One of the growing stacks of books in our house that needs to be pared down—though it arises from important and useful work—consists of those we’ve already scanned and contributed to Project Gutenberg by way of Distributed Proofreaders. I’m writing an auction listing today for one book (not yet for sale), Stories of Later American History. We scanned it, we ran it through DP to create a new authoritative edition, and now you can download it and read it and use it however you want.

In a fit of experimentation, I’ve included the Gutenberg eText number in the auction title, and some explanatory text and a link to the Gutenberg site.

We’ll see how it plays out. I know eBay allows links of some types, but not to third-party sites.

Update: In reviewing eBay’s ridiculously restrictive linking policies (“We’re just a venue,” my ass), I’ve decided I have to back off direct linking, and suggest Google search. I wish I could link there, but apparently I can’t. Maybe I should host the entire content of the book on my website, and link there? Hmm….

To compensate for eBay’s stupidity, I’ve decided to donate the entire proceeds of the auction to the Distributed Proofreaders Foundation, the non-profit organization funding the Distributed Proofreaders volunteer community. We’ll see how this plays out.