Old books are great, aren’t they?

Old books. Not necessarily classics.

A good portion of them are, happily, in the public domain, making them widely available in digital forms. But we grow weary of screens. And with so many wonderful, old, books not in print, I decided to begin rereleasing some favorites in the form of paperbacks.

Where to begin?

I read Jean Webster’s Daddy Long Legs in high school and never related to a fictional character so. Seeing how much I enjoyed the novel, I was gifted a copy of another one of Webster’s books, When Patty Went to College. The book was thin, made up of large, white pages covered in tiny font. It was practically unreadable.

In college, I picked up Daddy Long Legs again, this time out of nostalgia, and fell in love with it and its strong voice all over. Curious, I looked to see what else the author had written, and was dismayed to discover that her other works were only available in books formatted in the same way my copy of When Patty Went to College had been. What went on?

I soon realized why that was so. Since Webster’s books were in the public domain, many people shabbily formatted them and threw them on Amazon’s self-publishing website in the hopes of collecting some change from the quick act.

Much chagrined, I resorted to reading her works through digital means.

But, in the back of my mind, I knew that something had to be done. Jean Webster, queen of wit, deserved to be better preserved than that!

So reformatting her books — along with other’s — into neat, little paperbacks has become a passion project! I’m still a novice at it all, but have been thoroughly enjoying scouring through Webster’s manuscripts and formatting them in ways that seem fit. I hope you enjoy holding onto these books!