Standard Ebooks
| Standard Ebooks | |
|---|---|
 Logo | |
| Location | United States |
| Established | 2015 |
| Collection | |
| Size | 1001 documents (May 31, 2024) |
| Other information | |
| Website | standardebooks |
Standard Ebooksis anopen source,volunteer-driven project to create and publish high-quality, fully featured, and accessiblee-booksof works in thepublic domain.[1][2]
Standard Ebooks sources titles from places likeProject Gutenberg,theInternet Archive,andWikisource,among others,[3]but differs from those projects in that the goal is to maximize readability for a modern audience, take advantage of accessibility features available in modern e-book file formats, and to streamline updates to the e-books (such as typo fixes) by making use ofGitHubas a collaboration tool.
All Standard Ebooks titles are released inepub,azw3,andKepubformats, and are available throughGoogle Play BooksandApple Books.All of the project's e-book files are released in the United States public domain, and all code is released under theGNU General Public License v3.
Style
[edit]Standard Ebooks produces e-books by following a unified style guide, which specifies everything from typography standards to semantic tagging and internal code structure, with the goal of creating a consistent corpus, aligned with modern publishing standards and "cleaned of ancient and irrelevant ephemera[example needed]."[4]Standard Ebooks works with organizations such as the National Network for Equitable Library Service, and strives to conform toDAISY Consortium accessibility standards,among others, to ensure that all productions will work with modern tools such asscreen readers.
With the goal of making public domain works more accessible to modern audiences, archaic spellings are modernized and typographic quirks are addressed "so ebooks look like books and not text documents."[3]This approach stands in contrast to the work of transcription sites likeProject Gutenberg.[5]
All book covers are derived from public domain fine art. Volunteer e-book producers locate paintings suitable for the work they are producing.
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Cover ofLittle WomenbyLouisa May Alcott -
Cover ofMoby-DickbyHerman Melville
History
[edit]Standard Ebooks was founded by Alex Cabal after he experienced frustration at being unable to find well-formatted English-language e-books while living in Germany.[6]After early experiments creating apay what you wantedition ofAlice's Adventures in Wonderland,[7]the Standard Ebooks website was launched in 2017. Initial notice came from posts onHacker NewsandReddit,[6]with later mentions includingStack Overflow's newsletter.[8]
In 2021, Standard Ebooks began accepting donations and sponsorships to produce specific books.[9]In May 2024, Standard Ebooks publishedUlyssesas its thousandth title.[10]
References
[edit]- ^"Free eBooks with Modern Typography & Nice Formatting, All" Carefully Produced for the True Book Lover "".Open Culture. 21 June 2017.Retrieved17 June2020.
- ^Pot, Justin (23 April 2018)."Standard Ebooks Offers Public Domain Downloads That Aren't Ugly".How-To Geek.Archived fromthe originalon 24 June 2023.
- ^abAustin, Patrick Lucas (20 June 2017)."Standard eBooks Is a Gutenberg Project You'll Actually Use".Lifehacker.Archivedfrom the original on 15 March 2024.
- ^Kozlowski, Michael (25 June 2020)."Standard Ebooks is a great place to download free content".Good e-Reader.Retrieved9 May2021.
- ^Ghoshal, Abhimanyu (21 June 2017)."Fill up your ebook reader with beautifully formatted free classics".TNW.Archivedfrom the original on 16 January 2021.
- ^abpressmaster (19 February 2021)."Alex Cabal: Standard Ebooks".Mythaxis Review.Retrieved9 May2021.
- ^"The results from our pay-what-you-want ebook pricing experiment are in – Alex Cabal".7 April 2014. Archived fromthe originalon 7 April 2014.Retrieved9 May2021.
- "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland – Standard Ebooks".10 February 2014. Archived fromthe originalon 10 February 2014.Retrieved9 May2021.
- ^Donovan, Ryan; Williams, Cassidy (12 August 2022)."The Overflow #138: Social learning for engineers".Stack Overflow Blog.Retrieved12 October2022.
- ^"Donate".standardebooks.org.Retrieved9 May2021.
- ^"Standard Ebooks' 1,000th title: Ulysses | Hacker News".news.ycombinator.Retrieved6 June2024.