Weather too ominous to bicycle
Recently, I waded a few inches deeper into the modern world and bought a mobile device. A smart phone? A tablet? No, an ebook reader.
The first thing I did with my new Kindle was to download a Jane Austen novel. Doesn't everyone? They're all free on Project Gutenberg—legally free, as are all works published before 1923, the date of the oldest surviving copyright. (Note to non-Americans: Your laws may vary.)
Project Gutenberg boasts more than 50,000 free ebooks and has been around a long time, predating Amazon, Google, and even the Web itself. I first learned about Project Gutenberg fourteen years ago, before the rise of ebook readers and when a “mobile device” was a laptop with a nickel battery. Since then, ebooks have exploded in popularity—and some laptops have literally exploded—so Project Gutenberg must be doing well, too, right?
Sadly, not so. The most-downloaded book on the site is Pride & Prejudice, by Jane Austen, and has been downloaded, as of today, a scanty 30,531 times. That averages fewer than five downloads per day since the ebook's release in 1998. How many times has Amazon charged customers for the same book?
Yes, this blog post has an agenda, and that's to spread the word about Project Gutenberg. Don't be fooled into paying for written content published prior to 1923.
