Name: Gregory Newby
Publish Date: 03 February 2008


Interviewer: i4d
Interviewer: i4d

Named after the 15th century German printer and goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg, Project Gutenberg (PG) has been one of the path finding initiatives to integrate traditional printing with digital technology and technology enabled services. PG has opened the floodgates for many open publishing ventures attempted across the world.

The number of e-Users has certainly increased over the last 10 years and the site has served as a boon for researchers and educationists. PG has also affiliated projects that provide additional content including region-based and language independent work. With PG, so many old books and  several new ones have been made available online. These books can be accessed, downloaded and modified by Internet users from anywhere. PG has been able to save rare documents and manuscripts that were archived under unfavourable physical conditions.

We  in CSDMS have had an opportunity to come in contact with Gregory Newby, the CEO, PG and Michael Hart, the Founder-editor of the project.  It has been an exciting experience to see PG through the eyes of both the social engineers.

Michael Hart, a former scholar from the University of Illinois, United States was very enthusiastic in the initiation of this grand project. Since 1971, Hart has been working tirelessly to create e-Books and distribute them across all e-Users connected through interwoven networks. 

According to Hart, the mission of PG has been to encourage the creation and distribution of e-Books and the goal of PG is to provide as many e-Books in as many formats as possible for the entire world to read in as many languages as possible.

An interview with Gregory Newby  and Michael Hart reveals the modus operandi of PG. The interview highlights the new ventures of PG, the new technologies applied, the changes in the role of volunteers and overall management of e-Books.

Precisely when was the Open Publishing initiated under GP?
The story of the founding of Project Gutenberg is in Sam Vaknin’s ‘Anabasis’ article at www.gutenberg.org, among other places. The short answer: Michael Hart invented e-Books on July 4, 1971.

What is the main area of focus of Project Gutenberg?
Project Gutenberg is mainly into the electronic publication of public domain books, which were copyright free.

What is the reason of inclusion of old books and manuscripts in the Project Gutenberg (PG) repository?
The emphasis on older books means that such items were originally traditionally published in print form. Project Gutenberg works mostly with these. We also work with contemporary items, many of which were printed, but which could appear in the public domain.

Is there a specific subject categorisation maintained in choosing books?
We really go out of our way NOT to Choose the materials, but to get our volunteers to choose them. It is the choices of the readers and volunteers.

Does the electronic publication of books bear the characteristics of open publishing? What  Open Source Technologies are used to generate open source material at lower costs?
The Project Gutenberg license has been in use for e-Books longer than any of the other licenses, and sets a legal precedent the others have usually followed. FOSS licenses grant usage allowances for software which are *copyrighted*. This is different from the Project Gutenberg license, which guarantees ongoing access to items which are *not copyrighted* (that is in the public domain). In that sense, the PG license and typical FOSS licenses have different purposes--- FOSS licenses maintain copyright control, except as the license allows. The PG license reinforces the public domain status of the item, while providing a FOSS-like license to use the Project Gutenberg name, which is trademarked, in redistribution.

Does the project allow people to change, modify and convert file formats?
We encourage people to create their own editions, for sale, to give away free, or just for their own use. You OWN these books. All 100,000 of them.

Apart from the e-Publication of old books in a primordial form, is PG into the e-Publication of contemporary resources?
As you may have heard, millions of  books, including 5 of the 10 top best sellers in Japan last year, were originally written as true eBooks for electronic distribution, only moving to paper when the big publishing houses feel they have to get in or get run over by the Information Superhighway Steamroller.

Are the volunteers of PG given any recovery charges for expediting the process of digital conversion of text documents ?
For those without good network connectivity or computing capability or expertise, PG allows a small fee (just enough for cost recovery) to provide our e-Books.

What kind of a role does an editor perform in open publishing?
The PG model does not rely on a formal editor role which also means a lesser role for traditional editors. For previously published e-Books (that is, items first published on paper prior to the modern digital era), the editorial function happened long ago. We have minimalist procedures for selection (the librarians call this ‘collection development’), which is part of a publisher or editor role in a traditional print-based business. So, most of the process of selecting items is performed by the volunteers who are willing to do the digital conversion.

What is the exact number of books, articles, manuscripts, audio files, etc. in the Gutenberg repository?
In the ‘main’ www.gutenberg.org site, there are about 26,500 titles. The Project Gutenberg Newsletter has listed over 26,500 as of last week, plus ~ 75,000 at http://www.gutenberg.cc for a total 100,000+ Project Gutenberg e-Books. We have several affiliates (see our Links and Affiliates section), adding many more titles. We run an annual World e-Book Fair (WEF), and are striving for 1 million titles this year, after hosting 7,50,000 titles for the WEF in 2007.www.worldebookfair.com

Has there been an increase or decrease in the total number of users using Project Gutenberg site?
An increase. From the main www.gutenberg.org site (not including our many mirrors) 36 million e-Books were given  away last year. Thats well over one per second.

Is there an honorarium or token money given to the authors? If yes, then what is the mode of payment?
Project Gutenberg never pays for content. Resellers do need to pay royalties in certain circumstances (www.gutenberg.org/license), but we do not pass any such trademark royalties to authors.

What type of software is used in open publishing?
For details on the production process, visit http://www.pgdp.net There is all variety of software, for a very diversified and dispersed production team. We have some central sites (like www.gutenberg.org) but mostly people are able to choose what software they use for their own purposes. It is important to PG that our e-Books be readable without specialised software or hardware. For this reason, we typically have a plain text version of our e-Books, in addition to any other format such as HTML.

What are the partnering countries and are they following the same publication and information mining protocols?
We don’t partner with countries.

Do you think that Project Gutenberg has been economically sustainable? Did the costs incurred in the project reap equal amounts of economic benefit?
Yes, we are highly economically sustainable. Probably more so than any publisher or similar venture we are aware of. We are not motivated by economic benefits, and in fact are intentionally immune to income, or lack of income. We strive to make our works available freely. There is a FAQ item in the ‘about us’ section that talks about this, at www.gutenberg.org. If we just received a penny per book, we would be a financial leader.

What major hurdles do you face in carrying forward the task of open publishing?
There are relatively  few technical or practical barriers to creating e-Books. We have a large number of volunteers, and millions of books are in the public domain and therefore highly accessible  for digitisation. Overall, there are many opportunities. Copyright restrictions are a big concern, and as a US-based operation we are sometimes unable to accept items that are public domain in countries other than the US. http://copy.pglaf.org. Copyright is the biggest problem as World Intellectual Property Organisation(WIPO) wants it permanent.

Input and comments provided by Michael Hart