How does Standard Ebooks differ from Project Gutenberg?

Standard Ebooks puts more work into each book: it adds curly quotes, proper dashes and consistent formatting, and gives every title a cover based on public-domain artwork. Its own pages say Gutenberg’s quality varies greatly between productions.

Why is a book I know missing?

Only works believed to be in the US public domain qualify, and each one needs volunteer work to meet the project’s standard, so many eligible books may not have been produced yet.

Standard Ebooks Screensaver

The Standard Ebooks screensaver shows new releases from Standard Ebooks, the volunteer project that takes public-domain texts and typesets them properly, gathered key-less by the pipeline from its Atom feed. It's free, runs in your browser, and ESC exits.

How the Standard Ebooks screensaver works

The background pipeline reads this from Standard Ebooks and saves a snapshot the saver loads.

New releases from Standard Ebooks, the volunteer project that takes public-domain texts and typesets them properly, gathered key-less by the pipeline from its Atom feed..

It refreshes on a schedule, so what you see stays current.

Colours can be changed in settings; nothing is stored beyond your own browser.

What Standard Ebooks does to a public-domain text

Standard Ebooks is a volunteer-driven project that produces free ebooks from texts believed to be in the US public domain, aiming to match or exceed the quality of commercial ebooks. Its raw material is existing digital text, and archives such as the Internet Archive keep texts word for word, including typos, old publisher marks and advertisements that Standard Ebooks removes.

Production follows a published Manual of Style that covers semantic markup, typography, metadata and cover art. Typically that means curly quotes, proper dashes and ellipses, and consistent covers built from public-domain artwork. Standard Ebooks dedicates its own work to the public domain under CC0, so anyone can reuse the files.

The catalogue follows US public-domain rules, so a book can be free to download in one country and still under copyright in another. New titles appear in the project’s feed of recent releases as they are completed.

A worked example

New releases from Standard Ebooks, the volunteer project that takes public-domain texts and typesets them properly, gathered key-less by the pipeline from its Atom feed.

Settings & tips

Accent and Background recolour the display.
Run automation/run.py stdebooks to refresh the feed.
Press ESC to leave fullscreen.

Frequently asked questions

Is this real data?: Yes — it comes from Standard Ebooks and is refreshed on a schedule.
Is a key needed?: No. This source is fully key-less.
Is it free?: Yes — free, no download, in your browser.
How does Standard Ebooks differ from Project Gutenberg?: Standard Ebooks puts more work into each book: it adds curly quotes, proper dashes and consistent formatting, and gives every title a cover based on public-domain artwork. Its own pages say Gutenberg’s quality varies greatly between productions.
Why is a book I know missing?: Only works believed to be in the US public domain qualify, and each one needs volunteer work to meet the project’s standard, so many eligible books may not have been produced yet.

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