Of Course It's Right - It's Google

I hate it when they ask questions about the Roman Empire on Jeopardy and I don't know the answer. That's the reason I downloaded "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Vol. 1" from Project Gutenberg a couple of months ago. It's all a part of what I call the "Gutenberg" effect. That is I go to the Gutenberg website and see all the great books I've been intending to read one day and I get inspired. Unfortunately whether it's a case of my reach exceeding my grasp or just my desultory ways, the books still sit on my PDA unread. That's part of the "Gutenberg" effect too. All those great books you're going to read if you ever manage to find the time. Let's see I've also got some Edith Wharton and some Thomas Hardy and some...

Anyways, I bring up the subject only because ebooks are once again in the news. If you've been following the Ebook story then you already know about Google, and how they've been busily scanning and indexing the world's libraries so that book excerpts can be freely available over the internet. Today that all changed when Google announced that in addition to excerpts they are also offering the entire texts of public domain books for free download at their Google Books site.

"What's this?", you say. "Free books. You mean I can get that new James Patterson book for free?"

Well, no, you can't get the new James Patterson book for free. You can get Emerson's "Essays", though, or other public domain works whose copywrite has expired. Right now the list of works available for download seems pretty skimpy, but I'm sure that will change in the weeks and months to come. However, keep in mind that what you are getting are PDF's of scanned images, with all the advantages and disadvantages that entails. What am I talking about? Let me explain.

First, PDF files are fine for sending documents back and forth, but the idea of reading an entire book using Adobe's PDF Reader software seems a little nutty to me. Is that what you want to do? Spend hours sitting in front of a computer screen paging through a 8 MB PDF file? I doubt it. Of course Adobe makes Reader software for PDA type device's so you could transfer it over and read it that way, but as anyone who's ever tried to view a PDF document on a PDA can attest that's not much of a solution.

No, I don't think most people are going to find Google Books a very pleasant experience. Of course this is Google we're talking about, and for their faithful followers they do have this aura about them, a sort of golden-glow can't-do-no-wrong quality. I bet Google could go over and crap on these people's rugs and they'd be giving Google an award and calling crap the next big thing. (Crap on the carpet? Why didn't anyone ever think of this before?)

But Google worship aside, the big problem with Google Books is that there is a much better alternative already out there. Project Gutenberg has been around since 1971 and currently offers a catalog of around 20,000 public domain books that are completely free for the downloading, and unlike Google Books, Project Gutenberg converts their books into common, ordinary text files rather than unwieldy PDF's. The process involves scanning the pages, using OCR software to convert the scanned pages into text, and then sending that text out to hundreds of volunteers to be carefully proofread for OCR errors before offering it for download.

(I should probably disclose [or boast] that I am a member of the Distributed Proofreaders group which proofreads texts for Project Gutenberg. If you are interested in volunteering just follow the link and sign up. Proofreaders proof just one page at a time, not an entire text, and it takes up as little or as much time as you want to put into it. I probably spend about an hour a month proofing, and I consider it a way of giving a little something back to Project Gutenberg which has provided me with so many books over the years.)

So with Project Gutenberg already out there providing books to millions of reader (2 million downloads a month is what they claim), who needs Google Books? To be fair, what Google is doing is focusing some attention on ebooks and the whole dream of an ebook revolution, but in reality I gave up on that revolution a long time ago. I love ebooks and carry them with me wherever I go, but I think at this point it's safe to say that the public at large doesn't want to have anything to do with them. I don't know why. In terms of portablilty and convenience ebooks are the way to go, and with adjustable font sizes they're much easier to read, especially for the more elderly among us. Most ebook readers even have built-in dictionaries which can be a great convenience. Just tap a word and get its definition.

The argument against them has always been that they don't have the romance of books. You hear that all the time. You know you ask someone why they prefer paper to electronic and they start talking about how they love to open the cover and feel the book and smell the paper and run their fingers through its pages and all that. Geez, I always thought you were supposed to read a book, not fornicate with it.

To me a book is all about the words, and it doesn't make much of a difference if their ink on paper or dots on pixels on a screen. I think the real reason people stick with paper books is so they can show them off in their library or in their office. You know what I mean. That's the only real advantage paper has over electrons. An ebook is invisible when it's there on your hard drive or storage card, but a paper book makes an impression. That's what people think anyways, isn't it? C'mon, admit it.

"My, my, did you read all those books?"

"Why yes I did little lady. I can see you're impressed."

"I'll say. You must be really smart, like a professor or something."

"Oh no, no, no. Though I have done a bit of reading."

"I'll say. I just love a man who reads. I guess I'd do just about anything for a man like that."

"Oh really... It's awfully bright in here, don't you think? Mind if I turn down the lights?"

Yep, the fact is that people just aren't as impressed with an ebook library as they are with books on a shelf. That's the real problem. But if you can live with that then ebooks are a good way to go. You do need some hardware, though.

Sony is going to be coming out with a dedicated Ebook Reader pretty soon. I think it's called the Librie and it's going to sell for around $300 to $400. Ouch. Pretty expensive, and as far as I know there are only going to be about 400 books available for it when it launches. Here's the link if you want to know more about it.

Other than that, the best ebook device currently out there is the good ol' PDA. They're not as popular as they once were but you can still find 'em, and since you don't need an expensive one to read books you can probably get by with something for $100 or less. Once you have the PDA then you need the software. Gutenberg distributes their books as plain text so any text editor or word processor can read them. All PDA's I've ever seen ship with some kind of software that will do the job. However, Gutenberg also distributes their books in the Plucker format, which tends to look a little better than plain text in most cases. Plucker is available for free from plkr.org and works on all Palm based devices. For the PocketPC you need the Vade Mecum software to view Plucker files. Vade Mecum is also free.

And that's all I have to say about that. Free books are out there, and please don't judge the whole ebook thing on the basis of Google Books. You know, it's just possible that every now and then Google can get it wrong.