My original plan was to post another in the series of "Pitfalls Facing Newbie Writers" today, but the latest edition of Publishers Lunch (PL) changed my mind. We'll return to the pitfalls tomorrow.
There was a piece in PL about Project Gutenberg's ambitious initiative scheduled for next month. Called the World eBook Fair, it proposes to put as many as 300,000 books online for free download. The books will be available for a one-month period from July 4 to August 4 at http:www.worldebookfair.com.
According to today's Boston Globe, "The catalog of available works will include fiction, nonfiction, and reference books, mostly those that are no longer protected by copyright." Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, says, "'It will include the oldest books in the world, including every author you have heard of in your life, other than current ones'... The fair also will offer classical music files, both scores and recordings, as well as films." (Boston Globe)
You'll recall that Project Gutenberg is the oldest digital library. It was founded in 1971 and is manned by volunteers who type, digitize and archive works that are in the public domain. In 35 years of operation, they have assembled 18,000 items.
Michael Hart, has said that, "The mission of Project Gutenberg is simple: 'To encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks.'" (Wikipedia) The World eBook Fair is in line with that initiative.
While the 2006 goal is 300,000 books, future years are more ambitious:
2007 500,000 ebooks
2008 750,000 ebooks
2009 1,000,000 ebooks
For the World eBook Fair, more than 100 e-book libraries are donating books for download during the month of July. Among these is the World ebook Library (http://www.worldlibrary.net), which normally charges $8.95 a year for access to its library of over 250,000 ebooks.
Mark your calendars for July 4th.
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