Where the books come from

Where the books come from

Every book in PlotScroll is out of copyright where you are reading it.

Most of the texts come from Project Gutenberg, the volunteer library that has been putting public-domain books online since 1971, and a few from Project Gutenberg Australia. We clean each text, keep the author's italics, and cut it into sessions of about six minutes, each ending at a real stopping point. Nothing is abridged.

The Metamorphosis, The Trial and The Castle by Franz Kafka, and The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux, are new translations made for PlotScroll from the original German and French. These translations, our covers and artwork, and the way the books are divided into sessions are © 2026 PlotScroll. All rights reserved.

Our rule

We only show a book in a country where both its author and the translator of the version we use are out of copyright there. In the UK and EU that generally means they died more than seventy years ago; the United States has different rules, so a few books are shown in the UK but not in the US. Our server checks which country a request comes from and leaves out anything that isn't clear there.

Project Gutenberg's name and trademark are not used for the texts in PlotScroll, and Project Gutenberg does not endorse us.

Rights-holders

If you believe a work in PlotScroll is still in copyright in a particular country, or that we've made a mistake, please email rights@plotscroll.app with the title, the country, and why. We will look into it promptly and, while we do, remove the book from that country if there's a real doubt.