Beautifully done PDF classics from Planet eBook
More than 30 well-chosen classics, such as Great Expectations, Grimms Fairy Tales, and Dracula, are beautifully done in PDF on a new site called Planet eBook—-the work of Richard Crocker, who created the free library at Planet PDF.
The PE books, too, are free and DRMless. Best of luck, Richard! My anti-PDF feeling are against the format, not the people who disagree with me about it.
Meanwhile a list of the 30+ titles follows.
- A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
- Aesop’s Fables by Aesop
- Andersen’s Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen
- Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
- Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne
- Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Dracula by Bram Stoker
- Erewhon by Samuel Butler
- For the Term of His Natural Life by Marcus Clarke
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
- Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
- Grimms Fairy Tales by the brothers Grimm
- Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
- Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
- Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
- Middlemarch by George Eliot
- Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
- Paradise Lost by John Milton
- Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
- Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
- Sense and Sensibilities, by Jane Austen
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
- The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
- The Iliad by Homer
- The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells
- The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle
- The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
- Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenso
Thoughts from Richard on his new site: "The philosophy behind it is similar to what I did at Planet PDF, only the quality of the eBooks [is] much higher and there’s no licensing or sharing restrictions to speak of. Students, teachers, etc. can download them, print them, put them on their own site as downloads—essentially people can do whatever they like with them."
March 4th, 2008 at 6:52 am
I really don’t understand the PDF love. It is the hardest format to convert to something else if you want to read it on a mobile device. In fact, I have yet to find a program for my Mac that will do so. Maybe someone can enlighten me what the big attraction is to PDF, I don’t get it. They are slow to load and not very versatile.
March 4th, 2008 at 8:09 am
Ficbot, I am one who loves its typographical integrity.
A well designed page, balancing whitespace against a well chosen font creates a textual beauty that enhances reading.
Clearly it is a cow to transform.
However, perhaps what we should look forward to is producing PDFs through style sheets for specific devices as required. Allowing publishers to establish a look for their work and how it should appear.
I downloaded “For the Term of His Natural Life†which I last read when I was 12 years old, on the ferry to Tasmania, I finished it just before we reached Port Arthur, the scene of so much of the story. A quick glance of this beautifully produced PDF resurrected the whole experience for me that occurred half a century ago.
Bringing good typography back to electronic reading in a flexible way, is much needed, until then PDF as it stands has its attractions.
March 4th, 2008 at 8:30 am
They sure look purdy, those PDFs.
But like Ficbot (?) mentioned, those reading books on PDAs or smartphones or eReaders might not be too happy with this format.
But I agree with you, greg, when you say that we need good typo on electronic devices.
Oftentimes it is enough to get the text without line breaks :), because you can adjust the fonts and borders on a lot of ebook readers. I think MS Reader does a real good job at this.
March 4th, 2008 at 9:20 am
PDF is still very useful since not all books are one-dimensional text streams that are easily reflowable.
Quite a few books depend strongly on the arrangement in page, so of the full two dimensions of the page. As a good test for easy reflowability, books that are released in mmpb will do, but there is a reason a lot of non-fiction books are only larger size formats.
And then there are special characters, figures, equations that are harder to do with regular html (or xml) stuff that the reflowable formats depend on.
And then it’s the aesthetic thing too, a lot of pdf books are just more beautiful to view on an appropriate screen than the prc/lit/.. reflowable version. I have quite a few magazines that I read in prc on my 770, but once in a while I browse in pdf on my pc to see the art, the text arrangement properly…
March 4th, 2008 at 10:08 am
But Liviu, the overwhelming majority of books benefit from reflowability–a major help for those reading them on portable devices. Furthermore, there are ways such as through the right graphics to present equations, etc., through .epub. Meanwhile I notice that in your own reading, reflowability counts—that you’re resorting to PDF just “once in a whole.” Smarter design could address aesthic issues. PDF was created to render paper documents in a p-ish way; it’s the time to go beyond that mindset. Thanks. David
March 4th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
I do not like pdf that much either and avoid it whenever it makes sense, but right now you really need a lot of contortions for many books, or you just accept that say technical books with lots of diagrams, equations and scientific papers are not usable as e-books which is patently not the case.
I have a lot of math e-books/papers, and my wife has a lot of medical e-books/papers that I just do not see how you would do them outside pdf (and related formats like djvu, laTex/dvi, ps or plain images)
Sure for fiction, pdf is mostly irrelevant, though even there some books require a two dimensional presentation (House of Leaves anyone?); a book like House of Leaves may be doable in a reflowable way, but I am not sure that it’s very easy.
March 4th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Hallo! Got here via OLPC news, and am quite a fan. From what I can research, many of the ebook formats are based on XHTML or XML. So layout quality depends on current web standards, both quality and implementation.
As for typography, both Gecko (which firefox and friends use) and Webkit (mobile phones, MacOS) have made great strides in text quality. FF3 beta vs. FF 2 is like night and day. Not to mention (X)HTML+CSS offers surprisingly flexible layout capabilities and is the BEST core format for reflowable documents. PERIOD. Fortunately, this isn’t a problem.
Still, paper books which rely heavily on layout and high quality images are best served by PDF. Many children’s books, books of poetry and works like Irvine Welsh’s “Filth” would be degraded without a true-to-print representation. As long as our ebook readers have sufficient DPI (XO-1 screen and e-ink ) and our software is clever with scaling (BOO to the XO-1’s Read activity!) we’re golden.
Put simply, Zoom-to-width should be default on all readers that bother with PDFs, and those that allow screen rotation should automagically “re-zoom” on a rotate.
I also think that “reflowable PDF” is an arbitrary and unnecessary hack bolted onto a perfectly useful, special-purpose format. Fortunately, Adobe is pushing epub now.
March 4th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
P.S. These PDFs are beautiful on my OLPC XO-1, especially in sunlight reading mode (backlight off). Too bad the OLPC (PDF) Read Activity is still a bit janky.
My compliments and thanks to Planet PDF.
March 4th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Excellent points, Liviu; but remember this is a long-term process–I’m not calling for the immediate abolition of all PDF. But for most books these days, it’s a real hassle for users, and it’s time to plan ahead for alternatives. Meanwhile you’ll notice that .epub is the only distribution format of Hachette–which says a lot in terms of its versatility even now. Thanks. David
March 4th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
For some types of material, we probably will always need PDF or something similar. However, I think that the majority of books that people think have to be done in PDF can be done successfully in epub, assuming you have a reasonably sized screen. I would not want to read a textbook with lots of illustrations and/or equations on a PDA.
Speaking of equations, they can be done two ways in epub, without resorting to images. epub supports SVG, which is a vector graphis, XML standard. The second way is simply to use the appropriate math font and embed the font in the epub (font embedding is also supported).
Part of the problem is that we are used to the printed page. With proper CSS, images, SVG, fonts, etc., a very good reflowable equivalent can be made. Over time, we will get used to this, too.
March 4th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
I agree that PDF is not the best format for e-books but it seems to be the format of choice right now.
As a reader I try to find books that are easiest on my reader (iRex iLiad or XO). For me the PDFs from Planet eBook look great on the iLiad. Trying to read a letter size PDF that does not reflow is difficult. That is why I like the choices that Manybooks.net offers.
For DRM books I try to buy the Mobipocket format for use on the iLiad.
I have taken a few courses recently and it is hard to get textbooks in e-book format. For the literature classes I took the any format would have been fine. For some of the more technical courses (GIS) the e-books will need to be closer to a print book in layout or have the capability to zoom in and out of tables/charts/pictures/etc.
Having said all of that I agree that at some point we need to get to e-books that can reflow and adapt to different devices and screen sizes.
March 6th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
David, thanks for mentioning my new site. Much appreciated. Did I just start that whole PDF is great/terrible debate again? Whoops, sorry about that.
I’ve had a couple of days to think about the comments here and the following thought came to me. The more devices you design your e-book for, the less appropriate PDF becomes. The more devices you want a book to work on, the more control the publisher/designer must relinquish over the presentation, and the more dependent we must become on the computer and its ability to display a book that is nice to read.
It’s definitely a sacrifice worth making — we don’t really have a choice if we want to read e-books. But if a PDF page could be designed to fit the exact dimesions of the screen, I’d prefer a well designed PDF over havng a computer display it based on its layout rules. And as far as reflowing PDFs, it seems counter-intuitive to me — it’s exactly what they’re not really designed to do.
My basic goal for the e-books was to create a book that was nice to read on a computer screen and when printed. I also hoped they might look reasonable on large handheld devices and dedicated readers.
Between us, I’m planning to do a bunch of books designed specifically for the iPhone later in the year (when Apple releases it in Australia). I’m hoping (in part that) it’ll help me convince my wife that I really do need a new phone!
If anyone has an iPhone and would like to try one of my books on it. Please contact me and I’ll make you a book.
Thanks again for the mention on your site.