much safer and more permanent that any individual website can possibly be. We aim to keep this collection together over not just years, but centuries. You took the trouble to transcribe this book. We can relate; that's what _we_ do, as well. We know you want this work to survive you and your ISP, and we believe we can do that. And it's not as if you have to take it off your website when we make a copy; you're just using your candle to light another! If you want to let readers know that your site has other related material, you can put that information in the Credits Line [V.47]. Taking a real-world example, you could ask us to add this to the Credits line for a C. M. Yonge text: A web page for Charlotte M. Yonge will be found at www.menorot.com/cmyonge.htm V.66. I have already scanned or typed a book, but it's not in plain text format. Can I submit it to PG? Yes, of course. We'll be happy to discuss format options with you, and we're quite experienced in converting between multiple formats and deciding which formats work best and will have the longest life. All you need is to get us a copy of your TP&V [V.25]. About author-submitted eBooks: V.67. I've written a book. Will PG publish it? Maybe. PG gets submissions from young people, for example, who just want to get a story they wrote published in PG. We wish them well with their writing, but that's not really why we're here. If you are a published author, or perhaps an academic who wants to put a textbook into the archives, it's quite likely that we will publish it. V.68. I have translated a classic book from one language to another. Will PG publish my translation? Yes, if we can. The book that you translated needs to be in the public domain, and we will need the same proof of eligibility that we would use if you were contributing the book in its original language. For example, if you were translating Hesse's Siddhartha (published pre-1923 in German, but no pre-1923 English translation available), we would need to copyright clear [V.25] the original German edition from which you worked--it needs to be a pre-1923 or otherwise public domain edition. (We actually did this one, thanks to the hard work and scholarship of some volunteers.) V.69. OK, this is one of the cases where PG will publish it. What do I do next? You need to decide about copyright issues. Do you want to release your work to the public domain, or do you want to retain copyright? If you want to retain copyright, what terms do you want to release it under? The next few questions deal with those issues. Having decided that you want PG to publish it, and decided what restrictions (if any) you want to place on further distribution, you just need to write the appropriate letter and send the text to us. [V.46] V.70. I hold the copyright on a book. Can I release it to the public domain? You can. All you need to do is put a statement into the released version of the text saying that you have. If you want to release it into the public domain and distribute it through Project Gutenberg, you should send us a letter to that effect. To: Michael S. Hart Founder, Project Gutenberg 405 West Elm Street Urbana IL, 61801-3231, USA Dear Project Gutenberg: I am the sole copyright holder for the book, "Wallaby Happiness." It gives me pleasure to release this work into the public domain, and I invite Project Gutenberg to publish this public domain edition. Sincerely, Gregory B. Newby Once you have released it into the public domain, neither we nor anyone else needs your permission to publish it, but for us to be sure that it _is_ a public domain version, we do need a signed letter. V.71. I hold the copyright on a book. Do I have to release the book into the public domain for Project Gutenberg to publish it? Absolutely not! For example, many contributors of copyrighted material want to share it with the world, but do not want it commercially republished by other companies. You can grant Project Gutenberg perpetual, non-exclusive, world-wide rights to distribute your book on a royalty-free basis by sending a letter to Michael Hart. Your letter may be brief, but must be signed, and must include the name of the book and the assertion that you are the copyright holder or the agent for the copyright holder. If you want some related information, like a link to your website, included in the text, we will be happy to oblige. Once we have posted a text, many people will copy it. We have no effective mechanism for "recalling" texts that we have posted, so please be sure, before you commit to this, that you intend to follow through with it, because there is no way to change your mind later. Here is a sample letter, including the address to send it to: To: Michael S. Hart Founder, Project Gutenberg 405 West Elm Street Urbana IL, 61801-3231, USA Dear Project Gutenberg: I am the sole copyright holder for the book, "Wallaby Happiness." It gives me pleasure to grant Project Gutenberg perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive rights to distribute this book in electronic form through Project Gutenberg Web sites, CDs or other current and future formats. No royalties are due for these rights. Sincerely, Gregory B. Newby V.72. I hold the copyright on a book, and would like Project Gutenberg to publish it. Can I choose what rights to assign? For PG to be in a position to copy it, we do need perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free rights to distribute the book in electronic form. What rights you choose to assign to readers after that is a decision for you to make. The Creative Commons site may give you some ideas of what practical use you can make of your copyright to see that the work is used in the ways you intended. About what goes into the texts: V.73. Why does PG format texts the way it does? PG texts are formatted as plain ASCII, with 60-70 characters per line, with a hard return [CR/LF] at end of line, and some people ask "Why do it _this_ way? You could omit the hard returns and let the reader's word processor or Reader software wrap the lines. You could use "8-bit" accented characters for non-English characters." "You could use ' - ' instead of '--' for an em-dash." And so on, through a different choice we could make for every formatting feature. And the answer, of course, is that we _could_ do it differently, and sometimes we do, but mostly we keep to one consistent style. We'll be discussing each of the formatting decisions below, not only giving the summary PG answer, but also discussing the plusses and minuses of each, and the possible options. Like any question beginning "Why does/doesn't PG . . . ?", the answer is "Because that's what the volunteers and readers want!". These conventions have been worked out over the years, largely by Michael Hart, our founder and chief volunteer, in conjunction with all of us volunteers, as the result of feedback from readers. We are guided throughout by the principle that we want to produce texts in the simplest format that will adequately express the content. Quoting Michael Hart (1994):