Complete Neal Stephenson - Hand-tweaked ePubs

This torrent contains all of Neal Stephenson's novels, lovingly improved from
the best sources I could find. Some are retails, others (Notably, the "Stephen
Bury" novels) were in very bad shape and required extensive work. Enjoy!

IMPORTANT: If you like a book, please support the author by buying the book.
I recommend buying the real, dead-tree version and not the eBook.

Q: Why are you doing this?
A: I started doing this because I was dismayed at the quality of eBooks I could
find, just getting them to a condition where it didn't hurt to read them.
As I started spending some time on this, I thought that I could share my hard
work with others.


Q: Help! The book won't read on my reader!
A: Some readers are not fully compliant with the ePub standard.
The main cause for this that I have seen so far, is readers that use Adobe
ADE (such as Sony PRS readers). ADE has a maximum limit for how large the
internal files of an ePub can be.
The easiest way to fix this, is to use Calibre to perform a conversion
from ePub to ePub; this will split the internal files to smaller chunks
(and add a whole lot of unncessary formating to the files).


Q: My reader only supports format , why are you only releasing in ePub?
ePub is a nice and open format, which makes it easy to work with.
If you need another format, I suggest using Calibre to convert to the format
you need.


Q: What are you doing to the books?
A: Basically, I copy the contents of a book from an existing epub into a new
template, which will ensure proper and uniform formating and ToC generation.
For some books, I do a more thorough job of verifying and adding as necessary
the breaks and paragraphs that were not present in the original source; adding
markup such as italics.
As I read the books myself, I use my Kindle to note where there are errors, and
then go back in to fix these if possible.


Q: How are you doing it?
A: I use Calibre to keep track of my collection, and to convert between
formats. After getting the books into .epub format, I extract the contents.
Instead of altering the existing files, I have a template I use to create a
new book. This template has all the requisite hooks for chapters and ToC
generation, so I then extract the content from the books, and run it through
a special search-and-replace program I created to help me convert the symbols
to better-looking UTF-8 symbols. I then clean up any extraneous formating,
which is abundant in books created by word (or other WYSIWYG editors), or from
Calibre's conversion process. Lastly, I run the new file through FlightCrew to
ensure conformity to the ePub standard.

Tools:
* Eclipse (http://www.eclipse.org)
* FlightCrew (http://code.google.com/p/flightcrew/)
* Calibre (http://calibre-ebook.com/)


Q: What are the versions?
A: All books that I deem fit-for-publishing start out as v1. If I make changes,
either due to feedback, my own proofreading, updated meta-data, or any other
reason I create a new version, to be bundled in the next update.

Q: Why won't you recommend retail ePubs?
A: There are two main reasons for this:
a) I have yet to find a retail ePub that actually conforms to the ePub
standard.
b) Most publishers have this strange notion that a virtual copy should cost
more then a physical copy (compared to paperbacks).