Project Aldus is born: the InfoBooks contribution to world literature

The best books ever written belong to everyone.

In practice, they are almost never available in a format that invites you to read them: old scans, half pages, incomplete dialogue.

The work is free, but reading it is not.

That is what we are here to change.

Why we do it

Reading Cervantes, Austen or Dostoevsky should not depend on where you were born or on whether you can afford a copy.

These works already belong to humanity, and they deserve an edition worthy of them: well typeset and easy to read.

All free. No sign-up, no payment and no download limits.

What it takes

It is not a matter of copying a file and uploading it.

Every book is read in full, the errors left behind by digitization are corrected, and it is typeset again, page by page.

That is why we will be creating them little by little. We would rather have a few books done well than many done halfway.

Genuinely accessible

Every book is issued as PDF/UA and PDF/A: tagged structure, navigation bookmarks, declared language and embedded fonts.

This means a screen reader can read it aloud, and that the file will still open twenty years from now.

Where the name comes from

From Aldus Manutius, a printer in Venice who in 1501 took the classics out of those enormous, hugely expensive volumes and put them into a small, affordable format you could carry with you.

We are doing the same, in PDF.

His motto was festina lente: make haste slowly. We are carrying on his work in the 21st century.