Project Gutenberg News

December 2025

—Enjoy these eBooks. Share them. Celebrate them.—

Contents

Illustration of Greg Newby and Michael Hart
In the News about eBooks for November 2025
Legal News: eBook Lending and Copyright
Reflecting on Public Domain Day 2025
Top 100 eBooks downloaded for the month of November
PG AI Audiobooks Coming Soon!
Project Gutenberg Self Publishing Portal
Recent PG Releases
Join Distributed Proofreaders
Find Project Gutenberg on social media

Celebrating Greg Newby in Illustration

On behalf of all of us at PGLAF, we sincerely appreciate the illustrated likeness of Michael Hart and Gregory Newby. Note about the illustration, illustrator Denis Renard, and publication by Marie Lebert.

https://marielebert.wordpress.com/2022/10/07/denis-renard/

In the news about eBooks for November 2025

Key eBook news items and trends as November 2025 include:

AI and Copyright Lawsuits: There is news about publisher OverDrive suing OpenAI over AI training data and related copyright issues, a significant development for authors concerned about intellectual property rights.

Audiobook Growth: The rise in consumer demand for audiobooks means entrepreneurial authors and publishers are embracing an “audio-first” trend, seeking to leverage advances against audio rights while potentially self-publishing eBooks separately.

Spotify has expanded audiobook access for Premium subscribers in five additional European countries.

Legal News: eBook Lending and Copyright

A significant legal development in late 2024 involved the Internet Archive’s legal battle over its digital lending practices. The organization decided not to appeal a U.S. Court of Appeals ruling that found its “controlled digital lending” (CDL) model, which involved lending scanned digital copies of physical books, was not a “fair use” under copyright law. The case, Hachette Book Group, Inc. v. Internet Archive, was a closely watched dispute involving major publishers and had a significant impact on how libraries approach digital lending of copyrighted materials.

AI and Copyright Tensions: Mid-November saw heated debates on X about AI training data, with authors accusing OpenAI of scraping books (including public domain ones) without consent. A related lawsuit gained traction, potentially affecting how AI models handle free eBooks.

November’s X conversations about PG had some trending, with users recommending Gutenberg for classics like Dracula and Meditations. A viral thread noted how public domain status means “no fees, no licenses,” sparking eBook recommendation lists.

Dracula by Bram Stoker

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/345

Meditations by Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2680

Reflecting on Public Domain Day 2025

Last year, in November 2024, the primary focus in public domain eBooks news was centered on the impending Public Domain Day on January 1, 2025, when thousands of works from 1929 (plus 1924 sound recordings) entered into the U.S. public domain. This event has always generated significant buzz among digital libraries, authors, and readers, with platforms like Project Gutenberg and Standard eBooks preparing free eBook releases. Discussions emphasized how these additions will enrich free digital collections, allowing unrestricted sharing, adaptation, and remixing of classics. Here’s a breakdown of the Major Works Entering the Public Domain 11 months ago:

These titles, now free for eBooks distribution and adaptation, include literary heavyweights from the late 1920s. Highlights featured last November:

Ernest Hemingway’s, A Farewell to Arms
Iconic war novel; expected to see new eBooks editions and adaptations.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75201
Virginia Woolf’s, A Room of One’s Own
Feminist essay; poised for fresh digital annotations and audiobooks.
https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200791h.html
— From Project Gutenberg Australia!
William Faulkner’s, The Sound and the Fury
Modernist masterpiece; highlights the “Roaring ’20s” cultural wave entering free access.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75170
Agatha Christie’s The Seven Dials Mystery
Early detective story; boosts mystery genre.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75288
Dashiell Hammett’s, The Maltese Falcon (serialized version)
Hardboiled noir classic; anticipated for graphic novel and eBook remixes.
https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/hammettd-maltesefalcon/hammettd-maltesefalcon-00-h.html
— From Project Gutenberg Canada!

Other notables include All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque and early Tintin comics by Hergé. Also sound recordings like George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.

Next month, we will have a list of works newly available in 2026.

Top 10 eBooks downloaded for the month of November 2025

Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (303,221)
Moby Dick; Or, The Whale by Herman Melville (119,658)
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (85,862)
The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers (76,744)
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare (73,678)
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (65,938)
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (63,702)
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare (57,775)
Middlemarch by George Eliot (53,818)
A Room with a View by E. M. Forster (53,757)

PG AI Audiobooks coming soon!

The next-generation of PG audiobooks is coming soon. There will likely be two audiobooks per book (one male and one female). Feedback and demand have been positive. We are looking forward to continuing this collaboration.

The team of talented, and bright collaborators, have recently made some great progress on a v2 version of the open audiobook collection. They have been working on for the past few months to expand the collection to all 70K books, through the use of LLMs to automatically determine what should be read aloud and what should not be. Unlike the previous effort, which involved a lot of manual cleaning effort, this new effort will automate that with a series of LLM prompts so that we can automatically read things more like a human would. The AI audiobooks use some newer speech models to generate recordings, and tackle the issue of male and female voices.

Project Gutenberg Self Publishing Portal

Free Public Access to Create and Distribute eBooks via the Project Gutenberg Self Publishing system.

Project Gutenberg has focused mostly on the re-creation of paper books rather than the distribution of new authors and material, and we have spent as much of our time on finding books and doing copyright research as on eBook creation and distribution. Project Gutenberg Self Publishing Portal focuses solely on distribution rather than creation.

In 2011 Michael Hart and John Guagliardo created the Project Gutenberg Self Publishing Portal and Author’s Community, https://self.gutenberg.org. Since then we have published over 20,000 titles. For the month of November there were 107 titles submitted and 73 approved, https://self.gutenberg.org/RecentPublications.

If you or anyone you know, ever wished to have their title published at Project Gutenberg, visit https://self.gutenberg.org and join the author’s community. It is also a great place to find thousands of contemporary self-published titles.

Selected New Releases at Gutenberg.org - November 2025

In the last month PGLAF added another 211 new public domain eBooks to the PG catalog. Of the new books, 136 were added by PGDP. Thank you to all the volunteers who have helped to make these new titles freely available to the world.

These eBooks are now available at:

http://gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?sort_order=release_date

A selection of this month’s notable titles:

Flaxius: Leaves from the Life of an Immortal,
Leland, Charles Godfrey (English)
334 pages; December 1, 2025
PG #77376 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77376

The brave little maid of Goldau (1892),
Mary Elizabeth Jennings (English)
47 pages; December 1, 2025
PG #77374 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77374

Brake Up; or, The Young Peacemakers,
Optic, Oliver (English)
318 pages; December 1, 2025
PG #77372 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77372

Hold ‘Em, Wyndham!, Barbour,
Ralph Henry (English)
285 pages; December 1, 2025
PG #77370 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77370

Skum [1922],
Øberg, Edith (Norwegian)
137 pages; December 1, 2025
PG #77368 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77368

Among the Isles of Shoals, Thaxter, Celia (English)
193 pages; November 29, 2025
PG #77366 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77366

Bound to get there; or, A boy who could not be downed,
Franklin, Roy (English)
324 pages; November 29, 2025
PG #77365 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77365

Les conversations d’Émilie,
Épinay, Louise d’ (French)
208 pages; November 29, 2025
PG #77364 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77364

Genesis (1910), A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on,
Skinner, John, 1851-1925. (English)
671 pages; November 29, 2025
PG #77363 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77363

Adrift on the Amazon,
Miller, Leo (English)
286 pages; November 28, 2025
PG #77361 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77361

American medicinal barks,
Henkel, Alice (English)
61 pages; November 28, 2025
PG #77360 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77360

Letters of John Huss, written during his exile and imprisonment,
Bonnechose, Émile de (English)
248 pages; November 28, 2025
PG #77359 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77359

A lady’s cruise in a French man-of-war [1882],
Gordon-Cumming, Constance Frederica (English)
397 pages; November 28, 2025
PG #77356 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77356

Household words, no. 330, July 19, 1856: A weekly journal,
Dickens, Charles (editor) (English)
48 pages; November 28, 2025
PG #77354 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77354

Historia de la instrucción pública en Puerto Rico hasta el año de 1898,
Coll y Toste, Cayetano (Spanish)
212 pages; November 28, 2025
PG #77353 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77353

Ten years in a Portsmouth slum,
Dolling, Robert R. (English)
318 pages; November 28, 2025
PG #77351 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77351

Bacchus; or, Wine To-day and To-morrow,
Shand, P. Morton (English with French)
96 pages; November 27, 2025
PG #77340 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77340

The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, vol 6 of 11,
Hobbes, Thomas (English)
540 pages; November 26, 2025
PG #77338 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77338

Leben und Taten des scharfsinnigen Edlen
Don Quijote von la Mancha 1 {Fraktur}, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (Übers.: Tieck) (German)
379 pages; November 26, 2025
PG #77337 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77337

Hecuba and Other Plays, Euripides;
Michael Wodhull [tr.] (English)
288 pages; November 26, 2025
PG #77336 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77336

Poems: Scots and English,
Buchan, John (English with Scots)
107 pages; November 25, 2025
PG #77335 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77335

El proceso,
Franz Kafka (Spanish)
385 pages; November 25, 2025
PG #77334 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77334

Green Thursday: Stories,
Peterkin, Julia M. (English)
189 pages; November 25, 2025
PG #77332 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77332

The way of all earth, Delano,
Edith Barnard (English)
283 pages; November 25, 2025
PG #77331 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77331

La rive d’Asie,
Anet, Claude (French)
240 pages; November 24, 2025
PG #77330 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77330

The Best Short Stories of 1925, and the Yearbook of the American Short Story,
O’Brien, Edward J. [ed.] (English)
520 pages; November 24, 2025
PG #77328 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77328

The work of the War refugees committee,
Shaw, Flora L. (English)
43 pages; November 24, 2025
PG #77327 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77327

Insomnia: Its causes and cure,
Sawyer, James (English)
66 pages; November 24, 2025
PG #77326 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77326

Bernini, and other studies in the history of art,
Norton, Richard (English)
367 pages; November 24, 2025
PG #77325 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77325

The Dark Year of Dundee (1867),
Alcock, Deborah (English)
350 pages; November 24, 2025
PG #77324 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77324

The list of registered, operational mirrors is here:

http://gutenberg.org/MIRRORS.ALL

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