Free Books: Under the Radar 288
bcrowell writes "Remember e-books, anti-books, and print-on-demand books? They didn't pan out. The surprise success story is free books." Of course, this defines "success" as number of readers, not in terms of monetary profits. E-books and their ilk were concentrating on the latter definition, rather than the former. Still, it's good to see free books preferred in some circles based on their merit, and not just the cost.
BRUCE ECKEL! (Score:5, Informative)
I, personally, own a copy of Thinking in Java and Thinking in C++, and recommend it to all Java/C++ programmers. Check it out on the website, and buy a copy if you like it.
Baen Free Library (Score:5, Informative)
. Book publishers like Baen and O'Reilly, however, have found that they can increase sales of their printed books by giving away the digital versions for free. This has also been my own experience with my self-published physics textbooks. It's cheap marketing: readers can browse the digital book to see if it's something they want, and if they like it, they're willing to pay for the convenience of a printed copy.
Strangely, the author fails to link to the Baen Free Library: http://www.baen.com/library/ [baen.com]
It's funny. Publishers are starting to get what Microsoft has known for a while. 'Piracy' is in reality free advertising. Why don't the record companies and movie studios get it?
More books. (Score:3, Informative)
Eckel gets it.
Here's more gratis books. Site 1 [upenn.edu] | Site 2 (Math) [gatech.edu]
Philip Greenspun books (Score:2, Informative)
His Travels With Samantha [photo.net] was one of the first online free books ever, circa 1992-3. Later, he wrote the stupendous book on web publishing, Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing [photo.net] with his samoyed, Alex.
Two very good reads by a very good writer. Sorry, I know some people don't like Philip and this isn't flamebait -- I truly admire many of his initiatives, like the free Remindme and Clickthrough services, in addition to the remarkable photo.net which has grown enormous tentacles nowadays. Both books are intimately related to those efforts.
Re:In the beginning... (Score:5, Informative)
Project Gutenberg (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Free/E Not the problem (Score:3, Informative)
links (Score:2, Informative)
link (Score:4, Informative)
It's not much of a collection right now, but the quality level is high. Especially good is 'How to Think Like a Computer Scientist', a good introduction to programming that lives up to the title. It covers several languages.
Consider the Dover-Gutenberg connection. (Score:5, Informative)
So how's that affecting Dover's business (Dover produces no new titles, apart from original translations of non-copyrighted work)? They're booming. [corporate-ir.net]
Heck, with those sort of results, Dover ought to be providing financial support for PG (or at least releasing edited/translated titles into the public domain). Though I guess I'll settle for that nice brief [eldred.cc] they filed in Eldred's behalf.
Slight disclaimer here, Dover was bought by a big printing company that's really helped them with distribution (just came back from the beach and all the little bookstores there were well-stocked with Dover thrifts), but every other publisher on the planet has seen sales fall [reviewsnews.com], while Dover's sales, since the acquisition, have grown tremendously.
Community Writing (Score:3, Informative)
The best I can think of is Everything [everything2.com]. I spend many hours reading the stuff there every week. Though it cannot be called an encyclopedia by any stretch of imagination, I've found it to be a very valuable source of general contemporary info.
Then there's the Encyclopedia Mythica [pantheon.org].
Someone just mentioned Project Gutenberg too. It's a community effort that's coming out very well indeed. I know that it's not not community authorship, but a community effort.
There are many more counter-examples I can provide. Hell, even the usenet archives are a very useful source of info sometimes.
Community writing should not be written off (pardon the pun) lightly.
Free Book Links (Score:2, Informative)
Perseus Project [tufts.edu]
Great Books Index [mirror.org]
The Internet Classics Archive [mit.edu]
Bartleby [bartleby.com]
Enjoy these free reads. They are the greatest books ever written.
'Underground' Under the Radar? (Score:2, Informative)
free classics (Score:1, Informative)
The books are in DjVu format (viewer for Linux available here [sourceforge.net]).
Ebooks rule! (at least for research) (Score:3, Informative)
For example, I wanted to quote that great pseudo-riddle from Lewis Carroll -- "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" But which Alice book did it come from? In two minutes I found both text files at Gutenberg, searched for "raven", and there it was. (The Mad Hatter came up with it, in _Alice in Wonderland_. )
The Internet is, IMO, the best free ebook--it sure is the biggest. Unlike dead tree books, you get a wide choice of search engines. Of course, you can pick up a lot of weird stuff there too. So, surf safely--I myself always wear a condom.
Problem w/ reading books pdf format (Score:3, Informative)
Until then, the thing to do is offer books in pdf and html format. PDF to print out. HTML to read on the computer, which will allow you to change font settings and sizes to your preference, making it easier to read.
Interesting problem... (Score:3, Informative)
The problem is that though ClearType looks great subjectively it gives me a massive headache on my 17" ViewSonic VA800 LCD screen if I leave it on for a day or two of heavy computer use, even after I "tuned" it. I haven't set it up on a PDA and tried reading a Gutentext or other ebook because of that (well, and cuz I got rid of my PocketPC device and am back to a Clie for now... doh).
Luckily there are still some immediate options if you are one of the many who *know* about Project Gutenberg etexts (for those of us whose taste in books, e- and otherwise is somewhat antiquated) but have never actually *read* one due to their well, umm, rather plain text look and feel. In particular GutenMark [sandroid.org] should do the trick. So download a couple of GutenTexts and GutenMark them into PDF/PS and you have something you might not exactly be able to curl up with, but at least it's readable.
Re:ok so its not free but... (Score:3, Informative)
However, they also seem to be contributing to this disturbing trend of ``un-freeing'' free books. This book [theassayer.org] used to be free at the author's web page [chalmers.se]. If you click on the link, you'll find that it no longer exists. The book is no longer free, and you can only get the electronic version through Safari.