A great offline alternative to this is the Serial reader:
https://www.serialreader.org/
I've been using it for years and they keep adding public domain books.
Nice, had not heard of that before.
Readit Newsazum61 commented on Show HN: Daily Read – Receive a chapter a day from popular public domain books dailyread.xyz/... · Posted by u/azum61
azum61 commented on Show HN: Daily Read – Receive a chapter a day from popular public domain books dailyread.xyz/... · Posted by u/azum61
I did almost something similar. I split a pdf book into pages, one page per pdf file, named all in numbers like 01,02,03 ... etc. Then I put it in a Google drive folder, and, and a google script emailed me 2 pages every day as pdf attachments, and deleted those 2 pages from drive.
Nice, always forget how you can do so much cool stuff with Google Script.
azum61 commented on Show HN: Daily Read – Receive a chapter a day from popular public domain books dailyread.xyz/... · Posted by u/azum61
Do you think this would work with new ip as an offering from a small publisher?
Hmm, that is an interesting thought...not one that I had considered!
azum61 commented on Show HN: Daily Read – Receive a chapter a day from popular public domain books dailyread.xyz/... · Posted by u/azum61
To the OP/author: the homepage is devoid of details that would be useful. Could you please include details on how it works so that people can know without signing up?
Questions:
0. Which email address should users add to their address book or allow list so that the chances of the emails going to spam are reduced?
1. What time of the day does it send the emails? From other comments it seems like the user can choose, but does it account for time zones that the user would understand easily?
2. Within the email, is the entire chapter embedded in plain text or is it HTML formatted or both (left to the email client to pick)?
3. For works that are originally not in English (like The Count of Monte Cristo), which translation by whom and when is included on your site? Why was that choice made?
4. What is the source of the public domain books on this site?
5. Do you need any financial support (such as donations) or are looking to create paid subscriptions (though the books are public domain, there is a cost to operating this platform)?
And if you are curious, the answers are below!
0. Emails come from mailer@dailyread.xyz
1. Time zone is determined by the user's browser.
2. Chapter emails are in HTML.
3. Translations are what was available from https://www.gutenberg.org/
4. All from from https://www.gutenberg.org/
5. Hmm, had not really thought too much into this yet. Should be set up to run at a minimal cost, but might add a donation link or something like that if people are interested in making small donations.
azum61 commented on Show HN: Daily Read – Receive a chapter a day from popular public domain books dailyread.xyz/... · Posted by u/azum61
To the OP/author: the homepage is devoid of details that would be useful. Could you please include details on how it works so that people can know without signing up?
Questions:
0. Which email address should users add to their address book or allow list so that the chances of the emails going to spam are reduced?
1. What time of the day does it send the emails? From other comments it seems like the user can choose, but does it account for time zones that the user would understand easily?
2. Within the email, is the entire chapter embedded in plain text or is it HTML formatted or both (left to the email client to pick)?
3. For works that are originally not in English (like The Count of Monte Cristo), which translation by whom and when is included on your site? Why was that choice made?
4. What is the source of the public domain books on this site?
5. Do you need any financial support (such as donations) or are looking to create paid subscriptions (though the books are public domain, there is a cost to operating this platform)?
Thanks for the feedback, will see about incorporating some of this.
azum61 commented on Show HN: Daily Read – Receive a chapter a day from popular public domain books dailyread.xyz/... · Posted by u/azum61
I thought of looking for something like this just this morning, so glad it already exists. I really like the idea that its one chapter a day, however I don't fully understand the "Send time" preference, being an email, I think it doesnt really matter. Anyways, great work!
Good timing!
For the "Send time", it probably doesn't matter too much since it is email (as you said). On the flip side, it always seems like these things tend to come through really early in the morning and then get buried under other emails that come in, so wanted to give some flexibility here!
azum61 commented on Show HN: Daily Read – Receive a chapter a day from popular public domain books dailyread.xyz/... · Posted by u/azum61
Enjoyed working on this project and thought I would share!
Are you sending the emails directly from your server, or using some service in between?