30,000 out-of-copyright books for free? That’s it. I’m getting an iPad next week.
According to AppAdvice Apple has imported the entire Project Gutenberg library of over 30,000 out-of-copyright books into iTunes, making it very easy, apparently, for iPad owners to access them. Apple’s $9.99 bestseller price puts the iTunes book store in direct competition with Amazon’s e-book store and the iPad head-to-head with Kindle. While the Kindle can also read the ePub format from Project Gutenberg, users reportedly have to go through a more convoluted download process to get books to the device.
March 29th, 2010 at 8:46 AM
Just FYI, it’s pretty simple to put Gutenberg stuff onto the Sony Reader, or into the eReader library (to read onscreen).
March 29th, 2010 at 11:40 AM
The 30,000 Project Gutenberg books are even easier to get on the Kindle directly, without needing to go through Amazon or iTunes.
They are in Kindle-compatible .mobi or .prc format — you download The Magic Catalog to your Kindle and then browse or search it, then click on a link to download it to your Kindle from almost wherever you are, via its no-added-cost cellular wireless.
You can do that with an iPad only via wifi but the cellular wireless type of downloading will cost $629 for the cheapest model and then a monthly data plan.
For a guide on how to get the catalog etc, see http://bit.ly/kgutenb2
– Andrys