Welcome to Auro e-Books!
Auro e-Books is a Digital Bookstore/Library dedicated to e-books in the field of spirituality and well-being. The home of Auro e-Books is Auroville – an international township in South India, built with the goal of realizing human unity in diversity.
The aim of Auro e-Books is to produce e-books on spirituality and well-being, promote authors in these fields and disseminate their works in digital formats both through its own e-book online website and through the network of other digital online bookstores such as Amazon, iBooks, Barnes & Noble and Kobo.
Our Vision
The world today is redefining all fields of human activities. One of the most important is the printed word, which is now becoming the digital word: first on personal computers, and more recently on electronic devices such as tablets, book readers, and smartphones. Digital files on these devices are quickly replacing ordinary books. Digital devices as reading tools are now reaching a kind of perfection with recent state-of-the-art improvements in their technical functions, speed and conveniently portable forms.
Contemporary digital devices, such as book readers (Kindle), tablets (iPad), and smartphones provide effective accessibility for reading and studying. With their small size and light weight, they can be carried anywhere and the availability of inbuilt or online dictionaries in many languages makes it easy to look up word definitions. A huge number of books can be stored on a small digital chip and instantly accessed. Thanks to these new technical developments, e-books can be used to facilitate spiritual practice and research. Spiritual seekers may not be well-informed about this new technology, and there are, as yet, relatively few existing e-books in the field of spirituality.
Our Mission
Evolving book markets dictate the necessity to develop a digital area of book publishing, representing e-books of different digital formats. In recent years, we see significant developments in this sector as well as the increase of overall book sales and readers with digital devices throughout the world. However, mainstream publishers tend to disregard books on spirituality, due to relatively less interest and less earnings from their sales.
The aim of “Auro e-Books” is to create an international community and multilingual e-Bookstore/Library website which will aggregate e-books on spirituality and well-being, promote authors in these fields, and disseminate their works in digital formats both through its own e-book store and through the network of other digital bookstores such as Amazon, iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Kobo and others.
e-Books Digital Formats
- epub – which covers iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Google Books and Kobo eBook Stores
- mobi – the current format of Amazon.com
- pdf – which appeals to the general digital reader on multiple digital platforms
Book Domains
Free e-Library (Public Domain)
- Books with expired copyright (such as the writings of Sri Aurobindo and other spiritual writers)
- Books offered for free distribution by authors and copyright holders
Book Store (Copyright Domain)
- Sri Aurobindo Ashram publications (various works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother)
- Auroville authors and publishers
- Aditi Publications (Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s works in Russian)
- Lotus Press (Books on Well-Being and Spirituality: Integral Yoga, Reiki and Ayurveda)
- DIPTI Publications (Books of M.P. Pandit and T.V. Kapali Sastri)
- Mira Aditi Publications (Books by Satprem)
- Stichting Aurofonds (Books by Georges van Vrekhem)
- Sri Aurobindo Society publications
- Other authors and publishers on related subjects as well as book translations in other languages
We invite
People interested in spirituality to:
- discover authors and their books
- download and read books from the Open Library
- visit the Book Store and purchase books
- visit the Readers Cafe and participating in ongoing discussions
- like our page on Facebook and Google+
- share links of books and pages on our website with friends
- support our project by making a donation
Authors and publishers to consider us for the following services:
- e-book production
- book scanning and OCR
- publishing book links from outside websites
- uploading books to our Open Library
- selling books in our Book Store
- uploading books on e-Book stores (Amazon, iBooks, etc.)
Volunteers interested in learning opportunities to contribute by:
- learning different kinds of software for e-book production
- proofreading and text formatting; Sanskrit typing
- writing book reviews and website articles
- social networking, project promotion and establishing new connections
- administrative: website content administration, overall project supervision, legal registration and accreditation of Auro e-Books
- fundraising: creating a donations and payment gateway, developing financial strategies, opening and maintaining bank accounts and taxation, developing public relations
- website hosting and platform development (WordPress fans and developers)
- application development for mobile platforms (Android, iOS, and Windows)
- graphical design for website and books
- international development: translation of the project into your own language and its presentation in your country
- public events (educational webinars and seminars, book and author promotion)