telophase: (Default)
telophase ([personal profile] telophase) wrote2020-03-26 10:03 am
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In case you haven't seen it yet, the Open Library is now the National Emergency Library, which means you can borrow ebooks with no waitlist. They've got over a million books--I did a broad search last night for science fiction and fantasy, and they've got a ton of books, both well-known and obscure, from the mid-1990s and further back; adult, YA, middle grade, and kids. Especially when I got to the 1970s and 80s, it was like scanning the shelves at my childhood library and bookstore trips.*

Formats tend to be epub, PDF, and encrypted daisy for print-disabled users. [[personal profile] rachelmanija points out this online ebook conversion service for other formats. Don't know if there's DRM on the books that will stop it or not.]

Robotech books! Star Trek novels! A bunch of other good and terrible books! If there's something that's out of print that you've been trying to get your hands on for a while, it's worth searching for it here. [personal profile] yhlee I saw The Visual Guide to Amber by Zelazny and someone else. I was reminded of tons of books I'd forgotten about. There's even this odd book I read years ago that was written by someone who was a Cepheid* before I was, and who set it in a thinly-disguised future version of College Station/Texas A&M, IIRC.


*Cepheids = members of Cepheid Variable, the science fiction club at A&M that ran Aggiecon for years.
rachelmanija: (Default)

[personal profile] rachelmanija 2020-03-26 04:00 pm (UTC)(link)
This is AMAZING, thank you so much!
rachelmanija: (Default)

[personal profile] rachelmanija 2020-03-26 04:57 pm (UTC)(link)
Arrrgh! I can't convert their epubs, I guess because they're encrypted, and I can't open their pdfs, even after installing their choice of adobe. When I click on "download pdf," it downloads as a .acsm link, which adobe can't open.

[personal profile] helen_keeble 2020-03-26 06:57 pm (UTC)(link)
This is fabulous...but I’m agog that this is legal. Out of print is not the same as out of copyright, and they no longer have the “we’re only lending out as many copies as we actually own” excuse.

A quick search on PNR turned up books by H R Ward and Christine Feehan which are for sale in ebook on Amazon.

I guess they’re relying on not many publishers noticing/caring, and that those that do will just issue a drcm order rather than a lawsuit.
adafrog: (Default)

[personal profile] adafrog 2020-03-28 09:12 pm (UTC)(link)
I saw that. It's very cool.