2012 Book Archive Creative Commons licensed, freely downloadable

What is this?

First off, this is not the website for the original publisher. Instead, this is the archive of a small project by Andy Schmitz to archive Creative Commons-licensed copies of all the books which were available online from a specific publisher at the end of 2012. (That publisher has asked to remain unnamed here. For more information, see the attribution page.)

That publisher is a textbook publisher, focusing on (mostly entry-level) college textbooks. From their beginning until the end of 2012, they licensed all of their books under a Creative Commons by-nc-sa 3.0 license, allowing anyone who so desired to copy them, give them away, or modify them, as long as they acknowledged the authors, released the copies under the same license, and didn't do so for commercial gain. This was an unusual model, but they hoped it would work. (They sold access to additional study materials, as well as copies of books that would fit well on e-readers.)

In late 2012, they decided that the process of giving away access to their textbooks online wasn't working, and decided to switch to a different model, requiring students to pay for access to the books starting in 2013. (At least initially, these fees ware rather cheap compared to normal textbook prices, but still not free.)

Because the books were still available under a Creative Commons license at the end of 2012, I downloaded them to have copies known to be available under a Creative Commons license. I then repackaged them so that they are available outside of the publisher's website, and can be used by anyone under the terms of their Creative Commons license.

What's the status of these books?

These books are available with the content that was published on the publisher's website on December 28-30 2012. During that time, they were available under a Creative Commons by-nc-sa 3.0 license, which allows redistribution under the same (or substantially similar) license. Because of that, I can release these copies under the same license, regardless of the current terms on the publisher's website. You are welcome to copy them, rehost them, or modify them subject to the terms of their license.

Therefore, all of the books linked to below (in any formats available from this website) are licensed under the Creative Commons by-nc-sa 3.0 license. That fact will not change. However, given the publisher's decision to no longer allow free access to the books, the list of books is also unlikely to change. Any updates these books receive by their original authors will be unavailable on this website, unless the changes are contributed back under Creative Commons. For the latest versions of these books, you may wish to check the publisher's website. (Because they have asked for their name to not be mentioned here, that may require searching for the book titles in a search engine.)

How do I get them?

Below, you will find a list of all of the books that have been archived. You can re-sort the table by clicking on a column header. Clicking on a book's title will let you browse the book online.

The "HTML .zip" link will allow you to download a book as a compressed .zip file composed of HTML and supporting files for use offline. (This format will likely not work with most e-reader devices, sorry.) The "Full PDF" link will give you the full book as a PDF file, suitable for printing on 8.5x11" paper, or simply browsing offline. The PDF may be more suitable for e-reader devices. If you only want a chapter of the book at a time (easier to load on many computers), go to the book's table of contents by clicking "Browse", and get per-chapter PDFs from there. The PDFs were generated using the excellent Prince, with more details in this blog post.