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ZWIBook Flash Drive (Numbered, Signed)
$100.00
69,020 books. 128 GB flash drive. Bespoke reader software. Can export mobile files. Limited edition, numbered and signed. An ideal Christmas present! (Click through to read STYLE UPDATE NOTE.)
10 in stock (can be backordered)
Description
- 69,020 books. One 128 GB flash drive.
- Offline. Your own copy. The books and software are preloaded on, and run from, the drive itself. This means they are your own local copies of all those books.
- Limited edition. Numbered, signed, and hand-made. See STYLE UPDATE NOTE below! Up to about #270 as of January 1, 2025. (This version is unsigned, and cheaper.)
- So many classics. All the public domain Project Gutenberg books, as of June 2024.
- High-quality bespoke software. Full-featured reader; bookmarks; title/author search; personal bookshelf; category search.
- Research tools. Text search; highlighting; note-taking; export highlighted text; export notes; and (if online) select text to look up translation, dictionary, and encyclopedias, and to make AI queries.
- Export tools. Export EPUB (new in version 1.1) without an internet connection; lets you read the books on mobile. Also export PDF and ZIP (ZWI) format, which includes HTML and TXT.
- STYLE UPDATE NOTE: As of December 4, we are sold out of the fancier flashing style of USB drive. If you order this item, it will appear all yellow (with a simpler flashing LED visible underneath the sticker). In our opinion, the quality of these drives is definitely not worse.
We are now shipping this style. - An ideal gift! Perfect for scholars, homeschoolers, book-lovers, and preppers.
“That such a thing is possible — a library worthy of a great university on a stick — is astonishing. That any reader who knows about it would fail to get one is more astonishing. We should be sending a blizzard of these into space and seeding our galaxy with them.” –Walter Kirn, author of Blood Will Out
Technical info
- Dual 128GB drive, with both USB-A and USB-C ends.
- Windows, Mac, and Linux (developed on Linux).
- Not a mobile app, but you can easily export in EPUB and PDF formats (no internet connection required).
- Data (bookshelf, highlights, and notes) saved locally in JSON format, on your computer. Never remotely.
- Software extensively tested. Each drive individually tested.
- Book files are in ZWI format, which is a ZIP file of the relevant files used by ZWIBook, including metadata and a digital signature.
This limited edition is a high-quality copy, finished with a hand-made sticker on the back, and numbered and hand-signed by the software’s author, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger. They also light up when in use. The KSF continues to keep track of who was sold which number. We are up to #270 as of January 1, 2025.
We will continue to supply these drives as long as there is reasonably significant demand. We do have a reliable local supplier for blank flash drives, so we won’t run out.
Larger orders (10+), as for universities and schools, may be available at a discount but with a longer lead time. Please inquire before ordering.
More info
- Blog post about ZWIBook
- 3 minute video
- 23 minute video (from v1.0–most features and look and feel are the same)
Order and delivery notes
Shipping time: Please allow up to two weeks for U.S. delivery, longer for international. You might receive yours sooner. Look for the PirateShip shipping label email.
Ohio orders will have to pay sales tax as the KSF is located in Ohio.
Order communication: If you do make an order and receive no acknowledgment, please check your “spam” folder. If you have any difficulties, contact [email protected].
INTERNATIONAL ORDERS:Â If the postage for your country does not come up when you input your country, please get in touch and we’ll put the price for your country in the system. International postage is not $50;Â that is only the default.
Additional information
| Weight | 0.023 kg |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 23 × 15 × 1 cm |
Greg Newby –
Dr. Newby is Director and CEO of Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, and owner of #26. —ed.
I worked with Larry to help make Project Gutenberg contents available for the ZWIBook flash drive, and I’m very pleased with the outcome. One of the goals of Project Gutenberg is for individuals to have access to all literature and all the world’s knowledge. One of the ways of helping that happen is for people to have their own library – in their pockets, on their computers and mobile devices – and be able to share it. The ZWIBook Flash Drive does this: You get a massive personal library that you can read, annotate, and share. The collection is nicely done, with a helpful interface. The software gives you capabilities to search and use the library.
Jill Mayfield (verified owner) –
Ms. Mayfield is owner of #46. —ed.
My ZWIBook arrived well-packaged with a single printed page of instructions. I plugged it into my Mac laptop and opened the Finder to see its contents. After locating the correct ZWIBook app for my non-arm64 Mac processor, I dragged it into my Applications folder and started it up.
It opened very quickly to a search box that allowed me to search for books by Title, Author or both. Since the drive contains older books, I typed Shakespeare and a list of results rapidly was returned. In the upper right of the ZWIBook app are several buttons: Sort, Browse and Bookshelf. The Sort resorts the search results by your choice of Author, Title, or Date. The Browse shows a List of Categories such as History, Philosophy, Law etc. Lastly the Bookshelf shows books you have Viewed and Saved.
As a book lover, the ZWIBook is a real delight. In a matter of moments, I had accessed books including Shakespeare, Sherlock Holmes, Mark Twain, Gibbons’ Fall of the Roman Empire, Homer’s Iliad, and Voltaire’s Candide. The drive contains over 69,000 books.
The app gives you the ability to make highlights and take notes inside the books very much as you can in the Kindle and other book readers. For now, I am saving the markups back on to the thumb drive; however, I will probably buy an external drive to copy the book files and use for saving my marked-up books.
The books have hyperlinked table of contents to help you quickly navigate them. You can also use the app to quickly see all your notes, highlights, and bookmarks in the book.
I highly recommend the ZWIBook for all who love books, reading and research. For the price it is an amazing bargain.
Karl Waldman –
Mr. Waldman is owner of #32. —ed.
Tsundoku champion achieves digital enlightenment! ZWIBook: 69,000 new ways to read. Finally, my virtual ‘to-read’ pile can tower far more impressively as my physical one. Bonus: No more dust allergies from my neglected classics!”
S.Chekanov –
Dr. Chekanov is owner of #13. —ed.
It’s fantastic to have the ZWIBook USB plugged into my computer. The search is incredibly fast, and I can carry it with me to places without stable internet access. I’m truly impressed with the quality of this work. I highly recommend it, especially if you travel frequently and lack internet access on planes.
John Van Oudenaren (verified owner) –
Mr. Van Oudenaren is owner of #61. —ed.
This is an excellent product. I congratulate Larry and the KSF team on its creation and offer thanks for Project Gutenberg for their generosity. I like especially the ability to browse by Library of Congress subject heading (as someone who used to have a stack pass at LC, it’s a bit like walking the decks in the old days, just electronically). Under J class (Political Science), for example, the first items you see are James D. Richardson’s multi-volume compilation of the messages and papers of the presidents. Very useful. I also support the broader philosophical aims the project. Nobody knows what is going to happen in the future with AI, cloud storage, and Internet censorship, so having these books out there, in many hands and not connected to the web, is a great insurance policy. Congratulations to all involved!
Paul Ausick –
The ZWIBook app works as expected on my Windows laptop. The flash drive is very quick, the indexing and linking is thorough, and overall the product is definitely worth the money. For those of us who might want to read a book on a tablet or phone, individual files can be exported to PDF format. I use the Kindle app on an iPad and it’s simple to convert the PDF to a Kindle file. My hard copy of Dostoevsky’s “Brothers Karamazov” disappeared years ago. But now it’s safely stored on the ZWIBook drive and my Kindle library—first-rate job.
rish (verified owner) –
Can’t get anything better for the price! I like being able to read offline and the contents not being subject to any future changes. I was pleasantly surprised that the drive had both USB A and USB C 🙂
Leslie Sanford (verified owner) –
I was exicted to recive my copy of the ZWIBook app. Reading about the project conjured up images of walking through a vast library, occassionally stopping to randomly pick a book off of the shelve, captively reading for awhile, before moving on to explore the library further.
I wasn’t disappointed. The app is cleanly put together, making browsing through this virtual library so easy and enjoyable. But if you have something specific in mind, the search function works very well, too.
I’m very grateful for the project and look forward to many years of enjoyment and use.
Alex Peek –
Very cool product. The ZWIBook interface is smooth and the functionality is useful (bookshelf of saved books, highlighting, notes). It’s amazing to have so many books and works of literature all saved on single drive. I’m glad to be contributing to the preservation of human literature and knowledge.
Linda Achor Young (verified owner) –
Very easy to use, feels safer in the bunker now.
Patrick (verified owner) –
More books than I could ever read. All the books Western Civilization needs. A great tool to have on hand. It is intuitive, so it works and should continue to work.
Tim Chambers aka tbc0 aka Sparky (verified owner) –
Larry signed #39 for me.
TIL “tsundoku.” That’s the word for this library-on-a-stick, alright. No praise I could add today would move the needle farther than it is already: 5 of 5 stars! Stop reading this review and read all the others if you aren’t convinced!
Disclosure: I’ve been with the encyclosphere project from the beginning and still sit on the board as a volunteer. As the project’s treasurer, I am biased, and yet I still have to say that spending $100 for this swag is a superb way to support the project. All of Larry’s fundraising ideas have been good. This is his latest good idea.
Tim Francisco –
Happy to support Larry’s work. The interface is easy to use and was able to find books on obscure subjects as well as classic literature. It is crazy to imagine how large this library would be like in physical form and it’s all contained on a small USB stick.
Chuck Miller (verified owner) –
I’ve just received my ZWIBook Flash Drive. I’m using it on a Windows platform, and I’ve found it working exactly as the documentation details. So glad to support this important work. Now, looking for the time to read 69,000+ books!
Manon –
I could not be happier with this key!
I wished for that product before it was made and I wanted one before it was available.
I have had the pleasure of receiving key #9 from Larry and the KSF team, and I even ordered another one to offer as part of a wedding gift to ensure my grandkids if I am ever granted any will have access to a lot of the world’s knowledge. I am already ”asking nicely” for another version of this containing every free encyclopedia, if this ever happens, I will be again in the first few buyers…
I have worked closely with written content, e-communication, and e-marketing for well over 15 years; and in IT for much longer. Censorship has crept on us at a fast speed in the last few years and quite frankly, it is accelerating at an alarming pace. The more time goes, the less original content is available, the more we find articles that have been redacted, rewritten, ”fact-checked” in many bogus ways, removed from search engine results, and everything else under the sun. Having a copy on a key (and a copy on my computer, which is easy to do..) ensures that THIS content will never change.
I could not possibly be more thankful for the key and its content.
Get yourself one of those, if not for you, for the kids and grandkids.
Dorian Sherman –
This is both an excellent and important product. Not since 2012 has the Project Gutenberg library been distributed on media in this way, and at that time it was 10,000 titles on a DVD.
I want to share three things with you:
– Project Gutenberg’s founder Michael S. Hart was a true visionary and tech pioneer. Michael, who died in 2012, created the ebook (or etext as it was then called) all the way back in 1971 when he typed the Declaration of Independence into a Xerox Sigma V. You can find his writings in the ZWIBook (which he would have loved had he lived to see it), and he often talked about bridging the gap between the “Information Rich” and “Information Poor”.
– I am vision impaired and without ebooks and screens I can magnify I’d scarcely be able to read books at all.
– The role I unwittingly played in the ZWIBook’s life has now become a highlight of mine.
Thank you, Larry
Alyze Sam –
This is excellent! I love mine, anything that Larry Sanger does is absolutely gold. This is truly sustainable education at its finest and as we approach an ai age, truth is desperately needed.
This is worth 100s of thousands of dollars. I’m so grateful
Vince (verified owner) –
This is an excellent collection in a very convenient package. The software is snappy and easy to use and I’m happy to support the work behind it.
#262