Ebooks We Do and Don’t Accept

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 or earlier, though there are exceptions for works from later periods that did not follow copyright formalities. For full details, see Project Gutenberg’s Copyright How-To.

Types of ebooks we do accept

• Most long fiction, including plays.

• Most short fiction, when presented in individual collections or omnibus forms. We consider short fiction to be works less than 40,000 words in length, which typically includes novellas.

• Most philosophy and other “timeless” non-fiction.

Types of ebooks we don’t accept

• Ebooks that are not clearly in the U.S. public domain. If it’s not hosted on Projected Gutenberg, we’ll probably decline it.

• 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 Modest Proposal” or Philip K. Dick’s “Mr. Spaceship.” However we do want complete compilations of those kinds of short works, for example our ebook of all of Philip K. Dick’s public domain short stories.

• Non-fiction that is “dated” or not relevant to a modern reader. This includes obscure histories that are not otherwise notable and have been superseded by modern research; old-timey cookbooks, books of medicine, and textbooks; biographies of long-forgotten people that are not notable; non-fiction periodicals, magazines, or journals; legal documents, including codes of law and constitutions; and so on. Note that “notable” means we may make exceptions, for example for The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire or The Gallic Wars or The Life of Samuel Johnson.

• Books that are illustration-heavy, like picture or art books, or whose content greatly depends on the arrangement of illustrations or graphics.

• Modern books that have released to the public domain, including self-published books.

• Major religious texts from modern world religions, like the Bible or the Koran, will not be accepted. Texts about 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, might be accepted; ask first.

• “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 are interested in complete collections of single types of writing. For example, Anton Chekhov wrote many plays, short stories, novels, and novellas. We wouldn’t accept “The Complete Works of Anton Chekhov,” but we would accept Anton Chekhov’s Complete Short Fiction, or individual novels or plays he wrote.

• 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 modern translation of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, so we won’t be accepting a different translation.

• Non-English-language books. Translations to English are, of course, OK.

• Translations into English which are severely abridged, Bowdlerized, wildly archaic or near-unreadable to modern readers, or which scholars agree are poor translations.