Wanted Ebooks

If you’re interested in producing an ebook for Standard Ebooks, why not work on one of these books?

If something in this list interests you, please contact us at our mailing list for help before you start work.

If you want to suggest a different book to produce, please carefully review the kinds of work we do and don’t accept.

Add a book to this list

Patrons Circle members may submit ebooks for inclusion on this list.

Patrons Circle members periodically vote on a selection from this list to pick one ebook for immediate production. You can join the Patrons Circle to have a voice in the future of the Standard Ebooks catalog.

For your first production

If nothing on the list below interests you, you can pitch us something else you’d like to work on.

First productions should be on the shorter side (less than 100,000 words maximum) and without too many complex formatting issues like illustrations, significant endnotes, letters, poems, etc. Most short plain fiction novels fall in this category.

• The Oakdale Affair by Edgar Rice Burroughs. № 2 in the Mucker series.

• The Outlaw of Torn by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

• The Rivet in Grandfather’s Neck by James Branch Cabell. № 14 in the Biography of the Life of Manuel series.

• The Line of Love by James Branch Cabell. № 7 in the Biography of the Life of Manuel series.

• The Fifth Queen Crowned by Ford Madox Ford. № 3 in the Fifth Queen series.

• The Chink in the Armour by Marie Belloc Lowndes.

• With Edged Tools by Henry Seton Merriman.

• The Black Moth by Georgette Heyer.

• Maria by Mary Wollstonecraft.

• Overshadowed by Sutton E. Griggs.

• The House Behind the Cedars by Charles W. Chesnutt.

• The Bridal Wreath by Sigrid Undset. Translated by Charles Archer and J. S. Scott.

• Dark Princess by W. E. B. Du Bois.

• Tarka the Otter by Henry Williamson. № 9 in the Hawthornden Prize Winners series. Patron selection!

• The Conscience of a Conservative by Barry M. Goldwater.

• Tragedy at Ravensthorpe by J. J. Connington. № 2 in the Sir Clinton Driffield series.

• Bel Ami by Guy de Maupassant. Translated by Bigelow, Smith & Co. This uncredited translation is by “Bigelow, Smith & Co.”

• The Patient in Room 18 by Mignon G. Eberhart. Part of the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstones set.

• The Murders in Praed Street by John Rhode. Part of the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstones set.

• The Lone Wolf by Louis Joseph Vance. Part of the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstones set.

• The Layton Court Mystery by Anthony Berkeley. № 1 in the Roger Sheringham series.

• The Duke of York’s Steps by Henry Wade.

• The Lost Stradivarius by John Meade Falkner.

• Dr. Wortle’s School by Anthony Trollope.

• Anna of the Five Towns by Arnold Bennett.

• Jeremy by Hugh Walpole. № 1 in the Jeremy series.

• Jeremy and Hamlet by Hugh Walpole. № 2 in the Jeremy series.

• The Cossacks by Leo Tolstoy. Translated by Louise Maude and Aylmer Maude.

• The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp by William H. Davies.

• Father Henson’s Story of His Own Life by Josiah Henson.

• A Narrative of the Life and Travels of Mrs. Nancy Prince by Nancy Prince. Cut “Divine Contentment” section at the end.

Moderate-difficulty productions

• A Book-Lover’s Holidays in the Open by Theodore Roosevelt.

• John Brown’s Body by Stephen Vincent Benét.

• Malleus Malleficarum by Heinrich Kramer. Translated by Montague Summers. Page scans.

• The Castle of Wolfenbach by Eliza Parsons.

• Wild Animals I Have Known by Ernest Thompson Seton. PG transcription has removed formatting. Patron selection!

• The Curse of Kehama by Robert Southey. Volume 2.

• Roderick the Last of the Goths by Robert Southey.

• On the Sublime by Longinus. Translated by H. L. Havell.

• The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century by Jane C. Loudon. Transcription is of the 1st edition, but we want to update it to the 2nd or later edition.

• Poetry by Thomas Macaulay. Including “Lays of Ancient Rome.”

• Hamilton by Mary P. Hamlin and George Arliss. Patron selection!

• A Voyage to Abyssinia by Jerónimo Lobo. Translated by Samuel Johnson.

• Short Fiction by Vernon Lee.

• Short Fiction by Sheridan Le Fanu.

• Poetry by William McGonagall.

• The Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville by Alexis de Tocqueville. Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos.

• Maxims by François duc de La Rochefoucauld. Translated by J. Hain Friswell and J. W. Willis Bund.

• Short Fiction by Walter de la Mare.

• Poetry by Walter de la Mare.

• The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi by Giacomo Leopardi. Translated by Francis Henry Cliffe.

• Essays and Dialogues by Giacomo Leopardi. Translated by Charles Edwardes.

• Lady Rose’s Daughter by Mary Augusta Ward.

• Short Fiction by Saki. Some research may be required to determine whether to produce an omnibus Short Fiction or how to divide up his stories.

• Poetry by Andrew Marvell.

• The Life of Jesus Critically Examined by David Strauss. Translated by George Eliot.

• Short Works by Epictetus. Translated by Thomas Wentworth Higginson. This translation is better than George Long and will supersede our existing edition.

• A Joy Forever by John Ruskin. A.K.A. The Political Economy of Art.

• The Crown of Wild Olive by John Ruskin.

• Munera Pulveris by John Ruskin.

• Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin.

• Time and Tide by John Ruskin.

• Joan of Arc by Robert Southey.

• Madoc by Robert Southey.

• The Case with Nine Solutions by J. J. Connington. № 4 in the Sir Clinton Driffield series.

• The Eternal Boy by Owen Johnson. № 1 in the Lawrenceville Stories series. Patron selection!

• The Prelude by William Wordsworth.

• Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage by Lord Byron.

• Poetry by Lord Byron. Volume 3, Volume 4, Volume 5, Volume 7 as a single production.

• The Assassination Bureau, Ltd. by Jack London and Robert L. Fish.

• Jorrocks’ Jaunts and Jollities by R. S. Surtees. № 1 in the Jorrocks series.

• The Trail of the Serpent by M. E. Braddon.

• The Venetians by M. E. Braddon.

• Short Fiction by John Buchan. See this spreadsheet. Grey Weather (remove poems), The Watcher by the Threshold, and Other Tales (1902 & 1918 editions), The Moon Endureth (remove poems), and The Runagates Club in one production.

Advanced productions

• William Meister’s Apprenticeship by J. W. von Goethe. Translated by Thomas Carlyle. Part of the Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction set. Page scans. Transcription required for volume 2.

• Parallel Lives by Plutarch. Translated by Bernadotte Perin. Patron selection!

• Wolf Solent by John Cowper Powys. Transcription required.

• The Life of William Morris by J. W. Mackail. Transcription required.

• An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke. Volume 2; to be produced as one ebook. Patron selection!

• Utopia by Thomas More.

• The Ramayana by Valmiki. Translated by Ralph T. H. Griffith.

• The Mahabharata by Vyasa. Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli. Volume 2, volume 3, volume 4 as a single production; several sections are missing.

• Abie’s Irish Rose by Anne Nichols. Transcription required. Patron selection!

• The Life of Reason by George Santayana.

• Skepticism and Animal Faith by George Santayana. Transcription required.

• When We Were Very Young by A. A. Milne. № 1 in the Winnie-the-Pooh series. Research needed to see if we need a poetry omnibus.

• The Memoirs of the Conquistadors by Bernal Díaz del Castillo. Translated by John Ingram Lockhart. Volume 2.

• Saïd the Fisherman by Marmaduke Pickthall. Transcription required.

• Poetry by Harry Cust. Transcription required.

• The Baburnama by Ẓahīr-ud-Dīn Muhammad Bābur. Translated by Annette Susannah Beveridge.

• The Perennial Bachelor by Anne Parrish. № 2 in the Harper Novel Prize Winners series. Transcription required.

• The Revenger’s Tragedy by Thomas Middleton. № 10 in the Telegraph’s Greatest Villains in Literature set. Mistakenly attributed to Cyril Tourneur.

• The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest by Tirso de Molina. Translated by Harry Kemp. № 24 in the Telegraph’s Greatest Villains in Literature set.

• The Peasants by Władysław Reymont. Translated by Michael H. Dziewicki. Transcription required; see Winter, Summer, and Spring.

• Short Fiction by Algernon Blackwood.

• The Odes by Horace.

• Poetry by Trumbull Stickney. Transcription required.

• Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand. Translated by Brian Hooker. Transcription required; page scans.

• The Life of Johnson by James Boswell. George Birkbeck Hill’s unabridged edition was published in six volumes, all of which are on PG; the link leads to the first volume.

• The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni. There is a 1924 translation that must be considered, and will require transcription.

• Short Fiction by Jack London. We already have three short story compilations that must be rolled in to this one. See this bibliography spreadsheet.

• Short Fiction by W. W. Jacobs. We already have Lady of the Barge; do we need a Short Fiction omnibus?

• Poetry by Mark Akenside. Make sure this collection is a complete corpus of his works.

• The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes by Anonymous. Translated by Clements R. Markham.

• The Journal of a Disappointed Man by W. N. P. Barbellion.

• The Nun Ensign by Catalina de Erauso. Translated by James Fitzmaurice-Kelly. Transcription required; page scans.

• Essays by Michel de Montaigne. Translated by Charles Cotton.

• The Complete Letters to his Son by Philip Dormer Stanhope.

• A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume.

• Essays of Elia by Charles Lamb.

• Creative Evolution by Henri Bergson. Translated by Arthur Mitchell.

• Aesthetical Essays by Friedrich Schiller.

• The Analects by Confucius.

• The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.

• The World As Will And Idea by Arthur Schopenhauer. Translated by R. B. Haldane Haldane and J. Kemp. Volume 2, volume 3.

• Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville. Translated by Henry Reeve. Volume 2 as a single volume; note that we want the later revision for which there may not yet be a transcription.

• The Complete Angler by Izaak Walton. The Wikisource transcription will be easier to work with than the PG transcription.

• The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton.

• The Memoirs of Casanova by Giacomo Casanova. Translated by Arthur Machen.

• Poetry by St. John of the Cross. Transcription required; page scans.

• Poetry by John Clare. Careful research required to deduplicate this large corpus.

• The Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson by Thomas Jefferson.

• Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais. Translated by Peter Anthony Motteux and Thomas Urquhart. Confirm this is the Ozell 1737 revision. Should we prefer the Wallis 1897 revision?

• Poetry by Robert Burns.

• Poetry by E. A. Robinson.

• Fors Clavigera by John Ruskin. Some transcription may be required: as of May 2024, 6 out of 8 volumes are available on PG.

• Sinbad: A Romance by Cyril Kay Scott. Transcription required; page scans. Patron selection!

• Blind Mice by Cyril Kay Scott. Transcription required; page scans. Patron selection!

• The Travels of Marco Polo by Rustichello da Pisa. Translated by Henry Yule. Volume 2.

• Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler by Norbert Jacques. Translated by Lilian A. Clare. Transcription required; page scans. Patron selection!

• Memoirs of General William T. Sherman by William T. Sherman. Patron selection!

• The Adventurous Simplicissimus by Hans Jakob Christoph von Grimmelshausen. Patron selection!

• The Wilderness Hunter by Theodore Roosevelt. This is a two volume work, and the PG transcription is volume 2; editions vary widely; transcription likely required for volume 1 or the latest possible combined edition.

• Continental Op Stories by Dashiell Hammett. Part of the Continental Op series. Exclude stories forming Red Harvest and The Dain Curse; in 2025 all but 2 stories are PD; confirm the stories are transcriptions from the original magazines, as later editors made significant edits; see here as a starting point of transcriptions; Library of America's Crime Stories & Other Writings collects the original magazine editions, see here.

• The Magic Island by W. B. Seabrook. Transcription required; page scans. Patron selection!

• The Court of Charles IV by Benito Pérez Galdós. Translated by Clara Bell. № 2 in the National Episodes of Spain series. Transcription required.

• Táin Bó Cúailnge by Anonymous. Translated by Joseph Dunn.

• 20 hrs., 40 min. by Amelia Earhart.

• The Tales of Ensign Stål by Johan Ludvig Runeberg. Translated by Clement B. Shaw. Transcription required.

• The Lusiad by Luís de Camões. Translated by Richard Francis Burton. Vol. 1, Vol. 2 page scans. Transcription required.

• The Henriad by Voltaire. Translated by William F. Fleming. Page scans. Transcription required.

• Poetry by Robert Frost. See this spreadsheet and this mailing list thread. Patron selection!

• British Goblins by Wirt Sikes.

• Specimens of Bushman Folklore by Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd. Page scans. The text contains symbols that represent different clicking sounds.

• Poetry by John Buchan. See this spreadsheet. The Pilgrim Fathers, Grey Weather (remove short stories), The Moon Endureth (remove short stories), Poems: Scots and English (transcription required) in one production.

Jules Verne

Verne has a complex publication and translation history. Please review these notes before starting any Verne books.

• The first acceptable translation of 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas was published in 1966 by Walter James Miller. All known earlier translations are widely considered to be bad, therefore we won’t host them and must wait until the Miller translation enters the public domain.

• Master of the World has two PD translations, one from 1911 and one from 1914. The 1911 version is bad, and the 1914 by Cranstoun Metcalfe version is preferred; but as of 2023, there are no transcriptions or page scans of the 1914 version.

Uncategorized lists

• Entries in the James Tait Black Memorial Prize list

• English translations from the Prix Goncourt list

• Entries in the Hawthornden Prize list

• Public domain entries in the Newcastle Forgotten Fantasy Library

• Public domain entries in the Guardian’s top 100 novels of all time list

• Public domain entries in Le Mondes’s 100 Books of the Century

• Public domain entries in Pulitzer Prize for Drama

• Public domain entries in Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

• Public domain entries in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series (Note that not all of these are in the U.S. public domain)

• Public domain entries in this Spreadsheet of plays that have appeared on lists of the “Best Plays of All Time.”

• Entries in the Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction