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Unglue.it books - a new way of reading

13 August 2014


I've written before about my dislike of DRM, especially on ebooks (The problem with DRM on ebooks). Another thing that is great is when you can get a book for free, but with the option to reward the author by giving a donation. This is what I've done with a series of books called The Afterlife Series by Mur Lafferty. The current books have already been funded through crowdfunding, but the author is now looking for donations to help support the writing of the next book in the series.

You can download the books, read them and then if you think the author deserves a thank you send them a donation to thank them for their current book and encourage them to write more.

One of the great things about this is that you can read books that you wouldn't normally pick up if you had to pay. In the case of this book it didn't really sound like a book I'd be interested in, but as it didn't cost me anything I thought I'd give it a go. I started reading and really enjoyed it, so read the whole series. I then sent the author a thank you donation through unglue.it.

If I had to pay for the book up front then I don't think I would have ever considered reading it, but now I have I was happy to pay for it.

Read the book yourself and see what you think:
Heaven - The Afterlife Series I by Mur Lafferty

It will be great to see other books follow that model, but there risks to the author that they won't get sufficient donations to make it work their while creating new books. There are however two other ways that books can be unglued, including "Buy to Unglue" where you buy the ebook (still DRM free) and when they raise enough money the book is available for free and "Pledge to Unglue" where if the book gets enough advance pledges then they make the book available to all for free. I've already pledged against some of the unglued books from when unglue.it first launched. It's well worth taking a look at what campaigns are running or if there are any any existing unglued books that take your fancy.