Crowdfunding for opening ebooks - unglue.it

[Ronja]

Would you want to be able to say: "I helped give The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" as a free, no strings attached gift to the whole world"?

You see, THHGTTG just happens to be highest on the wishlist of all current users of unglue.it. The number of votes is not yet too impressive - my vote brought it to a staggering 36 ("A Brief History of Time" is second, with 30 votes).


So what's it all about?

This thing seems to have begun about a year ago. If you just want to see how it works (alpha version, though I noticed no problems), go here and register: https://unglue.it/


The earliest post about this that I could find was this, in April 2011:

... If the producers of ebooks had some way of covering their fixed costs (with profit to make it worth their while), ebooks could work just like free radio. Three million people contributing a dime would do quite nicely. 30,000 contributing $10 would work, too.

... this business model is what I've begun working on as Gluejar, Inc.. The Internet presents an incredible capability for assembling audiences around a common purpose. The business will bring together people to pay for the fixed costs of producing ebooks, reward the best producers with profits, and to make these ebooks public, free to read, free to copy, to everyone, everywhere in the world, using Creative Commons Licensing. ...

More here: http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2011/ ... books.html


This is the post about unglue.it going live this January, only three months ago:

A preview version of "unglue.it", the crowd-funding site for creative commons ebooks that I've been working on for more than a year, opened last week. Some key features are missing (pledging, campaigns) but the site lets you make a list of books you would support for "ungluing". ...

More here: http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2012/ ... ms-go.html


I'm existed: even if this project fails for one reason or another, this is an idea that is long overdue IMO and I am motivated to register and put books on my wishlist, just to show that I think this is way cool.

[PsychoSerenity]

Excellent, another step in the right direction, a business model for the internet age.

[apophenia]

Except it doesn't scale. A small movement can thrive on word of mouth. A larger movement requires promotion, which costs money, or time. And the larger the movement beyond a certain modest amount, the higher the cost per head for promotion, until promotion costs eclipse the economies of scale effect.

On top of that, there are nasty freeloader effects. One of the most critical being that, the more people involved, the less incentive for an individual to participate, letting someone else take up the slack.

[Rum]

Well, except it does seem to work, however inconsistently. There are a number of impressive examples, from software to films - here: http://crowdfunding.pbworks.com/w/page/ ... owdfunding

I love this idea. It changes the corporate or committee approach to projects of a creative nature and makes them potentially much more democratic.

[apophenia]

Well, except it does seem to work, however inconsistently. There are a number of impressive examples, from software to films - here: http://crowdfunding.pbworks.com/w/page/ ... owdfunding

I love this idea. It changes the corporate or committee approach to projects of a creative nature and makes them potentially much more democratic.

And the first example there that I can find numbers for it is noted "During the 3 years the website was online, about 1000 people registered as angels. The target of 50.000 is unlikely to be reached."

Looking at a handful of the examples mentioned at Wikipedia's article, generating funds necessary for even a modest film production budget is uncommon, with one project noting that, "The film’s crew worked at very low wages but also received crowd-funding 'shares'." And for many, the per capita contribution is higher than the cost of a similar commercial product. That's not crowdfunding, that's charity.

Pointing to a list of projects sans numbers on targets and relative success isn't evidence that it "seem to work," it isn't proof of anything. it's your evidence, pick a random sampling and show us the numbers. (And I'm being generous in not requiring it to be truly representative sampling — simply getting on that list probably weeds out the other 99% of crowdfunding projects which go nowhere and fold.)

[Ronja]

Not every crowdfunding project can be the newest Diaspora, that of course is clear. However, participating in projects like this, especially at the stage when they are only asking for interest, is one way to show that there really is interest for this business model.

I have dreamed of crowdfunding movies, so that they would not disappear from circulation, years before I ever heard the word "crowdfunding" - and I still do. There is so much quirky and weird and wonderful stuff that I worry about. A world without, for example, "The Great Dictator", "Thelma and Louise", "Rosencrantz and Guildersten Are Dead", "Fried Green Tomatoes", "Forgotten Silver" or even "Plan Nine from Outer Space" would be a poorer world IMO. If there was a way to add my euros to a common pile to make sure that these (and a hundred others that I love) survive, I would love to do it.

When it comes to books - how many authors are there who could maybe consider themselves already comfortable enough financially? Dawkins for example - could he not accept (or persuade his publisher to accept) a lump sum so that a book of his (or more - maybe even all of them?) would become every human being's property forever? It's one way to become immortal, and IMO one of the better ways...