Unstuck: Chatting with Eric Hellman of book rights crowd-sourcing site Unglue.it about ebooks, the creative commons, passionate authors and life after Amazon - By Brian Howard : Page 1 of 2 : Book Business

"A few weeks ago, crowdfunding platform Unglue.it announced the release of its first ebook: 'Oral Literature in Africa' via Cambridge's Open Book Publishers. While the scholarly tome by Ruth H. Finnegan  likely didn’t set the publishing world ablaze upon its initial publication in 1970, and its ebook release in 2012 didn’t unseat any bestsellers, its return to 'print' after more than a decade is cause for celebration. More good books in the public domain is always a good thing. This is the raison d’etre of Unglue.it, a company that seeks to reward rights holders who make their works available as ebooks under creative commons licenses and without DRM. The brainchild of entrepreneur and library technology vet Eric Hellman (he of Go To Hellman blog renown), Unglue.it’s aim is to increase the number of good, free ebooks available to the public. After leaving library technology nonprofit OCLC in 2009, Hellman put his thinking cap on about the big issues facing the library world. 'It seemed like the transition form print to digital was finally coming through in the book world,' says Hellman on the phone from his home in Montclair, N.J. 'There was a lot of concern about how libraries would work when patrons wanted books on their ebook readers.' Hellman realized that the business models for ebooks and libraries was a challenge, particularly one of available content. 'What I decided was important was to find a new way for books to enter the public commons,' says Hellman. 'Because copyrights last so long, things aren’t coming into the public domain in a timely way.' Hellman looked to the success of crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter for inspiration. 'I thought that one possible way for books to enter the public commons was for people who care about them, people who want to share those books, to pay the rights-holder' to make them available through a creative commons license. Unglue.it launched in May with five campaigns. One of those, Finnegan’s 'Oral Literature in Africa,' took off and was published on Sept. 12..."