A new company called Unglue.it is launching with an interesting, crowdfunded ebook model (it’s basically kickstarter for ebooks).

 

The company will try to work with rights holders to determine how much compensation they would need in order to release a free, legal ebook edition of their work.  Once an amount is determined, individual unglue.it users pledge to contribute toward that amount.  If the money is raised, the free, un-DRMed, creative-commons licensed ebook will be released to the public.

 

They announced their first five campaigns today: https://unglue.it/campaigns/ending#2

 

Kickstarter (and a number of other sites) have demonstrated that the crowdfunding model can work very well…be very interesting to see how unglue.it fares, and to see which other authors/right holders will be willing to work with them….I’ll be very interested to see if they can get a “big name” author to sign on (in fact, unless they can do so, I’m not sure how successful they’ll be). 

 

If libraries were to embrace the model, it might be a very affordable way to help create more free, unlimited-license ebooks for patrons.

 

-GW