Free ebooks from Project Gutenberg will work on the iPad

TheiPhoneBlog and 9to5mac reported today that the thousand of free books already available from Project Gutenberg should be able to work on the iPad.

The ebooks from Project Gutenberg are DRM (digital rights management) –free so will therefore work on the iPad and any other device for that matter. At the moment Apple are using the ePub fomat for their iBooks which are Fairplay DRM protected so will not work on any other device. Project Gutenberg will still be in the ePub format.

If you don’t know anything about ProjectGutenberg here is what 9to5mac reported from wikipedia.

Project Gutenberg, abbreviated as PG, is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to “encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks.”Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books. The project tries to make these as free as possible, in long-lasting, open formats that can be used on almost any computer. As of December 2009, Project Gutenberg claimed over 30,000 items in its collection. Project Gutenberg is affiliated with many projects that are independent organizations which share the same ideals, and have been given permission to use the Project Gutenberg trademark

As 9to5 states this is certainly great news for students, schools and even businesses. If they have access to an iPad then long term this would be a great investment. They have the hundreds of books stored ready to use at any time for free, where as if they bought the actual books it would cost them a small fortune. Whether or not the schools will be purchasing iPads for student use is another thing but I think it just goes to show that this is something that is to be considered for the future in schools and businesses that this is really the way forward.

What do you think? Are you an author, how would you feel seeing your book in this format? Do you know of any other great eBooks on offer? Let us know in the comments below.

Source: [tipb.com]

Advertisement

Leave a Reply