eBook Production Guidelines
The conversion of HTML documents on the Marxists Internet Archive to the various eBook formats, is a task that is being taken on by part-time volunteers and supporters of the MIA, while our permanent volunteers concentrate on transcribing new material.
Any volunteer who produces an eBook can send it to the MIA Admin Ctee as an email attachment and it will be added to our eBook Collection.
The following guidelines should be followed:
- Please check the existing eBook Collection to make sure you don’t duplicate a book.
- Produce versions in as many formats as you are equipped for: prc, mobi, epub, & odt.
- Please only convert substantial books. If you are interested in smaller works, please bundle articles together in sensible collections so we have at least about 200,000 words, or 1.5Mb of text, up to a file size of 10Mb.
- Please use only material already available on marxists.org as HTML. If you have other material, not already on MIA, please contribute this to the MIA first. There may be very good reasons, such as copyright restrictions, for us not having it already. If all is well, we will process it and upload it as HTML. See “Transcribing Text.”
- Your book will not be proofed or corrected by anyone else. We strongly recommend that you carefully proofread the source material before converting. Much of the material on marxists.org is in need of proofreading, so if you need to make any corrections, we would appreciate notice of all the errors, and we will implement the corrections.
- You may find it useful to prepare your material in MS-Word before converting to eBook format, so that you can use the spellchecker to assist in proofreading and easily eliminate unwanted links.
- We do not want HTML headers and footers to be carried over into our eBooks, which should be clean, and resemble hard copy books. The only hyperlinks should be from a Table of Contents and to endnotes and footnotes
- Please place in smaller print, under the main title (book title, author and date) the full bibliographical data for the source. This must include the URL of the source HTML on marxists.org as well as the bibliographical information given in the HTML Source: date written and first published, author, translator, transcriber, copyleft status, etc. Include your own name as “Converted to eBook format by: ...” in the same format, font-size, etc., as the other credits.
- Please include a comprehensive Table of Contents before the main text. It is preferable to convert footnotes to endnotes, either at chapter-end or document-end.
Metadata
- Title: Exactly as it appears on MIA;
- Author: Exactly as it appears on MIA;
- Publisher: Marxists Internet Archive;
- ISBN: (none)
- Language: As appropriate, if not English;
- Main Subject: Use broad category of best fit, but optional;
- Description: (none)
- Review: (none)
- Publishing date: Date of your conversion;
- Adult only: Do not use;
- Cover image: Optional. Use the original cover for very old books, otherwise skip;
- Demo: Do not use;
- Suggested price: 0, but optional;
- Territory: (none).
- Please notify us before starting work, just in case other volunteers are already working on your projects.
Contact the Marxists Internet Archive Admin Committee for further information