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Clarify collections policy, and change wording on public domain year to be clearer and to align with Wikipedia
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Alex Cabal
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4 changed files with 16 additions and 11 deletions
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<p>The public domain is a priceless resource for all of us, and for the generations after us. It’s a free repository of our culture going back centuries—a way for us to see where we came from and to chart where we’re going. It represents our collective cultural heritage.</p>
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<p>In the past, copyright was a limited boon, designed not to enrich a creator and their children’s children a hundred years from now, but rather to allow a creator to profit by granting a <em>temporary</em> monopoly on reproduction, in exchange for their work to be returned to the public after a few years. Our ancestors—in fact, the framers of the U.S. Constitution—recognized that art builds on art, and that locking up culture benefits a handful but harms the greater public.</p>
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<p>Today, large corporations are putting a lot of money into twisting our laws to slowly but surely strangle the public domain, making it increasingly remote and inaccessible so they can continue seeking rent on ideas and culture nearly a century old. Today laws lock up work not just for the author’s entire lifetime, but for the lifetime of their children, and <em>their</em> children. Copyright can’t enrich the dead, but it <em>can</em> enrich powerful corporations … at our—at <em>everyone’s</em>—expense.</p>
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<p>Dedicating the work Standard Ebooks produces to the public domain is our small way of letting the world know how important it is to fight that. If corporations have their way, the last liberated and free culture you’ll ever have is what was published before <?= PD_YEAR ?>.</p>
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<p>Dedicating the work Standard Ebooks produces to the public domain is our small way of letting the world know how important it is to fight that. If corporations have their way, the last liberated and free culture you’ll ever have is what was published before <?= PD_YEAR + 1 ?>.</p>
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<p>What a sad world that would be.</p>
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</article>
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</main>
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<h1>Collections Policy</h1>
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<h2 class="miniheader">Or, ebooks we do and don’t accept.</h2>
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</hgroup>
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<p>Standard Ebooks only works on books that have entered the U.S. public domain due to copyright expiration. Generally this means a book must have been published in <?= PD_YEAR ?> or earlier, though there are exceptions for works from later periods that didn’t follow copyright formalities. For more information on determining the copyright status of a work in the U.S., see <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/help/copyright.html">Project Gutenberg’s Copyright How-To</a>.</p>
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<p>Standard Ebooks only works on books that have entered the U.S. public domain due to copyright expiration. Generally this means a book must have been published before January 1, <?= PD_YEAR + 1 ?>, though there are exceptions for works from later periods that didn’t follow copyright formalities. For more information on determining the copyright status of a work in the U.S., see <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/help/copyright.html">Project Gutenberg’s Copyright How-To</a>.</p>
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<p>Note that a book that is in the U.S. public domain may not be in the public domain of other countries, and vice versa.</p>
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<h2>Types of ebooks we do accept</h2>
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<ul>
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<p>Ebooks that are not clearly in the U.S. public domain. If it’s not hosted on <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">Project Gutenberg</a>, we’ll probably decline it.</p>
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</li>
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<li>
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<p>Individual short works that could instead be collected in a larger omnibus, like individual pamphlets, essays, or short stories. For example, we wouldn’t accept individual ebook productions of Jonathan Swift’s “<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1080">A Modest Proposal</a>” or Philip K. Dick’s “<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32522">Mr. Spaceship</a>.” However we <em>do</em> want <em>complete compilations</em> of those kinds of short works, for example our <a href="/ebooks/philip-k-dick/short-fiction">ebook of all of Philip K. Dick’s public domain short stories</a>.</p>
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<p>Individual short works that could instead be collected in a larger omnibus, like individual pamphlets, essays, or short stories.</p>
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<p>For example, we wouldn’t accept individual ebook productions of Jonathan Swift’s “<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1080">A Modest Proposal</a>” or Philip K. Dick’s “<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32522">Mr. Spaceship</a>.” However we <em>do</em> want <em>complete compilations</em> of those kinds of short works, for example our <a href="/ebooks/philip-k-dick/short-fiction">ebook of all of Philip K. Dick’s public domain short stories</a>.</p>
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</li>
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<li>
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<p>Most non-fiction, including:</p>
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<p>In general, this means books about <em>facts</em> and not <em>ideas</em>. Note that we may occasionally make exceptions, for example for <i>The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire</i> or <i><a href="/ebooks/julius-caesar/commentaries-on-the-gallic-war/w-a-mcdevitte_w-s-bohn">Commentaries on the Gallic War</a></i> or <i>The Life of Samuel Johnson</i>.</p>
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</li>
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<li>
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<p>Books that are illustration-heavy, like picture or art books, or whose content greatly depends on the arrangement of illustrations or graphics. For example, we would not produce anything by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake">William Blake</a>.</p>
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<p>Books that are illustration-heavy, like picture or art books, or whose content greatly depends on the arrangement of illustrations or graphics.</p>
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<p>For example, we wouldn’t produce anything by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake">William Blake</a>, as his intricate arrangement of words and illustration would result in an ebook that is merely a series of images, without parseable text.</p>
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</li>
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<li>
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<p>Modern books that have released to the public domain, including self-published books.</p>
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<p>Major religious texts from modern world religions, like the Bible or the Koran, won’t be accepted. Texts <em>about</em> religion will usually be accepted. Texts from historical religious movements that were culturally influential but are now defunct, or are otherwise not significant in modern times, <em>might</em> be accepted; ask first.</p>
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</li>
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<li>
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<p>“The complete works”-type ebooks, in which an author who wrote in various styles (like poetry, short stories, and novels) has their entire corpus compiled into one ebook. However we <em>are</em> interested in complete collections of <em>single types of writing</em>. For example, Anton Chekhov wrote many plays, short stories, novels, and novellas. We <em>wouldn’t</em> accept “The Complete Works of Anton Chekhov,” but we <em>would</em> accept <i><a href="/ebooks/anton-chekhov/short-fiction/constance-garnett">Anton Chekhov’s Complete Short Fiction</a></i>, or individual novels or plays he wrote.</p>
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<p>Different editions of books, including editions published in different places or years, and different translations. We aim to host a single “best” edition of an book. For books that differ significantly across editions, this typically means the latest possible edition, presuming that it’s the most correct and most aligned with the author’s intent. (Of course, case-by-case circumstances often warrant exceptions to this rule of thumb.) For books in translation, we want the one public domain translation that reviewers or scholars consider to be the “best.”</p>
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<p>For example, we currently host the 1831 edition of <i><a href="/ebooks/mary-shelley/frankenstein">Frankenstein</a></i>, which is the author’s heavy revision of the original 1818 edition, and we host a respected translation of <i><a href="/ebooks/dante-alighieri/the-divine-comedy/henry-wadsworth-longfellow">The Divine Comedy</a></i>, which has numerous other public domain translations; therefore we wouldn’t accept other editions or translations of either of those books.</p>
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</li>
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<li>
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<p>Ebooks in translation for which we already have a translation. We aim to host one “best” version of books; for example, we already have a translation of <i><a href="/ebooks/dante-alighieri/the-divine-comedy/henry-wadsworth-longfellow">The Divine Comedy</a></i>, so we won’t be accepting a different translation.</p>
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<p>“The complete works”-type omnibuses, in which an author who wrote in various styles (like poetry, short stories, and novels) has their entire literary corpus compiled into one ebook. However we <em>are</em> interested in omnibuses of <em>single types of writing</em>.</p>
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<p>For example, Anton Chekhov wrote many plays, short stories, novels, and novellas. We <em>wouldn’t</em> accept “The Complete Works of Anton Chekhov,” but we <em>would</em> accept <i><a href="/ebooks/anton-chekhov/short-fiction/constance-garnett">Anton Chekhov’s Complete Short Fiction</a></i>, and his many novels and plays as individual ebooks.</p>
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</li>
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<li>
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<p>Non-English-language books. Translations to English are, of course, OK.</p>
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</li>
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<li>
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<p>Translations into English which are severely abridged, Bowdlerized, wildly archaic or near-unreadable to modern readers, or which scholars agree are poor translations. For example, the only public domain translations of <i>Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas</i> are ones widely considered to be slapdash, thus we will not accept them.</p>
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<p>Translations into English which are severely abridged, Bowdlerized, wildly archaic or near-unreadable to modern readers, or which scholars agree are poor translations.</p>
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<p>For example, the only public domain translations of <i>Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas</i> are ones widely considered to be slapdash—thus we wouldn’t accept any of them, even if that means not hosting the ebook at all.</p>
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</li>
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</ul>
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</article>
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</li>
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</ul>
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<p>Internet Archive has the widest amount of scans, with the most permissive viewing and lending policy. Hathi Trust has many of the same scans as Google Books, but with a more permissive viewing policy. Google Books restricts readers based on IP address and does a poor job of implementing per-country copyright law, so people outside of the U.S. may not be able to access scans of books that are in the public domain of their country.</p>
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<p>Each of those sources allows you to filter results by publication date, so make sure you select <?= PD_YEAR ?> and earlier to ensure they’re in the U.S. public domain.</p>
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<p>Each of those sources allows you to filter results by publication date, so make sure you select a maximum publication date of December 31, <?= PD_YEAR ?> (in other words, everything published before January 1, <?= PD_YEAR + 1 ?>) to ensure they’re in the U.S. public domain.</p>
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<p>Please keep the following important notes in mind when searching for page scans:</p>
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<ul>
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<li>
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<p>Make sure the scans you find are <em>published in <?= PD_YEAR ?> or earlier.</em> You <em>must verify the copyright page in the page scans</em> before proceeding.</p>
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<p>Make sure the scans you find are <em>published before January 1, <?= PD_YEAR + 1 ?>.</em> You <em>must verify the copyright page in the page scans</em> before proceeding.</p>
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</li>
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<li>
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<p>Often you’ll find different editions, published at different times by different publishers, for the same book. It’s worth the effort to quickly browse through each different one to get an idea of the kinds of changes the different publishers introduced. Maybe one edition is better than another!</p>
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@ -570,7 +570,7 @@ proceed to seal up my confession, I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll
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<p>The image you pick should be a “fine art” oil painting so that all Standard Ebooks have a consistent cover style. This is actually easier than you think, because it turns out most public domain artwork is from the era of fine art.</p>
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</li>
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<li>
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<p>You must provide proof of public domain status to the S.E. Editor-in-Chief in the form of a page scan of the painting from a <?= PD_YEAR ?>-or-older book, and the Editor-in-Chief must approve your selection before you can commit it to your repository.</p>
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<p>You must provide proof of public domain status to the S.E. Editor-in-Chief in the form of a page scan of the painting from a book published before January 1, <?= PD_YEAR + 1 ?>, and the Editor-in-Chief must approve your selection before you can commit it to your repository.</p>
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</li>
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<li>
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<p>The Standard Ebooks Editor-in-Chief has the final say on the cover image you pick, and it may be rejected for, among other things, poor public domain status research, being too low resolution, not fitting in with the “fine art” style, or being otherwise inappropriate for your ebook.</p>
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<main>
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<article id="a-basic-standard-ebooks-source-folder">
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<h1>Uncategorized art books</h1>
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<p>You may find these <?= PD_YEAR ?>-and-earlier art books useful as you conduct cover art research.</p>
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<p>You may find these art books published before January 1, <?= PD_YEAR + 1 ?> useful as you conduct cover art research.</p>
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<ul>
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<li><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=PBpAAAAAYAAJ">The History of Modern Painting</a></li>
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<li><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=Q3YoAAAAYAAJ">Art Studies for Schools: Or, Hints on the Use of Reproductions of High Art</a></li>
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