If you haven’t visited the Unglue.it site lately, news from GlueJar president, (parent company of Unglue.it) Eric Hellman, that two more e-books have recently become ‘unglued’ and are now freely accessible to all.
The two new ‘unglued’ titles are:
1. So You Want to Be a Librarian garnered support from 81 “ungluers”. It can be downloaded for free via this link. The book was published by Library Juice Press.
2. Dennis Weiser’s erotic sci-fi thriller The Third Awakening broke new ground in a number of ways. Produced and distributed through Smashwords, its successful campaign showed that Unglue.it can also work for self-published books. Digital files for the unglued edition of The Third Awakening were generated by Smashwords’ “Meatgrinder” system by special permission. Weiser’s campaign was also the first to succeed since Unglue.it’s relaunch with Stripe as its payment provider. “Stripe performed flawlessly. It’s great to be back in business!” said Hellman. “Smashwords, as much as any other company, is redefining how the publishing industry works, to the great benefit of authors.”
The Third Awakening was supported by 27 “ungluers”. It can be downloaded for free via this link. Dennis Weiser has 8 other books available through Smashwords.
These titles are the second and third books that Unglue.it has made available.
The first book Unglue.it released with a CC license was Oral Literature in Africa. It became available (with additional content available for the first time) during September 2012.
Unglue.it utilizes crowdfunding (anyone can contribute) to acquire the rights of selected books and then make those books open and accessible to all readers around the world.
In their words:
Unglue.it is a a place for individuals and institutions to join together to give their favorite ebooks to the world. We work with rights holders to decide on fair compensation for releasing a free, legal edition of their already-published books, under Creative Commons licensing. Then everyone pledges toward that sum. When the threshold is reached (and not before), we collect the pledged funds and we pay the rights holders. They issue an unglued digital edition; you’re free to read and share it, with everyone, on the device of your choice, worldwide.
See Also: The Crowdfunding of eBooks: Unglue.it (May 15, 2012)
Includes links to video of an interview and presentation about the service from Eric Hellman and Andromeda Yelton.
See Also: Eric Hellman: “Building a Public Sector for eBooks” (October 7, 2012)
Keynote Presentation by Eric Hellman at LITA Forum 2012 (Video)
About Gary Price
