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Weekly News Digest
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August 13, 2012 — In addition to this week's NewsBreaks article and the monthly NewsLink Spotlight, Information Today, Inc. (ITI) offers Weekly News Digests that feature recent product news and company announcements. Watch for additional coverage to appear in the next print issue of Information Today.
CLICK HERE to view more Weekly News Digest items.
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Amazon Forces Unglue.it to Suspend Crowdfunding for Ebooks
“Amazon Payments has informed us that they will no longer process pledge payments for Unglue.it, forcing us to suspend all active ungluing campaigns,” announced Eric Hellman, president of Gluejar, Inc., the company behind crowdfunding site Unglue.it. The Unglue.it website launched on May 17, 2012, with the goal of “giving ebooks to the world.” It has unglued one title so far.Unglue.it allows rightsholders of already published books to present “ungluing campaigns.” Site members can then pledge toward making the book available as Creative Commons licensed ebooks. If the campaign meets its goal, the ebook becomes freely available to everyone. Unglue.it’s first success was to raise $7,578 to unglue Ruth Finnegan's 1970 classic, Oral Literature in Africa. That book is unaffected by the suspension and will soon be available for download.
Amazon is requiring Unglue.it to void all pending pledges. The Unglue.it team is already hard at work to implement a new payment method for Unglue.it, which will be announced as soon as it’s available. Until then, the best way to express support for Unglue.it is to register on the site, urge friends to do the same, and let the world know which books should be unglued by making a wishlist.
Eric Hellman added, “We’re very disappointed that this has happened. We’ll relaunch very soon and unglue many many books. Maybe some day billions of people will read unglued books and recall with amazement the span of years when Amazon dominated the world of ebooks.” Source: Gluejar, Inc.
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Brandi Scardilli
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