Re: [NTLK] How should I place "my" copyright-free ebooks into circulation

From: DJ Vollkasko (DJ_Vollkasko_at_gmx.net)
Date: Mon May 17 2004 - 07:33:01 PDT


>I started working a while back on converting some miscellaneous
>copyright-free documents into NewtonBook format. I am wondering what would
>be the fastest way to get such books placed into circulation. I could
just send
>them to www.unna.org one at a time, but they may not get organized into the
>appropriate category folder (e.g. Ethnography, Exploration, History,
Technology,
>etc). Should I just upload them to UNNA and let Victor worry about
placing them
>into the appropriate place?

What I do:

I tell NTLK what new stuff I have and that it's at UNNA. Anybody who needs
it *now* is invited to mail me and will get service right away.

Also I sometimes send a list to people who'd previously received books from
me directly or have given me books they did. That list is actually just a
sig of this mail account, so it's always handy.

Unna will serve it in the long run, but it can take up to three months or
more for stuff to appear. Also the filing is somewhat arbitrary (if that's
the right word), e.g. check for Cory Doctorow's books, they are splattered
all over the place. Doyle, too, I think - there's a Doyle directory and a
separate Holmes folder, IIRC.

When I upload my stuff to UNNA, I post the same description I posted at
NTLK and also add a suggestion on where to file them, in the (usually vain)
hope that this will little by little help sorting out the mess in the books
section.
   Unfortunately, though Victor and I had many kind and enjoyable exchanges
on this topic, we weren't able to agree on how the directory structure
would be more intuitive and useful. For an example, I think it is nicer to
have a bunch of directories for authors named like "Doctorow, Cory" than
"Cory Doctorow". Also adding the life dates makes much sense to me (e.g.
"Burroughs, Edgar Rice (1875-1950)" - and look where all *his* books are
filed) if available, but longish strings seem to conflict with technical
needs for publishing UNNA's offline media (CDs/DVDs or whatever). Same goes
for deep hierarchies, e.g. "Tarzan", "Mars-Tales", "Caprona - The Land that
Time Forgot" and other subcategories in Mr. Burroughs oeuvre.

Maybe Eric Morgan's Alex Catalogue (which already offers books as Newton
Paperbacks) will accept ebook submissions after the rerelease. No reason
why that shouldn't work, as long as you submit an ebook and your edited
text source (aka master document). I think that would be a nice asset to
Newtonia and could possibly vastly improve the book appreciator's experience.

But for the time being, [ANN] at [NTLK] and upping to UNNA seems like the
way to go for me for all material in the public domain.

Cheers,

DJV.

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