Making ebooks available on Apple Books

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Seth

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Jul 28, 2021, 5:02:53 AM7/28/21
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I was wondering whether I would be able to make the ebooks produced by Standard Ebooks available on the Apple Books store at no cost. 

When the ebooks are added by download, the cover doesn't appear, and so I wondered whether this was something that people would be interested in.

I think this would help widen knowledge of Standard ebooks, helping to increase the number of volunteers and donations, allowing more books to be produced.

Robin Whittleton

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Jul 28, 2021, 5:24:39 AM7/28/21
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For the cover issue, you’ll need to pick “Comaptible ePub”, not “Advanced ePub”. Books is a good reader, but it doesn’t support SVGs for covers unfortunately.

As for getting them into the catalogue, we haven’t specifically tried to my knowledge, but the standard problem is that companies aren’t set up to have a corpus of books republished every couple of weeks with proofing fixes and generalised quality upgrades. But I’m happy to look into it.

-Robin

On 28 Jul 2021, at 11:03, Seth <goodwi...@gmail.com> wrote:

I was wondering whether I would be able to make the ebooks produced by Standard Ebooks available on the Apple Books store at no cost. 

When the ebooks are added by download, the cover doesn't appear, and so I wondered whether this was something that people would be interested in.

I think this would help widen knowledge of Standard ebooks, helping to increase the number of volunteers and donations, allowing more books to be produced.

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Seth

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Jul 28, 2021, 5:26:22 AM7/28/21
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I'd be happy to get them onto the store. I believe apple have a web interface to upload them to.


Seth

Asher Smith

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Jul 28, 2021, 5:59:31 AM7/28/21
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The issue is not just adding them to the store, the issue here is that SE makes changes and updates to books already published with some frequency as proofing errors are found or our standards change. Take Hamlet as an example - it was published on Feb 16th this year and has had 17 changes pushed to it since then. We don't want a scenario where the versions of books available from us versus from other places differ, we want a single updated version available everywhere.

I believe that Alex has been having conversations with Google about such a thing, but they have an API that is used for their Play Store that may make things easier/possible. We would need to have a conversation about if we can have changes pushed to the corpus directly without needing to manually upload the 500+ books in our corpus every time we change something that applies to all of them.

Asher Smith

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Jul 28, 2021, 6:09:54 AM7/28/21
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https://itunespartner.apple.com/books/articles/how-to-edit-book-files-2731

It looks like versioning is supported, but not set up in a way that it can be done without their web interface. I would be surprised if that was the case for traditional publishers, though, so I suspect that it would be worth having a conversation with them if that hasn't already happened. This is the sort of place where I don't want to step on Alex's toes.

Mind you, Seth, the CC0 dedication of SE editions means that you can legally add them all to Apple yourself.

Asher Smith

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Jul 28, 2021, 6:20:41 AM7/28/21
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Sorry for spamming - I for sure should have done this research before sending the first message.

It looks like there is a software interface for the iTunes store - iTunes Producer. This page notes that you can only submit one book at a time using this service, but that you can "contact an Apple-approved aggregator to submit multiple books for you."

Looking through that list of aggregators, it occurs to me that the simplest way of doing this might be to approach those aggregators and see if any of them are willing to donate their services, perhaps in exchange for being listed as a corporate sponsor. Smashwords, in particular, might be effective as they are also a distributor themselves and that would be another way to get the books out there to kobo/Overdrive/Gardners/etc. at the same time.

David Grigg

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Jul 28, 2021, 7:42:39 PM7/28/21
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Smashwords are VERY picky about the format of the books they accept. Our books are gold standard,  but Smashwords have all sorts of requirements we might not meet.

That said, it would be worth trying to upload a sample book. I have an account and could try, if you like. If they do accept a book, they do distribute it to Apple, Kobo, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc, so that would be better than targeting those places individually.

Asher Smith

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Jul 29, 2021, 3:04:40 AM7/29/21
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I've gotten in touch with them about whether it's possible to update/upload books without going through their web interface. If it isn't, the whole thing is a little moot.

Seth

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Jul 29, 2021, 3:44:05 AM7/29/21
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Using an aggregator seems like a good idea, especially if it gets the books onto multiple stores for distribution.

Seth

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Jul 29, 2021, 3:53:38 AM7/29/21
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Just looking at the smashwords requirements, it looks like they don’t accept public domain works:
139AF626-1928-4D13-ABA7-096657C55972.jpeg

Asher Smith

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Jul 29, 2021, 5:57:42 AM7/29/21
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I hadn't noticed that, so we'll see what happens. That's probably a bad sign for being able to work with them, but I'll continue reaching out to other people on that list if that doesn't work out.

On the flip side, their CTO (the person I emailed) has been working on open sourced software for about as long as I have been alive, so there's a possibility he'll like SE enough as a project to want to work with us anyway.

Seth

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Jul 29, 2021, 7:01:08 AM7/29/21
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Yes, and I suppose if it is ‘officially’ run instead of some random person trying to upload the thousandth copy of a book they are more likely to accept it — and especially if you know their CTO.

If they say no, then I would imagine there would be another distribution partner that might be able to help.

Asher Smith

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Jul 29, 2021, 8:15:55 AM7/29/21
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That's a good point - a single source of PD books might work well for them. (I don't know the CTO - I just found his info online).

Alex, what are the sorts of things that could lead to them being considered a corporate sponsor? Is that strictly monetary, or would that sort of logistic support be considered as well?

Asher Smith

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Aug 3, 2021, 5:37:44 PM8/3/21
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Smashwords isn't going to work technically, so I'll just start working my way through that list of aggregators and see if we get any bites.

Asher Smith

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Feb 11, 2022, 10:48:06 AM2/11/22
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I'm picking this project up again, and have a call with a distributor next week. Fingers crossed.

Asher Smith

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Feb 16, 2022, 11:39:42 AM2/16/22
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Some updates:
  • One distributor I spoke to wants to charge us 50 cents per title per month to distribute them all
  • One distributor has a blanket policy of not working with anything in the public domain
  • One distributor seems to only work on larger commercial things
  • I have emails out to two more distributors, so fingers crossed. After that, I will have gone through the entirety of the list of Apple Approved Aggregators.
I've also called Apple to inquire about the process of getting bulk upload permissions for the iBook store. Effectively, we need to upload 50 or so books to show that we know what we're doing, then call them to request bulk permissions. I got the impression that while this isn't a given, it's doable. If we do decide to go down that route, I'd be happy to spend some time on that. I'm also going to put in calls to Kobo/Overdrive to see what the process is like for them.

Asher Smith

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Feb 18, 2022, 5:24:23 AM2/18/22
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Seth sent this to me:
>  I tried to upload a book through the iTunes system, however it didn’t seem particularly simple. Hopefully the other distributors are more open to this.

It's an interesting point: I don't really know how bad the apple upload process is, so I don't even know if it's going to be feasibly to do the 50 uploads before we get bulk permissions. I am less and less optimistic that working with a distributor would be possible, so it may be the only way.

@Alex, are you opposed to setting up an account for SE in a way that I can attempt it with one or two and get a better idea if it's even worth attempting to go down this path?

Alex Cabal

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Feb 18, 2022, 11:35:21 AM2/18/22
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As time has gone on I've come to think there's probably only limited
value in having our ebooks in Apple/Amazon. The reason is because
there's an unending deluge of public domain reprints - this is why
Amazon already doesn't accept new free public domain editions, because
they're swamped.

If someone searches for Pride and Prejudice, they're going to get 1,000
results of the same book. Most will pick the first free edition which
will be some PG repack, and SE's edition is going to be somewhere on
page 20 where nobody will ever see it. Not a whole lot of value in that,
for what's starting to look like a considerable amount of work in stores
that are demonstrably hostile to more PD reprints.

The exception is when we can get our books pinned to the top. I believe
Play Books does this right now - if you search for P&P in the Play Books
store, the SE edition is on top.

The value for partnerships would be in smaller distributors who we can
have a closer relationship with, and who have a bigger interest in
having high quality free ebooks in their catalog. Maybe orgs like
libraries, reading apps (social and non), etc.

On the other hand, catalog-based partnerships might be an opportunity to
bring some revenue in for SE - we could do a lot with more than the
handful of donations we get from time to time, and managing the project
has grown from a part-time hobby to nearly a full time job.

On 2/18/22 4:24 AM, Asher Smith wrote:
> Seth sent this to me:
> > I tried to upload a book through the iTunes system, however it didn’t
> seem particularly simple. Hopefully the other distributors are more open
> to this.
>
> It's an interesting point: I don't really know how bad the apple upload
> process is, so I don't even know if it's going to be feasibly to do the
> 50 uploads before we get bulk permissions. I am less and less optimistic
> that working with a distributor would be possible, so it may be the only
> way.
>
> @Alex, are you opposed to setting up an account for SE in a way that I
> can attempt it with one or two and get a better idea if it's even worth
> attempting to go down this path?
>
> On Wednesday, February 16, 2022 at 4:39:42 PM UTC Asher Smith wrote:
>
> Some updates:
>
> * One distributor I spoke to wants to charge us 50 cents per title
> per month to distribute them all
> * One distributor has a blanket policy of not working with
> anything in the public domain
> * One distributor seems to only work on larger commercial things
> * I have emails out to two more distributors, so fingers crossed.
>> <https://itunespartner.apple.com/books/articles/how-to-publish-an-ebook-with-itunes-producer-2718>.
>> This page notes that you can
>> only submit one book at a time
>> using this service, but that
>> you can "contact an
>> Apple-approved aggregator
>> <https://itunespartner.apple.com/books/partner-search> to
>> Take /Hamlet/ as an
>>> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/ed16901c-dc2e-4051-abd4-34c47b5b11f5n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.
>>
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Asher Smith

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Feb 18, 2022, 1:11:48 PM2/18/22
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Is the Google Play thing a US-only feature? I'm based in the UK and don't see any of the editions there. In fact, most of the editions of P&P available to me are paid only.

I think that Overdrive is probably going to be the best bet for getting into libraries; I know that the libraries I have access to use it to distribute their books. I've put an email in to them to enquire about the process, and will update.

To be clear, are you opposed to exploring Apple further, or do you just not want to put time into it yourself?

Asher Smith

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Feb 18, 2022, 1:13:29 PM2/18/22
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I think it's also worth noting that Apple does have a line of their own classics, though it's a much smaller list than ours, and as such might be open to some more integration with SE.

Alex Cabal

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Feb 18, 2022, 4:39:59 PM2/18/22
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I just don't think the ROI is there and I don't think it's likely to
succeed anyway. If they have their own line of classics that we would
compete with, then even less so - why would they introduce more PD
reprints that compete with their own reprints?

If anything, maybe the avenue is contacting whoever is in charge of
their classics book line and seeing if they want to use SE instead.
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Colby Russell

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Jul 11, 2022, 1:08:39 PM7/11/22
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Play Books seems to have directly integrated with Standard Ebooks on some level.

In the mobile app, select "Shop", "Genres", and "Textbooks".  Currently, the top category ("Free & popular classics") just shows a list of a bunch of Standard Ebooks covers.  Tapping any one of them confirms this; the publisher is listed as "Standard Ebooks".  There is seemingly no way to get a full list of Standard Ebooks titles (e.g. by tapping the "Standard Ebooks" label).

Without the Play Books app, you can visit <https://play.google.com/store/books/category/coll_1673> to see the Textbooks page.

PS: please consider moving away from Google Groups.  I tried posting this using my phone, but even after logging in, it's apparently impossible to participate—at least if you're using Firefox; I didn't bother trying with Chrome, and I'm not downloading the app, assuming there even is one.  I had to go to my desk to post here.  Searching around reveals that the Google Groups team is aware of this but doesn't care enough to do anything about it.

Alex Cabal

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Jul 11, 2022, 1:11:13 PM7/11/22
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Yes, we worked with Google to directly integrated SE into the Play store.

Google Groups is convenient because it's free, no maintenance, has a
reasonable web interface, and allows posting via email (which is how I
always interact with it). Since this is a mailing list, I expect 99% of
people interact with it using email and not the web interface. If you
know of alternative mailing list services that meet those needs, let me
know!
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Colby Russell

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Jul 11, 2022, 1:59:36 PM7/11/22
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If being able to post from the Web interface is considered merely
optional, then Sourcehut seems like it would work just as well as
Google Groups. (NB: I don't actually agree, generally, with most of
the praise that gets thrown around—e.g. on Hacker News—for Sourcehut's
design. So this isn't about a cult of personality or the supremacy of
a subculture. But the subset of the site that involves its support
for mailing lists, however, is adequate and, importantly, (a) can
almost certainly be expected to improve further still, and (b) is
amenable via outside contributions.)

Its userbase is opinionated about *how* mailing lists are supposed to
be used—this message I'm sending composed in Gmail, for example, would
be considered a problem on multiple levels—but that choice (and any
actual enforcement) is presumably something that's ultimately left to
discretion of the relevant project.

(I didn't come to this topic by way of being a mailing list
subscriber, FYI. It was in the "natural" way: I noticed a thing about
a project that I'm acquainted but not intimately involved with, I
looked for some discussion about the thing I noticed (incl. e.g. blog
post about it), and it turned out that the closest thing was here, on
the mailing list. Assuming a list-centric mindset e.g. from a
subscriber inverts that.)

John Levine

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Jul 12, 2022, 3:34:43 PM7/12/22
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Take a look at groups.io, which I think does everything you want: e-mail in and out, nice web interface, well maintained.
The blocker is that you can only have 100 subscribers to a free list. The paid version is $220/yr. Perhaps people who dislike Google Groups could offer to cover the cost.
FYI in my experience Groups emits so much spam, usually from uploaded lists in west Asia, that they're blocked in a lot of places.

Vince

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Jul 12, 2022, 3:45:35 PM7/12/22
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I dislike anything and everything Google, and would love for us to be off Google Groups. But a paid option isn’t an option; even I’m not going to pay to be on something else. It would be nice to have our own mailing list, but that requires maintenance and upkeep that, at least currently, isn’t an option, either. I don’t know spam you’re referring to, but I don’t recall ever receiving a spam message from this list.

Asher Smith

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Jul 12, 2022, 3:53:12 PM7/12/22
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There are currently 950 members of this group, so that's probably a nonstarter.

My own two cents is to ask what additional list functionality is likely to add to the project. Concerns about searchability and access to information are secondary because important decisions are codified in the MoS. Concerns about spam blocking seem like less important because we're not trying to build audience interaction - everyone who wants to read this has actively sought it out. For me personally, there's no problem using the desktop interface to browse and see what's happening and to have the threads I care about come to my inbox. I can't imagine that I'd be completing more editions if only I had different access to the group.

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David

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Jul 13, 2022, 4:08:07 AM7/13/22
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I share the sense that Google Groups serves the project and its camp-followers quite well. I get a daily digest by email, follow up threads of interest in the desktop interface, and subscribe to those I get involved with. What's not to like? :)

IFF the project was minded to seek an alternative (should something arise to make that desirable; it hasn't yet!), then to my mind the obvious alternative is "Discussions" on Github = https://docs.github.com/en/discussions

SE already makes heavy use of Github, of course. And "Discussions" looks viable, but doesn't add any features (I think?) that make it preferable in the current circumstances to Google Groups.

FWIW. Just my £0.02

David / Edinburgh UK

Asher Smith

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Jul 24, 2024, 7:04:25 PM (3 days ago) Jul 24
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I know that this discussion was started 3 years ago, but I do want to make sure that there is a publicly visible solution to the things that were discussed in case anybody else is ever in a similar situation.
  • Going through an Apple-approved distributor turned out to be a non-starter, for various reasons. They wanted to charge us, they weren't set up to deal with projects such as this, etc.
  • Anybody can create an Apple Books account to publish books to the Apple Books store. Once you have done that, it's possible to take an epub file and use a piece of software called iTunes Producer to manually input the necessary metadata from the book and then submit it to the store. The files produced by this that include the .epub and the metadata are in a .itmsp format.
  • There is also a command-line tool called iTMSTransporter that you can use to upload a previously created .itmsp file directly. I created a package called publish-to-apple that takes an epub file with fully completed content.opf metadata and uses that to create an itmsp file which it can then submit using provided account information.
  • Use of iTMSTransporter does not seem to be fully supported by Apple as a tool for publishers to submit books; it is not particularly well documented for this purpose. I have experienced issues where StandardEbooks is building books that conform to the most up-to-date technical standards and as such will pass the most recent version of epubcheck but not necessarily previous versions of epubcheck, and iTMSTransporter has not been updated with the latest version of epubcheck. For example, at time of writing iTSMTransporter v3.3.0.8 is bundled with epubcheck v5.0.1, while epubcheck v5.1.0 was released about a year ago.
I have, for the last couple years, completely updated the SE library on Apple Books every 6 months or so. I'm open to discussion about whether this is an acceptable cadence, or if we should be finding a more efficient way of updating books more frequently.

Alex Cabal

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Jul 25, 2024, 12:47:25 PM (2 days ago) Jul 25
to standar...@googlegroups.com
Thanks for the update Asher. You're doing great work keeping things up
to date.

If Apple requires us to pass epubcheck, and they bundle an old version,
then not sure if we can do much about that.

Considering the difficulty of the task, I think updating every 6 months
is fine.

Re. iTMSTransporter, a Red Hat installer probably means yum, but Ubuntu
is Debian which uses apt. So the installers would not be compatible.

I don't remember enough about xml vs xmlstarlet, that was over a year
ago. I haven't had any issues with anything, so whatever you did
probably worked.

On 7/24/24 6:04 PM, Asher Smith wrote:
> I know that this discussion was started 3 years ago, but I do want to
> make sure that there is a publicly visible solution to the things that
> were discussed in case anybody else is ever in a similar situation.
>
> * Going through an Apple-approved distributor turned out to be a
> non-starter, for various reasons. They wanted to charge us, they
> weren't set up to deal with projects such as this, etc.
> * Anybody can create an Apple Books account to publish books to the
> Apple Books store. Once you have done that, it's possible to take an
> epub file and use a piece of software called iTunes Producer
> <https://itunespartner.apple.com/books/support/21-publish-from-web>
> to manually input the necessary metadata from the book and then
> submit it to the store. The files produced by this that include the
> .epub and the metadata are in a .itmsp format.
> * There is also a command-line tool called iTMSTransporter
> <https://help.apple.com/itc/transporteruserguide/en.lproj/static.html> that you can use to upload a previously created .itmsp file directly. I created a package called publish-to-apple <https://github.com/ACBSmith/publish-to-apple> that takes an epub file with fully completed content.opf metadata and uses that to create an itmsp file which it can then submit using provided account information.
> * Use of iTMSTransporter does not seem to be fully supported by Apple
> Take a look at groups.io <http://groups.io>, which I think
> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/d49a07b1-149f-4cc5-a195-a8f4b2bce3cfn%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/d49a07b1-149f-4cc5-a195-a8f4b2bce3cfn%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>>.
>
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