Copyright laws were introduced in order to promote creation of Intellectual property by protecting it. They were never meant to be a way for a logistics industry (publishers + bookstores) to decide what gets offered to the readers. What we have today is a system which is legally entitled to ask for ransom to release works while giving little to no deciding power to the actual creator.

Moreover, if a book is out of print, nobody can legally force the copyright holder to reprint it; even if there is a huge interest in that particular work. So not only does such a situation go against the intention of the law, it also leaves an author empty handed. It seems reasonable to provide a mechanism to restore publishing rights to the creator should the holder of the delegated copyright fails to operate in an expected manner (aka good faith).

Currently, authors willingly accept these terms since very few bookstores would sell books not distributed by a publisher. It is the ‘distributors’ that set the rules. The quality of the material itself does not seem to play any role whatsoever in the process so audiences can only hope that publishers back quality. Which, of course, is not always the case as a casual stroll through any bookshop proves.

Another point is that readers who are using the internet to look for hard-to-find books are also usually informed enough to know that the author receives $3-4 at most from the $20 list price. Many writers, just like music artists etc., have set up personal websites where they accept donations. Not many readers would pay an arguably needlessly inflated price but a growing percentage of them would gladly pay the author directly.

This is why the internet is so important. First it makes “The Online Book Page” possible, and also allows for better prices and thus wider availability of books and other forms of intellectual property.

To make unglue.it work at scale, we will need a million people to participate, a thousand times what we have now. That’s still a fraction of a percent of the number of book buyers or library patrons. Based on early returns, that’s saying that a million ungluers might put a few million dollars into works like Oral Literature in Africa, maybe only a few hundred thousand into works for teens or horror fantasy novels. It will happen if and only if people who are aware of the possibilities take action.

Thank you for making the effort to pledge! We have a steep road, but the destination is not so far away.