A Crowdfunded Approach To Setting E-Books Free | paidContent

“What do To Kill A Mockingbird, A Wrinkle in Time and Little House on the Prairie series have in common, besides being beloved? None of them are available legally as e-books... The newly launched Unglue.it, now in alpha, is a place for individuals and institutions to join together to liberate specific e-books and other types of digital content... Here’s how the site will work when it is fully up and running: A book’s digital rights holder sets the price for which he or she is willing to make a book as a Creative Commons, DRM-free e-book... Then Unglue.it begins a Kickstarter-like crowdfunding campaign to raise money to set the book ‘free.’ Users make pledges that are pre-authorized using PayPal. Once the money is raised—the practical limit of a campaign is about six months, says Hellman—the book is released and Unglue.it takes a commission. The company behind the site is called Gluejar. It is led by Eric Hellman, who writes about the intersection of technology, libraries and e-books and previously worked at the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC)...”