I believe that there is already a CD-ROM with over 1100 books in ASCII text format that comes with the Kurzweil 3000 format.
Marlene McIntosh
>>> [log in to unmask] 06/23/01 20:12 PM >>>
Hi listers! thought I would send this forwarded message.
David from Arizona.
----------
| From: richard seltzer <[log in to unmask]>
| To: richard seltzer <[log in to unmask]>
| Subject: books on CD ROM (the next stage beyond PLEASE COPY THIS DISK)
| Date: Tuesday, June 19, 2001 1:34 PM
|
| At one point or another your requested information regarding PLEASE COPY
| THIS DISK, our project to make public domain books available on
diskettes.
|
| After eight years of our doing that, it's now high time to make these
texts
| (and far more) available on CD ROM -- providing many more books at far
less
| cost in an easy to use format. We're calling this project SEEDY PRESS --
| books on CD ROM.
|
| Many of you probably already have general collections of popular classic
| texts on CD ROM.
|
| But is that all you need?
|
| I'd like to make available an enormous number of texts, providing greater
| variety of choice and breadth and depth than what you are familiar with.
| That would give
| you the opportunity to read the other works of authors that you have
sampled
| before and to pursue topics of interest to you in the detail you wish,
| rather than being dependent on the selections that others have made for
you.
|
| I just built the first of these CDs -- American Literature before 1920.
It
| consists of 349 books, in plain ASCII text, with each author's works in a
| separate directory, and with a comprehensive HTML index page with links
to
| all the exts, for easy navigation. The price is $29 (i.e., less than
nine
| cents per book).
|
| Authors include: Louisa Mae Alcott, Horatio Alger, B.M. Bower, Ambrose
| Bierce, Willa Cather, James Fennimore Cooper, Stephen Crane, Richard
Harding
| Davis, Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Zane Grey, Bret Harte,
| Nathaniel Hawthorne, O. Henry, Olvier Wendell Holmes, William Dean
Howells,
| Washington Irving, Henry James, Jack London, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
| Herman Melville, Frank Norris, Edgar Allan Poe, Upton Sinclair, Henry
David
| Thoreau, Mark Twain, Charles Dudley Warner, Walt Whitman, Stewart Edward
| White, and many others.
|
| It includes well-known works and also works that are very hard to find
and
| have been out of print for decades. The collection of Westerns, by
authors
| like Bret Harte and Zane Grey, is particularly interesting.
|
| You can see the detailed table of contents at
| http://www.samizdat.com/amlitcd.html
|
| If there is enough demand to justify the work involved, I'd like to put
| together four more CDs, in the same format, and to add new books to each
of
| these CDs as they become available.
|
| The other CDs would cover British/Canadian/Australian Literature,
Nonfiction
| (history, science, religion, etc.), World literature (in English
translation
| and also in the original language, when available), and Children's Books.
| They too would have hundreds of books and would sell for $29 each. The
full
| set of five would probably amount to between 1200 and 1500 books -- a
| complete library. (All would be texts published before 1920, and hence in
| the public domain.)
|
| Please let me know if you like this approach.
|
| Suggestions welcome.
|
| Richard
|
| Richard Seltzer, [log in to unmask], www.samizdat.com
| Internet marketing consultant www.samizdat.com/consult.html
| Ebook at Mighty Words -- Take Charge of Your Web Site
| Coming soon from Wiley -- Web Business Bootcamp
| Online discussion http://webworkzone.com/bootcamp
Audio of three Internet business speeches www.samizdat.com/internet
| 617-469-2269
|