We Made Some Matches, Lighting Them is Up To You

“Unglue.it launched at noon yesterday. It was a good day, which means nothing awful happened. That's what launching a new website is like. Here are some stats for our first 12 hours: [1] We had 2,151 unique visitors [2] We served 9,042 page views [3] We signed up 86 new ungluers, to total 665 [4] We generated 68 pledges for 5 campaigns totaling $1,098 [5] 543 tweets were sent about unglue.it... The publishing establishment is sneering at us... But when it comes right down to it, Unglue.it hasn't changed a thing. All we've done is to create a new tool. Some self-striking matches. If you want anything to actually change, it's entirely up to you. You have to light the matches. If you want book publishing and book reading to be chained to a pay-per-copy pretend-its-print economic model, forget about Unglue.it and go buy ebooks locked to your kindle and monitored by Amazon. On the other hand, if you want ebooks that can't be taken away from you and don't subject you to surveillance by Amazon or Apple or Adobe, then its time to cast your ballot for a different path. If you want libraries to be able to focus on putting ebooks in front of readers rather than enforcing digital rights management and putting friction into every library transaction, then now is the time to act. If you want to reward creators who made the books that you love instead of feeding a voracious supply chain that manages to spit a few pennies of royalties to an author for every $14.99 out of your pocket, then now is the time to send a message to that publishing establishment. Because there are a lot of smart people in the business of creating books. I've met a lot of them. And at least 5 of them are also courageous. (Don't worry, more are coming!) But they are powerless to change anything without YOU. Whether you're a reader, a librarian, a school teacher or a scholar, it's you who gets to decide. So do it. Unglue.it.”