The Crowded Street on Project Gutenberg

[regshoe]

Here it is!

The Crowded Street by Winifred Holtby, published in 1924, is about the society of suburban Hull in the early twentieth century and its treatment of a young woman who fails in what it sees as the ultimate purpose of a young woman's life—getting married. It is a very good book, taking a slow run-up to a resounding conclusion in minute and brilliant detail of setting and character, and it has one of the most satisfying endings of any book I've ever read.

When I submit the files for a new ebook, there are two steps that have to happen before it's available for download: first, the lovely processing volunteers at Project Gutenberg check the files, fix any mistakes they find and upload them, at which point they email me to let me know it's up; then the files actually have to finish uploading and appear on the website itself. Usually the first stage takes a day or two and the second a few hours, but this time it was the other way round: the processing team worked very fast and I got their email only a couple of hours after sending the files, but for mysterious reasons it's taken another day and a half for the book to materialise. Thus I have been impatiently bouncing up and down waiting to post this since Wednesday evening, but it's here now!

Comments

[sovay]

The Crowded Street on Project Gutenberg

Thank you so much!

[regshoe]

You're welcome!

[garonne]

Yay, thank you! I just downloaded it.

[regshoe]

Hooray! I hope you enjoy it.

[luzula]

Woohoo! Congratulations on finishing it! \o/

[regshoe]

Thank you :D

[osprey_archer]

Thank you for all your hard work! These glimpses of the process of getting a book onto Gutenberg.org are so fascinating.

[regshoe]

It's a fun process to learn! I'm glad my posts about it are interesting :D

[scintilla10]

Yay! That's so great. Love the sound of this one!

[regshoe]

:D Thank you—I hope you enjoy the book if you read it!

[oursin]

Holtby love! I have this if not in a first, in an early hardback edition - I don't think it was one of the ones reprinted in Fontana paperback after South Riding was televised in 1974, which is where most of my collection came from (honestly, she was not dragged from obscurity by Virago Press, just saying...)

[regshoe]

:)

Very cool! I think the only paper copy of any of her books I have is a tie-in edition of South Riding for the more recent TV adaptation, which is no good—I'll have to remedy that. Hmm, there are still several I haven't read...

[ysilme]

Thank you so much for doing this, that's awsome. I'm certainly giving it a try, no matter how long my TBR list already is. (Are you familiar with bookcrossing? In the German community there, several acronyms are circulating, derived from the pile of unread books which would be the SUB, Stapel Ungelesener Bücher = pile of unrad books, going up to bookshelf of unread books, room of unread books and house of unread books. My digital equivalent of that is certainly "house" by now. ;op )

How do you go about making ebooks for Project Gutenberg? Can anybody do this or is this limited to certain people/groups? I might be interesting in contributing as well for German books, if that's possible.
Edit to add I'm currently goign through the FAQs and how-to's on the Gutenberg site, so perhaps my questions will be answered there already. :o)

[regshoe]

:D I hope you enjoy it! I'm not familiar with those terms, but I definitely recognise the heartache of a too-long to-read list, oh dear...

Ooh, how exciting that you're thinking of getting into ebook making! It's great fun and a very rewarding hobby, I find. :)

The most common way ebooks are made is by a large team of volunteers working together through Distributed Proofreaders, where one person will make the text file and various others proofread it a little bit each before others again do the HTML and final formatting. I don't do that (it's too complicated; I want to pick my own books to work on; and I would get very frustrated only seeing a page of a random book at a time!), but they also accept submissions of ebooks from volunteers working independently. Anyone can do this, and AFAIK they accept books in any language, so (as long as you can get around the Germany-copyright-blocking issue) then you should be fine. I've never found the FAQs and help pages on their website very helpful or easy to navigate, unfortunately—perhaps they've improved, but in the meantime I've compiled a little collection of useful links and resources. I'd be happy to send you these, and to help with any issues or questions you may have!

[lirazel]

Downloaded! Who knows when I'll be able to read it, but I am looking forward to it, and I will enjoy it even more knowing that you made it possible!

[regshoe]

Thank you! I hope you like the book whenever you manage to get to it :)