Standard Ebooks: liberated ebooks, carefully produced for the true book lover

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Relationship to Project Gutenberg and other sources

  • Standard Ebooks typically starts from Project Gutenberg texts, cleaning and re-typesetting them; it does not systematically send fixes back—contributors must do that individually.
  • Internet Archive and Open Library are noted as primary scan sources; Open Library also links to Standard Ebooks where available.
  • Wikisource and Project Runeberg are mentioned as related but different efforts (more like multi-language PG / page-faithful editions).

Access to older and copyrighted works

  • Users praise SE for making out-of-print or expensive classics easily readable.
  • Shadow libraries and Internet Archive are discussed as sources for both public-domain and in-copyright scans; there is debate about whether scans themselves can be copyrighted.
  • Some users keep private, improved editions of in-copyright works because “legit” channels only accept public-domain material.

Sponsorship, funding, and scope

  • SE offers “sponsor a new ebook” starting at $900 for already-transcribed texts; some see this as expensive, others as fair for detailed human work.
  • Suggestions appear that states or cultural institutions should fund this kind of work.
  • SE is English-only by design; extending to other languages would require editors with strong typographic authority in each language, which is seen as out of scope.

Contribution workflow and tooling

  • Workflow: start from PG text, clean and semantically mark up in XHTML, run tools/regex-based automation, then peer review and editorial approval.
  • Books are “claimed” via mailing list to avoid duplicate work; each ebook lives in its own repo to keep histories manageable.
  • PG Distributed Proofreaders’ multi-pass pipeline is described in detail and praised; SE still finds remaining OCR errors.

Device support and rendering

  • Kobo devices (especially with kepub format) are repeatedly recommended; Kindle’s renderer is often criticized as outdated.
  • KOReader, Plato, Foliate, Zathura, Moon Reader, Apple Books, and others are mentioned as good viewers.
  • There’s extensive discussion of epub as XHTML, limited CSS support, and Kobo’s kepub quirks (file renaming, extra spans, conversion tools).

Language, editing, and modernization choices

  • SE modernizes spelling and some usages (e.g., hyphenated forms, certain names) for contemporary readability.
  • Some readers appreciate this; others feel it undermines fidelity to the author and avoid SE for works they care deeply about.
  • SE argues this kind of modernization is long-standing editorial practice and all changes are traceable in git; scans and original transcriptions are linked.

Site UX and discoverability

  • Users want better browsing: author index, language filters, popularity sorting, and a way to hide non–public-domain placeholders.
  • Collections (e.g., “best books” lists) exist but are not prominently surfaced.
  • Placeholders for non–public-domain titles are defended both as volunteer beacons and as a political statement about copyright duration.

Audiobooks and richer metadata

  • Librivox is highlighted as the closest audiobook analogue; some pair SE texts with TTS or the Storyteller app for ebook–audiobook sync.
  • One commenter proposes much richer in-text metadata (characters, emotions, locations) for enhanced reading and AI narration; others argue this would be prohibitively labor-intensive (TEI-like) or philosophically misaligned with reading as interpretation.

AI, automation, and error-checking

  • SE explicitly does not use LLMs; most automation is regex and custom tools.
  • Some think AI could help with spell-checking or metadata; others question the point if both metadata and its consumers are AI.
  • Discussion notes that PGDP already requires spellcheck; LLM-based checkers have been tested on SE texts with minimal additional benefit.

Tone, framing, and typography criticism

  • Many comments are enthusiastic, calling SE a “treasure” and replacing raw PG downloads for them.
  • Some criticize SE’s homepage copy for an “us vs them” stance toward other free-ebook projects.
  • The online typography manual and web reading view receive criticism for tight leading and poor mobile experience, seen as at odds with SE’s typographic claims; maintainers say web view is secondary and welcome PRs.