Austin, Texas · since 2021
Three people publish one proofed book a month, and every correction goes on the record
Novelvora keeps a small catalogue of public-domain fiction you can read online free. Each title is re-set for the screen and checked line by line against a scanned first or early edition before it goes live. Twelve books so far. That is on purpose.
01 / Who runs this site
Novelvora is a small reading catalogue based in Austin
This site, novelvora.us, is run by Novelvora, a three-person online book catalogue working from 70 Oak Lane, Floor 2, Austin, Texas 82798, United States. It is not a bookshop. There is no till, no warehouse and no stock of other publishers’ books. It is not a publisher of new work either.
We started in January 2021, the month The Great Gatsby entered the US public domain. That was the first book we re-set. It took eleven weeks, most of them spent finding out how many small errors the free versions already online were carrying. The most common one was a missing line break that merges two speakers into one paragraph. We still fix those first, in every book.
- Founded
- 2021
- People
- 3
- Titles live
- 12
- Earliest edition
- 1813
- Latest edition
- 1926
- New titles
- About one a month
02 / The people
One editor, one typesetter, one correspondent
Editor
Chooses and proofs every text
Decides which book comes next, finds the edition to proof against, and reads the whole text against its scan. Writes the editor’s notes, the content notes and the margin glosses. Signs off every ledger entry. Nothing goes live without a full pass from this desk, which is why we average one book a month and never release a batch.
Typesetter
Builds the reading pages
Turns a proofed text into pages that read well on a phone at 320 pixels and on a 27-inch monitor. Sets chapter openings, restores original indents and verse layout, and builds the large-print editions for group sets at 18 point. Tests every book on an old e-reader before launch.
Correspondent
Answers every inquiry
Reads each email, chat message and form, and replies in person. Writes the quotes for reading-group packs and large-print sets. Logs every reported error and passes it to the editor, then writes back to the reader with what was found.
03 / What we do
The proofing method, step by step
We publish public-domain fiction to read online, free, chapter by chapter, and we make reading-group packs, large-print sets and custom collections that are quoted by email on request. No cart, no checkout, no payment on this site. You can check every claim below on any book page.
The Great Gatsby, proofed against the 1925 Scribner first edition: two commas changed after launch. Both are in the ledger with the date and page.
Choose the edition
A first edition where we can get a clean scan, otherwise the earliest the author saw through the press. Frankenstein is the 1818 text, not the 1831 revision.
Build a working text
From the scan, with OCR we then distrust completely. Typical first-pass error rate is one problem every 300 words.
Read it against the scan
Line by line. The editor reads aloud; speaker changes, italics and paragraph breaks get checked on their own pass, because that is where free editions go wrong most.
Set it for the screen
The typesetter builds the pages, restores indents, verse and letters, and adds the margin notes.
Publish, then keep correcting
Every change after launch goes into that book’s correction ledger with a date, a page reference and what changed.
04 / What we won’t publish
Four refusals, and the reason for each
No abridgements. If a chapter is slow, it was slow in 1851 too.
- Modern copyrighted work. If it isn’t in the US public domain, we don’t host it, excerpt it or link to someone who does.
- Abridged texts. Moby-Dick keeps all 135 chapters and the Epilogue, cetology included.
- “Modernised” spelling. Austen’s “chuse” stays “chuse”, and a note tells you why.
- Batch uploads. Twelve books read properly beat twelve thousand files scraped from somewhere.
05 / Reaching a person
Write to the correspondent, or call
Every message is read by a person, not a bot. Email is best for group quotes and error reports. The phone is answered on weekdays during Austin office hours; if nobody picks up, leave a message and we call back the next working day. Emails get a reply within two working days, usually sooner.
The chat window at the bottom right of every page reaches the same person.