Gutenberg:Submitting Your Own Work How-To
From Project Gutenberg, the first producer of free electronic books (ebooks).
Thanks for considering offering your eBook or other work to Project Gutenberg. This How-To gives an overview of our selection process, and describes the steps you should take. These guidelines should be followed for any item which is either currently under copyright in the US, and you are the copyright holder, 'or' contemporary items (i.e., post-1923) which are public domain, but were not published by a commercial publisher or are not generally available in libraries. These guidelines should also be followed if you wish to add supplemental materials for an existing Project Gutenberg eBook (such as a new author biography, annotations, bibliographies, etc.).
- Only works that fit in the Project Gutenberg literary mission will be considered.
- Confirm the eBook has already been published by a bona-fide publisher (i.e., not self-published or unpublished). Project Gutenberg generally is not suitable for unpublished work. In cases where a work was published by a very small publisher or not widely distributed, Project Gutenberg might request copies of published literary reviews or similar documentation to demonstrate recognition of the work's literary value.
- Let Project Gutenberg review the work. You might also include inks / copies of published or online reviews of your work.
- If Project Gutenberg accepts the eBook, send a copyright permission letter
- Submit the properly formatted eBook files
If your book is not well-suited for Project Gutenberg, you might consider using another outlet for it. Some that we area aware of include:
- Wattpad, Project Gutenberg's affiliate for self-published works, including formats for essentially all mobile devices
- Wikibooks, open content books, a Wikipedia project.
- the Internet Archive's Open Source Books collection, which accepts a wider range of content.
Let Project Gutenberg review the work
Project Gutenberg's mission is to preserve and distribute literary works. As part of this mission, we seek contemporary authors to consider us as a means of preservation for their published creative output. Some general guidelines:
- The book must have been published by a bona fide publisher (Project Gutenberg is probably not the right target for your unpublished manuscript);
- You must have the legal right to offer the eBook for distribution;
- The book should be in a literary genre, broadly considered. This could include anything from recipes to travelogues, but probably excludes most items such as technical manuals, diaries, self-help books and musical performances;
- It must not contain illegal materials, including obscenity. This is important for the safety of Project Gutenberg and its mirrors. (For a definition of obscenity, as compared to indecency, see the FCC);
- You should have the book in an editable electronic form, so that it may be converted to plain text and other formats desired. We generally do not distribute eBooks only in non-editable formats (such as PDF) — the ability to engage in fair use, to create derivative works etc. within the constraints of copyright law or the license you grant is a hallmark of the Project Gutenberg literary mission.
- If you would like Project Gutenberg to consider distributing your book as part of its collection, please email details to PGLAF's CEO. You can email the eBook (plain text or HTML is best) or a URL. He'll repond within day or two.
Send a copyright permission letter
Due to the risks and challenges of US Copyright Law, we need to have the letter on paper, sent to Michael Hart (Founder). The letter can be brief, must be signed by the appropriate person, and should include:
- The name of the book(s);
- That the letter's sender is the legal copyright holder (or agent);
- Giving Project Gutenberg perpetual, non-exclusive, worldwide rights to distribute the books in electronic form on a royalty-free basis.
Here are some notes of explanation:
- You do not need to grant the book to the public domain. It is still copyrighted, according to whatever national laws apply.
- Copyleft, Creative Commons, and other licenses are fine.
- You still own your book, and all rights to it (for example, you could sell copies of the book in print or electronic form).
- Because the collection is mirrored worldwide, Project Gutenberg has no way of "recalling" etexts, so you cannot expect to be able to change your mind. Once we add it to the collection, it will stay there. We can fix errors or update the formatting, as needed.
- If you desire to have a URL or other information included with the etext, we will be happy to oblige. Minimally, we will include clear notation that the book is copyrighted by the copyright holder.
- The Project Gutenberg header specifies under what conditions your book may be distributed while associated with the Project Gutenberg trademark. People might remove this header. If you want to place additional restrictions (such as no commercial use or resale), we advise putting them at the start of the text.
Here is a sample letter, including the address to send it 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, "A Pouch Full of Wallabies." 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 gbnewby AT pglaf.org
Including your email in the letter will make it easier for us to get in touch.
Submit the work
Project Gutenberg does not have sufficient staff to edit your eBook or to prepare the eBook files to meet our standards. Thus, it is up to the submitter to prepare files to our standards. Complete detail is available in our Editors' FAQ. Please review these standards before offering your eBook. If you are unable or unwilling to prepare your eBook as described, we will be unable to accept it.
Briefly, requirements are:
- You must submit a plain text (.txt) version of the file, formatted according to our guidelines (line endings at ~72 characters; run through the gutcheck program for correct formatting). The only exception is if plain text is simply not possible for your work (for example, for a mathematical work). If you do not have plain text, or are unable to meet our standards, we will not be able to accept the eBook.
- Other formats, such as HTML, are welcome. HTML must be valid and linkchecked (as described in the HTML FAQ), with no external links other than one link to the author/submitter's site. We require eBooks to be available as one single HTML file. If you would additionally like to submit a work subdivided into separate HTML files, that is acceptable as long as the one-file version is available. Images may be included in an "images/" subdirectory.
- We will distribute PDF, RTF, LaTeX, and other formats in addition to plain text, but you might want to check first on any guidance we might have to offer. Generally, we do not distribute files in Word .doc or similar vendor-based formats. We greatly prefer formats that are editable, but recognize that PDF is sometimes the best contemporary way to get your eBook to display just right.
Once the eBook is uploaded to the main servers and announced, it will be searchable and listed in the Gutenberg holdings lists. If you notice any problems with the files, contact the posting team or individual who prepared your eBook, so fixes may be applied
Thanks again for considering offering your work to the Project Gutenberg collection!
FAQ
I've written a book. Will PG publish it?
Maybe.
If you are a young person, for example, who just wants to get a story you wrote published somewhere, we wish you well with your writing, but PG is not the right place for you.
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.
If your book is not well-suited for Project Gutenberg, see our suggestions for alternate venues for your work, above.
Please don't take it personally if we find that your work is not well-suited for the Project Gutenberg collection. The majority of our content, and most of our volunteers, are more focused on works printed relatively long ago.
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 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.)
I hold the copyright on a book, and would like Project Gutenberg to publish it. Can I choose what rights to assign?
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 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.
For PG to be in a position to publish 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 they have downloaded the eBook is a decision for you to make.
I hold the copyright on a book. Do I have to release the book into the public domain for Project Gutenberg to publish it?
No. 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. See here for a sample letter.
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.
I hold the copyright on a book. I want to release it to the public domain.
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.
