327-5100
http://ebooksabouteverything.com

The Internet Archive
http://www.archive.org/details/texts

[Michel actually sent this as an email, which I am posting here with his permission. He probably won't reply to any comments directly but I will pass these along to him -- Ed.]

Many people have argue with me for years on the subject of dedicated eBook reader devices, with any number of reasons they like them, but it is really only that they can’t read small print or they still want “the look and feel” of the dead trees pulp bound up in dead animal skins.

I won’t even address the latter issues here but to say that the world always says it will stick with the old ways until a new generation comes, and then the car or the telephone or hairstyle, or whatever, becomes ubiquitous, then the story is closed, and the argument forgotten.

However, I will address the issue of font size.

This is an issue mainly of interest to Boomers, and to others born with limited vision, rather, sadly, than just from olde age.

However, the Boomers are losing power faster in all respects than the media are willing to show because the media is still controlled by Boomer and even older groups, who will not admit their time went, of even pretending to be middle age. I won’t argue right now that people born in ‘65 were the last Boomers, how silly, those Boomers of the real kind were already having kids!!!

Even so, it should be obvious, and I tried this out on a 9 year old this week, new generations, those whose eyesight will not deteriorate for a long time to come, those people can read prints I can’t even read with my reading glasses, thus they could care less about the size of the font available in a Kindle, leaving the Kindle sadly to the declining Boomers, who are spending $500 on the average when they buy a Kindle, while an entirely new computer generation is buying this new crop of Netbooks that are full computers in pretty much all senses, but are even smaller in size than the Kindles, and smaller in price.

I just bought one for $278 that I can use every other hour from 9 to 5 and still have the power for a little extra work afterwards.

Yes, the keyboard is a bit too small for my big hand, much larger than average so I think I may look into an external keyboard for long usage.

However, I should add, I have always been quite satisfied with the little foldup keyboards with my Palm Pilots and Visors and the like.

But my values are not the ones that count here, it is world values, and I will be the world has no desire to spend more on a Kindle than on the full boat, or even full sized, laptops that are the best selling computers for years now. They replaced desktops as the primary around 2005…depending on whose reports you believe.

There are several reasons people will not buy a dedicated eBook reader, and some of them a very powerful reasons that cannot be argued with via any intelligent reasoning rationality. Continue Reading »

The first goal of Project Gutenberg was simply to reach totals of estimated audiences of 1.5% of the world population, or the total of 100 million people.

With the advent of cell phone [mobile phone] access we are now setting our goal at 15% of the world population or 1 billion.

Given that there are approximately 4.5 billion cell phones now in service around the world, that means we would have to reach just over 1/5 of all cell phone users to accomplish this.

Possible. . .but not likely unless we make it extremely easy!

To this end we will be emphasizing eBook reader programs for a wide range of cell phones.

Given the estimated 4.5 billion cell phones that we could make eBooks for today, presuming they can all display plain eBooks, and the extremely slow rise in Kindle sales as compared to the iPod, iPhone, Blackberry Curve, and all the others, we should be able to reach more readers than Kindle and Sony combined if we just reach one cell phone user out of a thousand. This has to include many more languages than English, of course, so our effort also has to be multi-lingual, if we are to reach anyone beyond the number of people comfortable enough with English to read our eBooks on their cell phones.

As many of you know, we already have well over a thousand book titles in French, followed by lesser numbers in German and the other more popular languages, but not nearly enough to really, sincerely, say we are offering a library in these languages.

Once we complete a survey of our Top Ten languages we are down to under 50 books per language. . .it’s a start, only a start.

[This article was originally released in the May 2009 Project Gutenberg Newsletter]

Just recently Project Gutenberg had a major crashe of their hardrives and subsequently lost some data and the newsletter lists were destroyed. They are currently using some ancient backups but most people should still be on the list.

A number of poeple have been asking how to subscriber/unsubscribe from the Project Gutenberg mailing list. Full instructions can be found at www.gutenberg.org/howto/subscribe-howto but here is a quick overview;

Mailing Lists

There are various Project Gutenberg mailing lists here is a brief description along with a link to visit and subscribe/unsubscribe. All lists live at pglaf.org, and are moderated except for the discussion lists:

• Newsletters, with new eBook listings, calls for assistance, general information, and announcements
  • gweekly: Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter – Usuall only one weekly newsletter.
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• Notification as new eBooks are posted
  • posted: receive book postings as they happen, along with other PG related internally-focused discussion (high traffic, over 10 postings per day)
• Discussion for active volunteers
  • gutvol-d: general unmoderated volunteer discussion (moderate traffic)
  • gutvol-p: programming volunteers, for software development (light traffic)
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• Other lists
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If you would like to subscribe to one of the above mailing lists, simply visit the lists.pglaf.org website and select a mailing list name.

All lists require a password and email confirmation to subscribe as part of the Lyris anti-spam measures.