From ricardofdiogo at gmail.com Sat Oct 10 14:06:29 2009 From: ricardofdiogo at gmail.com (Ricardo F Diogo) Date: Sat, 10 Oct 2009 22:06:29 +0100 Subject: [gutvol-d] Current submissions to PG all go through the DP? Message-ID: <9c6138c50910101406i71e27eafn4a347ea400a9bbc6@mail.gmail.com> DMcCunney at Mobileread has stated that ?Current submissions to PG all go through the DP proofing process, but there seems no way to get existing PG texts dating from before DP resubmitted for cleanup and quality control.? Is this any way true? When did that happen? Ricardo F. Diogo From ajhaines at shaw.ca Sat Oct 10 14:48:53 2009 From: ajhaines at shaw.ca (Al Haines (shaw)) Date: Sat, 10 Oct 2009 14:48:53 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Current submissions to PG all go through the DP? References: <9c6138c50910101406i71e27eafn4a347ea400a9bbc6@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: So far as I know, DP itself has no mechanism for refurbishing its old texts. However, error reports, on any existing PG text, can be sent to errata_AT_pglaf.org. (change _AT_ to @). A report can be as simple as extracting a copy of the problem line and submitting it and the proprosed corrected line, up to submitting a fully corrected version of the existing etext. In the latter case, the PG header and footer should not be tampered with, nor should the file be reformatted, so that the Errata team can more easily compare it to the existing text. All error reports should mention the book's author, title, and etext number. For Mr. McCunney's information, not all submissions to PG arrive via DP. Most do, but there are a few independent contributors to PG. Al Haines Project Gutenberg ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ricardo F Diogo" To: "Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion" Sent: Saturday, October 10, 2009 2:06 PM Subject: [gutvol-d] Current submissions to PG all go through the DP? DMcCunney at Mobileread has stated that ?Current submissions to PG all go through the DP proofing process, but there seems no way to get existing PG texts dating from before DP resubmitted for cleanup and quality control.? Is this any way true? When did that happen? Ricardo F. Diogo _______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d From jimad at msn.com Wed Oct 21 09:17:17 2009 From: jimad at msn.com (Jim Adcock) Date: Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:17:17 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Sign up our Favorite Non-profit with Amazon Payments? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Amazon is just starting a "Paypal" type service, advertising that people can use it to make donations to non-profits. So, how about signing PG up as such a non-profit? It might be interesting to see what happens! https://payments.amazon.com/sdui/sdui/business?sn=paynow/donation From ajhaines at shaw.ca Wed Oct 21 09:51:12 2009 From: ajhaines at shaw.ca (Al Haines (shaw)) Date: Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:51:12 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Sign up our Favorite Non-profit with Amazon Payments? References: Message-ID: <8E452FCB9DD94A99957206A77DA62057@alp2400> I can't speak to the specifics, but I believe it already is. There's a Paypal link on the left side of PG's home page. Al ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jim Adcock" To: "'Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion'" Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 9:17 AM Subject: [gutvol-d] Sign up our Favorite Non-profit with Amazon Payments? > Amazon is just starting a "Paypal" type service, advertising that people > can > use it to make donations to non-profits. > So, how about signing PG up as such a non-profit? It might be interesting > to see what happens! > > https://payments.amazon.com/sdui/sdui/business?sn=paynow/donation > > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > From jimad at msn.com Wed Oct 21 15:34:53 2009 From: jimad at msn.com (James Adcock) Date: Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:34:53 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Sign up our Favorite Non-profit with Amazon Payments? In-Reply-To: <8E452FCB9DD94A99957206A77DA62057@alp2400> References: <8E452FCB9DD94A99957206A77DA62057@alp2400> Message-ID: This is different -- this is Amazon introducing a competitor to PayPal. So if PG were to sign up, then PG would show up in Amazon as one of the charities there -- which would be amusing and appropriate, I think. >I can't speak to the specifics, but I believe it already is. There's a Paypal link on the left side of PG's home page. From Bowerbird at aol.com Wed Oct 21 15:42:07 2009 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:42:07 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] is this the beginning of the end? Message-ID: is this the beginning of the end? > http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2009/10/hp_amazon_team_on_rare_book_reprints.html?ana=from_rss hewlett-packard is teaming with amazon.com to turn the scansets of the public-domain books from the university of michigan into paperbacks. hp will clean up the scansets, and print them, and amazon will sell those puppies, and split the cash with hp and u.m. it's ironic, because most of the u.m. scansets were done by google... and now amazon will sell them... i am assuming that hp won't just print the scans, but will actually clean up the o.c.r. and print that. if i'm right about that... then, relevant to the point here on this listserve, is this observation: if hp cleans up all the scansets, and prints them nicely to an inexpensive paperback, why should anyone here bother doing a digitization? instead, just buy the paperback, and scan that thing. with clean pages and clear digital printing, the o.c.r. will likely be near-perfect, so clean-up would be easy. now, of course, if hp is merely going to print the scans, then we'd be back in the same boat. but -- otherwise -- is this the beginning of the end? -bowerbird -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gbuchana at teksavvy.com Wed Oct 21 16:14:55 2009 From: gbuchana at teksavvy.com (Gardner Buchanan) Date: Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:14:55 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: is this the beginning of the end? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4ADF95EF.2060908@teksavvy.com> Bowerbird at aol.com wrote: > now, of course, if hp is merely going to print the scans, There is no doubt in my mind that this is exactly what they will do. Printing the scans is easy, preserves artwork, halftones, colour, oddball typography, initials and other stuff. The final result will be no worse than a good quality photocopy. My bet is that they won't even proof the stuff, but just rely on the end user complaining if there is something wrong. Expect them, of course, to insert a spurious new copyright notice. They will have de-speckled the images, tweaked the aspect ratio and de-skewed them a bit, so they will no doubt believe they deserve a new copyright, and claiming copyright where one's not entitled never causes any harm anyhow. ============================================================ Gardner Buchanan Ottawa, ON FreeBSD: Where you want to go. Today. From Bowerbird at aol.com Wed Oct 21 16:18:36 2009 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:18:36 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: is this the beginning of the end? Message-ID: gardner said: > There is no doubt in my mind that > this is exactly what they will do. and, as i said, if that's actually what they do, we're in the same boat we've always been in, and this is just another ho-hum news item... > My bet is that they won't even proof the stuff i'm not sure i understand what you mean here; if they print the scans, there's nothing to proof. -bowerbird -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jimad at msn.com Wed Oct 21 16:26:53 2009 From: jimad at msn.com (James Adcock) Date: Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:26:53 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: is this the beginning of the end? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: >is this the beginning of the end? LOL - Well maybe - but certainly NOT for the reason posited! The HP side of the effort is called "Bookprep" and can be found here: http://www.bookprep.com You can read the books free online, and you can zoom in by clicking CTRL-+ where you can find out if you had doubted it earlier that indeed they apparently ARE "only" doing page images no OCR and apparently pretty bad page images to boot. Don't pick one of their recommended example books (which are unrepresentatively good) but instead do a "search function" instead so that you see what their effort is really like. For example I did a search on "Mark Twain" which ought be a turkey shoot, but see what you find if you try it! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gbuchana at teksavvy.com Wed Oct 21 16:32:51 2009 From: gbuchana at teksavvy.com (Gardner Buchanan) Date: Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:32:51 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: is this the beginning of the end? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4ADF9A23.3060201@teksavvy.com> Bowerbird at aol.com wrote: > and this is just another ho-hum news item... What's your point? > if they print the scans, there's nothing to proof. If there are pages missing or illegible sections, then it might be better to skip that volume, versus go ahead selling it to folks who are likely to complain or return it. But if you're lazy, you'd skip that step and let the customer inform you if a given volume is unusable. If you get a lot of complaints about a specific volume, you can then go and figure out what exactly is wrong maybe find a fill-in source or what have you. But why take on that work up front? People will pay the same whether you invest up front or not. ============================================================ Gardner Buchanan Ottawa, ON FreeBSD: Where you want to go. Today. From dakretz at gmail.com Wed Oct 21 21:32:16 2009 From: dakretz at gmail.com (don kretz) Date: Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:32:16 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: is this the beginning of the end? In-Reply-To: <4ADF9A23.3060201@teksavvy.com> References: <4ADF9A23.3060201@teksavvy.com> Message-ID: <627d59b80910212132m1ab8c041vfa8dffe4b07a9a67@mail.gmail.com> It's pretty hollow. I searched on "maps". It says "All books: 647. Books to read now: 9". Another obscure inquiry - "britannica" - gives me 98 books, with 1 available now. But to mitigate, if I click on one of the unavailable books, it says: *This book has not yet been processed, but if you preorder we?ll process it faster and notify you when it?s ready.* Right. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From user5013 at aol.com Wed Oct 21 22:17:59 2009 From: user5013 at aol.com (Christa & Jay Toser) Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:17:59 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Is this the beginning of the end? Message-ID: From Bowerbird: "then, relevant to the point here on this listserve, is this observation: if hp cleans up all the scansets, and prints them nicely to an inexpensive paperback, why should anyone here bother doing a digitization? instead, just buy the paperback . . ." No. Amazon will charge money, and then there is mail delivery time of a few days. Except when you buy from another country, then delivery is weeks. Gutenberg is free, and delivery is immediate -- worldwide. Let's see . . . Immediate delivery verses days or a week. Hmm, hard choice. . . . free verses costly. Hmm, another hard choice. Not to flagellate the deceased equine here, but much of the world can't afford Amazon; No matter how precious books are. If you are a seamstress in India, and you make your business work on 50 Rupees a day, you'll never buy a book. But you might go to an internet cafe, rent their computer, and download several books for free. Especially if they help you with your business. How much is 50 Rupees? Look it up. Gutenberg and Amazon/HP are two completely different services. Apples and Oranges. Jay Toser From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu Oct 22 08:18:57 2009 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:18:57 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Is this the beginning of the end? Message-ID: jay said: > No. > Amazon will charge money, and then there is > mail delivery time of a?few days. > Except when you buy from another country, then delivery is weeks. > Gutenberg is free, and delivery is immediate -- worldwide. > Let's see . . . Immediate delivery verses days or a week. > Hmm, hard?choice. > . . . free verses costly. Hmm, another hard choice. > Not to flagellate the deceased equine here, but > much of the world?can't afford Amazon; > No matter how precious books are. > If you are a seamstress in India, and > you make your business work on?50 Rupees a day, > you'll never buy a book. > But you might go to an internet cafe, rent their computer, > and? download several books for free. Especially if they > help you with?your business. > How much is 50 Rupees? Look it up. > Gutenberg and Amazon/HP are two completely different services. > Apples?and Oranges. wow, jay, you managed to miss the point entirely. entirely. go try reading my post again, and see if you get it that time. -bowerbird -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu Oct 22 08:21:19 2009 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:21:19 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: is this the beginning of the end? Message-ID: don said: > It's pretty hollow. not surprising. even the article put it all in the future tense. and h.p. talked about "potential", while amazon merely confirmed. > > This book has not yet been processed, > > but if you preorder we?ll process it faster > > and notify you when it?s ready. > Right. it makes perfect sense to me. how else would you prioritize which books should be done first? as for skepticism on the time-frame, how much time do you think it'll take 'em to prep a book? i would guess that it's a matter of mere minutes. (seconds for the scripts to run, and then a minute or two for a human to execute the quality-control.) *** jim said: > bookprep thanks for running that down, jim. good info. *** gardner said: > What's your point? "what's my point?" well, it's pretty obvious, i would think, isn't it? if h.p. is correcting the o.c.r., that's a big deal. but if they're just printing the scansets, it's not. so there is an informational asymmetry at work. > If there are pages missing or illegible sections, > then it might be better to skip that volume, > versus go ahead selling it to folks who are > likely to complain or return it.? ok, i see what you meant when you said "proofing"; i consider checks like that to be "quality control"... those problems were common in the first few years of the google scanning, but are fairly rare nowadays. > But if you're lazy, you'd skip that step and let the > customer inform you if a given volume is unusable. well, we differ on terminology again, because i wouldn't call that "lazy", as it's more like a business decision, but i'd think a quick screening for those types of problems would be cost-effective, as opposed to making good on any complaints that your customers would have later on. shipping is gonna be one of your biggest expenses, and shipping a book twice, to make-good, will be expensive... (not to mention a costly infrastructure to field complaints.) > If you get a lot of complaints about a specific volume, > you can then go and figure out what exactly is wrong > maybe find a fill-in source or what have you. the "fill-in" source is likely right there in the umichigan stacks. > But why take on that work up front? again, google and michigan have each separately worked on correcting these problems, so i'd think very few remain. and a quick check by h.p. can eliminate any glitches that do. i'd guess most of google scanning nowadays is clean-up work. > People will pay the same whether you invest up front or not. but people will only pay once for a book. so if h.p. has to print and ship _two_ books to make that customer happy, they've lost money on that sale. that's why they'd "invest", up-front, to ensure they won't have to face that prospect. at least that's _my_ take on your particular point here... i guess real life will show us whether you're right or i am. -bowerbird -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu Oct 22 11:56:44 2009 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2009 14:56:44 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] for the love of god Message-ID: for the love of god, will somebody -- anybody! -- please pull piggy off his "confidence in page" project over at distributed proofreaders... please! anyone! i sincerely believe that piggy is well intentioned... but... the whole thing has been a disaster all the way through. and now he's proposing an even bigger waste of time: > http://www.pgdp.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=30951&start=450 please have the good sense to say "no" to this stupidity. (and for those of you out there who don't know the issue, but take offense at my label of "stupidity", before you bitch, go and actually read the "research" that has been done and then come back and _explain_ it to the best of your ability. because i understand statistics -- took it in grad school -- and i can assure you that these statistics are entirely bogus.) *** as i have said, many times now, time after time after time, there is an _excellent_ way to determine "confidence" that it is not worthwhile to spend more time looking for errors on a page, and that's when 2 people have checked the page and found no errors. or if you wanna be even more certain, draw the cutoff line when _3_ people fail to find any errors... and the easiest way to put in place a "roundless" d.p. system is to simply set the number of rounds to a very high number (such as 11), and then automatically mark a page as "done" in a particular round if it matches exactly the last 2 rounds. (or, to be stricter, the last _3_ rounds.) -bowerbird -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lostpaces.dp at googlemail.com Thu Oct 22 12:09:41 2009 From: lostpaces.dp at googlemail.com (christine) Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:09:41 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Current submissions to PG all go through the DP? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: If such demands were to arrived at PG, what would PG do ? As for Errata, there have been a call made last year for volunteers, I did volunteered, were then told I would receive a mail about how to help ... I am still waiting. Christine (aka Lostpaces) > >> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- >> From: "Al Haines \(shaw\)" >> > > So far as I know, DP itself has no mechanism for refurbishing its old >> texts. >> >> However, error reports, on any existing PG text, can be sent to >> errata_AT_pglaf.org. (change _AT_ to @). >> >> A report can be as simple as extracting a copy of the problem line and >> submitting it and the proprosed corrected line, up to submitting a fully >> corrected version of the existing etext. In the latter case, the PG header >> and footer should not be tampered with, nor should the file be reformatted, >> so that the Errata team can more easily compare it to the existing text. All >> error reports should mention the book's author, title, and etext number. >> >> For Mr. McCunney's information, not all submissions to PG arrive via DP. >> Most do, but there are a few independent contributors to PG. >> >> Al Haines >> Project Gutenberg >> >> >> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ricardo F Diogo" < >> ricardofdiogo at gmail.com> >> >> DMcCunney at Mobileread has stated that ?Current submissions to PG >> all go through the DP proofing process, but there seems no way to get >> existing PG texts dating from before DP resubmitted for cleanup and >> quality control.? >> >> Is this any way true? When did that happen? >> >> Ricardo F. Diogo >> >> > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gbnewby at pglaf.org Thu Oct 22 12:43:08 2009 From: gbnewby at pglaf.org (Greg Newby) Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:43:08 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Current submissions to PG all go through the DP? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20091022194308.GA16177@pglaf.org> On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 09:09:41PM +0200, christine wrote: > If such demands were to arrived at PG, what would PG do ? If you mean, what happens when fixes are reported to the errata email address below: the answer is, that the problems are dealt with. > As for Errata, there have been a call made last year for volunteers, I did > volunteered, were then told I would receive a mail about how to help ... I > am still waiting. > > Christine (aka Lostpaces) Did you respond to me? Or somewhere else? Apologies if you sent me a note, and didn't get a follow-up. There is still work to be done... Greg > >> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > >> From: "Al Haines \(shaw\)" > >> > > > > So far as I know, DP itself has no mechanism for refurbishing its old > >> texts. > >> > >> However, error reports, on any existing PG text, can be sent to > >> errata_AT_pglaf.org. (change _AT_ to @). > >> > >> A report can be as simple as extracting a copy of the problem line and > >> submitting it and the proprosed corrected line, up to submitting a fully > >> corrected version of the existing etext. In the latter case, the PG header > >> and footer should not be tampered with, nor should the file be reformatted, > >> so that the Errata team can more easily compare it to the existing text. All > >> error reports should mention the book's author, title, and etext number. > >> > >> For Mr. McCunney's information, not all submissions to PG arrive via DP. > >> Most do, but there are a few independent contributors to PG. > >> > >> Al Haines > >> Project Gutenberg > >> > >> > >> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ricardo F Diogo" < > >> ricardofdiogo at gmail.com> > >> > >> DMcCunney at Mobileread has stated that ?Current submissions to PG > >> all go through the DP proofing process, but there seems no way to get > >> existing PG texts dating from before DP resubmitted for cleanup and > >> quality control.? > >> > >> Is this any way true? When did that happen? > >> > >> Ricardo F. Diogo > >> > >> > > > > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d From jimad at msn.com Thu Oct 22 17:23:41 2009 From: jimad at msn.com (Jim Adcock) Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:23:41 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Real Competition to PG In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Rather than worry about HP's "bookprep", consider that Amazon has just announced "Kindle for the PC" and "Kindle International Version" http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1345297&highlight= http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1339430&highlight= From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu Oct 22 18:43:10 2009 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:43:10 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Is this the beginning of the end? Message-ID: i said: > go try reading my post again, and see if you get it that time. i've been informed the point was missed a second time, so i'm happy to explain it, for anyone else who missed it. if -- and as i've made clear, i don't know if it's the case, and i actually _doubt_ it, but _if_ -- h.p. will "clean up" the o.c.r. and then print the books from that clean-up, then that would likely mean "the beginning of the end" of the way we typically now do digitizations of these books. currently, people o.c.r. the scanset; the o.c.r. results are typically fairly bad, and time is spent on cleaning them... however, if h.p. cleaned the o.c.r. first, and then printed out the paperbacks -- on clean pages, with digital type -- the o.c.r. from such paperbacks would be extremely clean. so, if you bought such a paperback, and did a scan of it, the o.c.r. that you got from it would be extremely clean... you would find that "cleaning" that already-very-clean o.c.r. would go very quickly, especially compared to the old way... so it would be "the beginning of the end" of that old way. now, as most people (including me) have said, it's probably unlikely that h.p. will take on the work of correcting the o.c.r.; it'd be much easier for them to just clean and print the scans. (and, since the end-target is paper anyway, that would be ok.) so we are probably _not_ seeing "the beginning of the end" of the "old" way of doing digitizations -- from the scansets. what i was saying had absolutely nothing to do with e-books versus printed books, or the speed of delivery of p-books, or the number of books available from amazon versus p.g., or anything else other than exactly what i have explained here. (although i'm glad whenever anyone brings up the vital issue of the digital divide, even if it is completely off-topic, since we spend too little time thinking about that important topic.) if anyone has any more questions about what i'm saying here, i would be happy to answer them. -bowerbird -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gbuchana at teksavvy.com Thu Oct 22 21:08:05 2009 From: gbuchana at teksavvy.com (Gardner Buchanan) Date: Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:08:05 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: is this the beginning of the end? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4AE12C25.6040002@teksavvy.com> Bowerbird at aol.com wrote: > > People will pay the same whether you invest up front or not. > > but people will only pay once for a book. so if h.p. has to > print and ship _two_ books to make that customer happy, > they've lost money on that sale. that's why they'd "invest", > up-front, to ensure they won't have to face that prospect. I think we differ in our assumptions about the economics. My thinking is that having a huge back-catalogue of titles is mostly a marketing gimmick. I anticipate that perhaps 1% of the available titles would ever get ordered by anyone. That means that 99% would not have to have any investment put into them at all in order to fill a slot in the back-catalogue. In my vision, time spent on doing *anything* non-mechanical to a book is, on average, 99% wasted. Better to let the market help identify the 1% of valuable titles and concentrate your scarce fixup attentions on those. Assuming that even without manual review 99% of your titles are actually fine as far as scan quality and completeness goes, you are actually quite likely to get away with a 1 part in 10,000 return rate. And customers might not actually *read* the whole book either. If 50% wind up on shelves unread, or have problems that are annoying, but that don't result in returns, the return rate drops to 1 in 20,000. And if, in the end, they have to ship two copies to a customer, they only have to do *that* once. After a return they can go and fix up that exact book, and never have to double-ship that one again. ============================================================ Gardner Buchanan Ottawa, ON FreeBSD: Where you want to go. Today. From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu Oct 22 22:11:38 2009 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Fri, 23 Oct 2009 01:11:38 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: is this the beginning of the end? Message-ID: gardner said: > I think we differ in our assumptions about the economics.? i agree. wholeheartedly. > My thinking is that having a huge back-catalogue of titles > is mostly a marketing gimmick.? um, i'm not sure how that "gimmick" is supposed to work. having more titles in your catalog isn't going to make me any more (or less) likely to order a specific book from you. if i want a particular book, i'll order it. if i don't, i won't. if i don't want it, i'm not sure why your having a million -- or two million, or twenty million -- other titles would make me decide to change my mind and suddenly want it. > I anticipate that perhaps 1% of the available titles > would ever get ordered by anyone.? i anticipate that 50% of the titles will be ordered in any year. but the vast majority of those might only be ordered _once_. and i'd assume that, over the course of 5 years, every title will end up being ordered -- a couple of times, at the very least... > That means that 99% would not have to have any investment > put into them at all in order to fill a slot in the back-catalogue.? i agree, that -- until a specific book is ordered -- it won't be fixed. or maybe i don't. it would be nice to think that umichigan itself is thumbing through these scansets to identify any problem children. (and we could certainly hope that students will be using the scans, and bringing glitches to the attention of people who can fix them.) > In my vision, time spent on doing *anything* non-mechanical > to a book is, on average, 99% wasted. i guess it depends on what you would consider "non-mechanical". most of the scripts to handle the scans -- deskewing, centering, noise-removal -- probably don't need any human attention at all. but every single one of these scansets has garbage scans in them, such as excess blank-pages in the beginning and color-correction scans at the end, not to mention library-style check-in pages, etc. so it will absolutely be necessary to have a human thumb through all of the pages, to eliminate these unnecessary pages and also to ensure that odd-numbered pages always occur on the recto and even-numbered pages always occur on the verso, and that there are no missing pages or page-spreads, and no duplicated pages. this quality-control pass only needs to be done _once_ on a book, but it would be stupid to the point of ridiculous to go without it... (and as it's only a minute or two of work, it's economically feasible.) there might be some problems which would evade quality-control, such as a page with a few characters cut off at the end of each line, but for the most part, i'd think a simple pass would catch most stuff. if you look at any particular scanset, you should be able to see immediately why such a quality-control pass would be necessary. > Better to let the market help identify the 1% of valuable titles > and concentrate your scarce fixup attentions on those. any book for which an order has been received is "a valuable title". > Assuming that even without manual review 99% of your titles > are actually fine as far as scan quality and completeness goes none -- 0% -- of the scansets are "actually fine" right out of the box. > you are actually quite likely to get away with a 1 part in 10,000 > return rate.? And customers might not actually *read* the > whole book either. If 50% wind up on shelves unread, or > have problems that are annoying, but that don't result in returns, > the return rate drops to 1 in 20,000. i don't think amazon thinks of quality-control issues the way you do. > And if, in the end, they have to ship two copies to a customer, > they only have to do *that* once.? After a return they can go > and fix up that exact book, and never have to double-ship > that one again. i think you underestimate their commitment to a quality product... -bowerbird -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lostpaces.dp at googlemail.com Fri Oct 23 01:55:32 2009 From: lostpaces.dp at googlemail.com (christine) Date: Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:55:32 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Current submissions to PG all go through the DP? Message-ID: > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: Greg Newby > To: Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion > Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:43:08 -0700 > Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Current submissions to PG all go through the DP? > On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 09:09:41PM +0200, christine wrote: > > If such demands were to arrived at PG, what would PG do ? > > If you mean, what happens when fixes are reported to the errata > email address below: the answer is, that the problems are dealt > with. > > No, I meant what would happen if PG were to receive a mail from a reader saying something like "the ebook #xxxxxx is of bad quality, could you please do something about that". Would PG just say "sorry, nothing we can do", or post in a forum of a DP asking for that book to be redone ? or .... ? > As for Errata, there have been a call made last year for volunteers, I did > > volunteered, were then told I would receive a mail about how to help ... > I > > am still waiting. > > > > Christine (aka Lostpaces) > > Did you respond to me? Or somewhere else? Apologies if you > sent me a note, and didn't get a follow-up. > > There is still work to be done... Greg > > No, it was a "call" from Charles, to which I responded, and I received an answer from him telling me I would receive a mail from someone else. My offer is still there, if you need help with Errata, you now know where to find some. Christine -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ajhaines at shaw.ca Fri Oct 23 10:11:21 2009 From: ajhaines at shaw.ca (Al Haines (shaw)) Date: Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:11:21 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Current submissions to PG all go through the DP? References: Message-ID: <05AE270C22014AC8A01E46E2CD0C457E@alp2400> There's nothing that PG can do with an errata email saying only that a book is of "bad quality". The phrase is meaningless--does it mean poorly proofed, poorly formatted, or what? To be useful, an errata report must be specific, ranging from a line-by-line listing of the errors found, up to sending in a corrected text that can be compared/checked against the current version of the book. Many of PG's older books, whether done by early independents or DP, would benefit from a complete re-proof, and even from a re-do from scratch, producing a new text file and adding an HTML version and illustrations. Given the existence of Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org/details/americana), Google, etc, and the scansets they host, along with text checking utilities such as Gutcheck, Jeebies, and Gutspell (http://gutcheck.sourceforge.net/etc.html), which weren't available to PG's earliest submitters (who may have typed their submission by hand), there's nothing stopping anyone from using a downloaded scanset and modern software tools to create a new, high-quality, version of an old PG text. (Just run it through the copyright clearance process first.) This has been done a couple of times. Check out Andrew Lang's "The Lilac Fairy Book", PG# 3454 (produced by independents) and 28096 (produced by DP Canada), or Lang's "The Yellow Fairy Book", PG #640 (independent) and 28314 (DP Canada). Al Haines Project Gutenberg ----- Original Message ----- From: christine To: gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org Sent: Friday, October 23, 2009 1:55 AM Subject: [gutvol-d] Current submissions to PG all go through the DP? ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Greg Newby To: Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:43:08 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Current submissions to PG all go through the DP? On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 09:09:41PM +0200, christine wrote: > If such demands were to arrived at PG, what would PG do ? If you mean, what happens when fixes are reported to the errata email address below: the answer is, that the problems are dealt with. No, I meant what would happen if PG were to receive a mail from a reader saying something like "the ebook #xxxxxx is of bad quality, could you please do something about that". Would PG just say "sorry, nothing we can do", or post in a forum of a DP asking for that book to be redone ? or .... ? > As for Errata, there have been a call made last year for volunteers, I did > volunteered, were then told I would receive a mail about how to help ... I > am still waiting. > > Christine (aka Lostpaces) Did you respond to me? Or somewhere else? Apologies if you sent me a note, and didn't get a follow-up. There is still work to be done... Greg No, it was a "call" from Charles, to which I responded, and I received an answer from him telling me I would receive a mail from someone else. My offer is still there, if you need help with Errata, you now know where to find some. Christine ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From joey at joeysmith.com Fri Oct 23 12:04:36 2009 From: joey at joeysmith.com (Joey Smith) Date: Fri, 23 Oct 2009 13:04:36 -0600 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: is this the beginning of the end? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20091023190436.GA26192@joeysmith.com> On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 01:11:38AM -0400, Bowerbird at aol.com wrote: > > My thinking is that having a huge back-catalogue of titles > > is mostly a marketing gimmick.? > > um, i'm not sure how that "gimmick" is supposed to work. > > having more titles in your catalog isn't going to make me > any more (or less) likely to order a specific book from you. > if i want a particular book, i'll order it. if i don't, i won't. > > if i don't want it, i'm not sure why your having a million > -- or two million, or twenty million -- other titles would > make me decide to change my mind and suddenly want it. > You can see this "marketing gimmick" in play every day at places like Amazon and iTunes - check out Chris Anderson's excellent book "The Long Tail" for more on how playing to a marginal market can increase the market impact of a brand. It certainly doesn't mean you're more likely to come to me for a popular item, but if you're looking for something in that "long tail" and you find it with me, you're now "in the door" and I can upsell/cross-sell and target you for future promotions. From jimad at msn.com Sun Oct 25 20:43:42 2009 From: jimad at msn.com (Jim Adcock) Date: Sun, 25 Oct 2009 20:43:42 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: is this the beginning of the end? In-Reply-To: <4AE12C25.6040002@teksavvy.com> References: <4AE12C25.6040002@teksavvy.com> Message-ID: > I anticipate that perhaps 1% of the available titles would ever get ordered by anyone. I think we can see that this *isn't* true from the PG catalog. Perhaps 90% of the downloads *are* concentrated in a small amount of well known books from well known authors, but the other 10% represents a "fat tail" distribution where lots of people want to read lots of different weird stuff. I do agree that I think too much time gets spent on books that don't get read much -- but that is part and parcel of the self-selection process. From paulmaas at airpost.net Mon Oct 26 05:21:24 2009 From: paulmaas at airpost.net (Paul Maas) Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2009 05:21:24 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: is this the beginning of the end? In-Reply-To: References: <4AE12C25.6040002@teksavvy.com> Message-ID: <1256559684.28792.1341989367@webmail.messagingengine.com> Could it be that a lot of PG's books are rarely read, and the traffic seen for these books is due to people downloading the whole collection simply to have it? On Sun, 25 Oct 2009 20:43:42 -0700, "Jim Adcock" said: > > I anticipate that perhaps 1% of the available > titles would ever get ordered by anyone. > > I think we can see that this *isn't* true from the PG catalog. Perhaps > 90% > of the downloads *are* concentrated in a small amount of well known books > from well known authors, but the other 10% represents a "fat tail" > distribution where lots of people want to read lots of different weird > stuff. I do agree that I think too much time gets spent on books that > don't > get read much -- but that is part and parcel of the self-selection > process. -- Paul Maas paulmaas at airpost.net -- http://www.fastmail.fm - Faster than the air-speed velocity of an unladen european swallow From hart at pobox.com Mon Oct 26 08:24:17 2009 From: hart at pobox.com (Michael S. Hart) Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2009 08:24:17 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: is this the beginning of the end? In-Reply-To: <1256559684.28792.1341989367@webmail.messagingengine.com> References: <4AE12C25.6040002@teksavvy.com> <1256559684.28792.1341989367@webmail.messagingengine.com> Message-ID: Actually, the number of people who download each and every PG book is fairly contant and not very large. mh On Mon, 26 Oct 2009, Paul Maas wrote: > Could it be that a lot of PG's books are rarely read, and the traffic > seen for these books is due to people downloading the whole collection > simply to have it? > > > On Sun, 25 Oct 2009 20:43:42 -0700, "Jim Adcock" said: > > > I anticipate that perhaps 1% of the available > > titles would ever get ordered by anyone. > > > > I think we can see that this *isn't* true from the PG catalog. Perhaps > > 90% > > of the downloads *are* concentrated in a small amount of well known books > > from well known authors, but the other 10% represents a "fat tail" > > distribution where lots of people want to read lots of different weird > > stuff. I do agree that I think too much time gets spent on books that > > don't > > get read much -- but that is part and parcel of the self-selection > > process. > From Bowerbird at aol.com Mon Oct 26 10:13:57 2009 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:13:57 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: is this the beginning of the end? Message-ID: paul said: > Could it be that a lot of PG's books are rarely read, > and the traffic seen for these books is due to people > downloading the whole collection simply to have it? could be. but i doubt there are many such people. and is there any particular reason why you'd want to doubt that there is actually an audience for a book? if the only people who download unpopular books are the ones who are downloading all books, then you should have a number of unpopular books that have the exact same download-count all the time... so if you need to test your hypothesis, that's a way. p.g. books are different from google books, in that someone has spent a good deal of time on each one, meaning that there has to be some intrinsic interest. -bowerbird -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: