{"id":4448,"date":"2012-06-21T18:14:50","date_gmt":"2012-06-21T18:14:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/?p=4448"},"modified":"2012-06-21T18:14:50","modified_gmt":"2012-06-21T18:14:50","slug":"unglue-its-innovative-model-hopes-to-resolve-sticky-situation-of-e-book-access","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/2012\/06\/21\/unglue-its-innovative-model-hopes-to-resolve-sticky-situation-of-e-book-access\/","title":{"rendered":"Unglue.it&#8217;s innovative model hopes to resolve sticky situation of e-book access"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After years of hovering beyond the budget of most university libraries and scholars, Ruth Finnegan&#8217;s out-of-print text, <em>Oral Literature in Africa<\/em>, will soon be available for download as a free and legal e-book\u2014thanks to a new startup in the library universe. This platform, <a href=\"https:\/\/unglue.it\/\">Unglue.it<\/a>, works by setting up <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Crowd_funding\">crowdfunded<\/a> campaigns to release e-books of already-published works under <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/\">Creative Commons<\/a> licensing. The <a href=\"https:\/\/unglue.it\/work\/81724\/\">campaign<\/a> to unglue Finnegan\u2019s book has already exceeded its original goal of $7,500 dollars, the amount needed to release an electronic edition of the text. The success of this inaugural campaign has demonstrated how this self-proclaimed &#8220;for-profit company with a public-spirited mission&#8221; may just revolutionize the way readers worldwide access e-books.<\/p>\n<p>Unglue.it\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/unglue.it\/faq\/\">model<\/a> is a novel approach to e-book publishing and distribution. The startup first enters into agreements with rights holders to set a fair price for releasing the work as an e-book, and then hosts crowdfunding campaigns on its website to reach that agreed upon amount. For the <em>Oral Literature in Africa <\/em>campaign, participants could pledge various levels of donations: whereas a single dollar would deliver the e-book to your inbox, a pledge of $200 would upgrade you to benefactor status, guarantee you a paperback copy of the text, and provide you with a discount on future purchases from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.openbookpublishers.com\/\">Open Book Publishers<\/a>. Once the donation goal is reached, the &#8220;unglued&#8221; e-book is released to the world and its rights holders\u2014along with Unglue.it\u2014are compensated.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike Amazon&#8217;s Kindle lending library or the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedigitalshift.com\/2012\/06\/ebooks\/top-libraries-in-u-s-and-canada-issue-statement-demanding-better-ebook-services\/\">often messy system<\/a> of e-book borrowing in public libraries, Unglue.it streamlines the process of obtaining rights to and subsequent compensation for texts in a single online platform. It places the power of e-book access in the hands of readers, rather than a web of publishers, librarians, authors, and similar stakeholders. The Unglue.it model is one that, with the initial success of the <em>Oral Literature in Africa<\/em> campaign, may radically democratize texts for readers around the world, while compensating authors for their creative efforts.<\/p>\n<p>To learn more about Unglue.it and help support its ongoing campaigns, visit <a href=\"https:\/\/unglue.it\/landing\/\">https:\/\/unglue.it\/landing\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new startup in the library universe is &#8220;ungluing&#8221; already-published works and turning them into free, legal e-books, one campaign at a time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4630,"featured_media":4473,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[923,2236],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-featured"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/files\/2012\/06\/post_6-21.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4630"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4448"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4476,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4448\/revisions\/4476"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}