Comments on: Getting Project Gutenberg books on your Kindle

By: Free E-books From B&N | The Open Author

Free E-books From B&N | The Open Author — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 18:00:29 +0000

[...] to the Gutenberg Project page. I don’t have a Kindle, so I don’t know for certain, but this site seems to suggest that it’s [...]

By: Jerry ODell

Jerry ODell — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 14:22:25 +0000

Oh, I now have a Kindle 2.

The little program that removes the extra cr/lf’s
works fine on the Kindle. I will try to figure out some way to ship it off to you, but it probably only works with Visual Basic 6.

All in all, the Kindle is interesting. Criticisms: screen hard to read for old man, seemingly no way to tell how much memory is left, and there are times when you get stuck, and have to restart it.

I will try to get my little program in decent shape. I am jwodell@comcast.net (so I’ll have your address)

Jerry O

By: 7 things I like about the Amazon Kindle | Michael Castellon

7 things I like about the Amazon Kindle | Michael Castellon — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 03:45:41 +0000

[...] Amazon offers quite a few free titles. There are also a lot of Web sites and blogs that specialize in connecting Kindle users with free content. My favorite is the Gutenberg Project. [...]

By: Mark

Mark — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:24:05 +0000

It’s very simple…. Copy the TXT file into word, delete the Gutenberg intro if you don’t want it.

Replace double paragraph marks (which mark the actual paragraphs) with a marker (something that doesn’t occur like *X*X*X*). Then search and replace all the paragraph marks (which are the hard line breaks you don’t want). Then search and replace your marker (*X*X*X*) with one or two paragraph marks (as you prefer); this puts the paragraphs back into the text. Save as an HTML and voilà, all clean.

By: Duncan

Duncan — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 19:57:58 +0000

I’ve had this problem recently and have created a simple web-based tool to convert line endings from the project gutenberg format to one better suited for ebook readers:

http://www.duncanjauncey.com/gutenberg.html

Hope that helps,

Duncan.

By: design in the moment: episode 23 - everlastingNow

design in the moment: episode 23 - everlastingNow — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:42:37 +0000

[...] Kindle’s Project Gutenberg [...]

By: Gene Venable

Gene Venable — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 00:56:13 +0000

The Project Gutenberg process is a lot better than expressed above; possibly it’s improved since those earlier downloads. For one thing, all books have the Mobi format, which is what you should use unless you have some special reason to use another. I have had zero problems with bad formatting with the Mobi format, and I have gotten quite a few files from that site.

Something I didn’t seem mentioned above is that there is a very good program called Calibre, easily found by Googling, for converting virtually any text file into Mobi format, so the student who was asking if he (or she) could add textbooks to the Kindle probablty can, if there is a text file.

If I DID have problems with hard returns for some reason, I would then immediately start trying other sites such as the manybooks site to see if they have the problem — that would be much easier than stripping out the hard returns, which would also be easy, but kind of a hassle anyway.

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 18:59:18 +0000

I’m well familiar with various search and replace routines; I’ve used them in publishing for 25+ years. My point is inadvertently made by Ber above: “The key is doing a clever search and replace. Look at the text so you can see the formatting characters …” which is to say the search and replace has to be monitored, since there’s no consistent standard used by Gutenberg regarding single return vs. double return. In general, a double return is used for paragraphing, but verse, notably, isn’t, presenting a problem. It’s commonplace for novels, for instance, to have insets of verse, or even exchanges of dialog, presented in single return format. In historical or sociological or technical literature it’s even more common. Monitoring search and replace routines is onerous with large texts. I don’t want to monitor each line return in a long novel, which I believe could be in the 20,000-30,000 range. Combined with some of the clumsy multiple spaceband formatting for indents and even “centering” and Gutenberg texts can be a real can of worms.

By: Ber

Ber — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 01:01:57 +0000

It’s actually also possible to strip out the hard line breaks just using a word processor’s search and replace if you don’t know how to write a VB script (which, admittedly, is faster and can be stored, etc.). I’ve done it a lot with Gutenberg stuff. They key is doing a clever search and replace. Look at the text so you can see the formatting characters (line breaks, paragraph marks). Replace what you don’t want to be there. It is easy to sometimes screw things up, so maybe a dime is reasonable to pay. As long as the service does a good job.
Free texts like Gutenberg’s are the one reason I’m remotely considering a Kindle. I’m certain I’ll never buy a DRMd version of a book or one that Amazon can just decide to wipe from my device. So I guess I’ll have to spend some time learning whether they can wipe anything on the device, or just things bought through them.

By: Tim

Tim — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 19:40:58 +0000

Jerry — do you have that Visual Basic program available for download? I’m sure there are others (including me) that would love to use it. And if you posted the source code, it would be interesting to programmers that want to see the algorithm you’re using.

Regards,

Tim