If you subscribe to our newsletter, you already know that Berlin-based academic publisher De Gruyter is offering 100 books for potential ungluing.

There aren’t campaigns yet — that’s up to you! We’ll run campaigns for whichever books have the most support. You can tell us which books you support by adding them to your wishlist. (And use the sharing options to get your friends to support your favorite books, too.)

You can see all the De Gruyter books Unglue.it knows about (both these, and any others that ungluers have wishlisted or searched for in the past) at Unglue.it. But for your convenience, we’re also listing the hundred (technically, 104) books here, with links to their Unglue.it work pages.

We feel great about all the support we’ve gotten from the library community.  It was fun meeting, and catching up with, so many librarians at our table in the exhibit hall at the American Library Association Midwinter conference in Seattle.  (And, let’s be honest, it was also great that some of you brought me snacks.  Thanks!)

Some librarians have asked us what they can do (beyond supporting our active campaigns, of course) to advance the mission.  Now we have a list!  There are a lot of things libraries are uniquely positioned to do: for instance, adding unglued ebooks to their collections, educating the public on the challenges of ebook licensing and the benefits of Creative Commons licensing, and making sure unglued ebooks get properly cataloged.  For the whole list of ways you can help, check out the Unglue.it ♥ libraries page.

(Now if only I could get another one of those maple syrup crepes…)

The most common questions I get when I talk about Unglue.it are about the books. What sort of books will work in the Unglue.it model? Why have you picked the books you have? In response, I emphasize the Unglue.it is not a publisher, nor is it a gatekeeper. Publishers and authors are the ones who decide which books to offer, and it’s the supporter community that decides which books get unglued.

We’ve started concentrating on some specific directions based on the response we’re getting from authors and publishers.

One group that has been interested in the model is authors who’ve turned to self-publishing. And to make it easier for self-publishers to participate with Unglue.it, I’ve been talking with Mark Coker, President of Smashwords and a true advocate for authors. He’s letting Smashwords authors use the ebook-making machinery at Smashwords to produce books for ungluing. If you been paying close attention, you may have noticed that unglued book #2 was a Smashwords-produced title.

If you’re a Smashwords author and your book meets their standards for “premium catalog” inclusion, just sign a Platform Services Agreement with us and you’re good to go.   For the fine print, check out our FAQ for Smashwords authors.  http://unglue.it/about/smashwords/

(I loved hearing Mark on NPR the other day, check it out!)

Another group that I expect to begin testing the waters with significant numbers of books is academic publishers. They are struggling to find the sustainable models for open-access books that researchers are increasingly demanding. Last week I traveled to Berlin to speak at the Academic Publishing in Europe conference, and had some great meetings with some brand-name publishers. I’m hopeful that one or two of them will join Open Book Publishers  (unglued book #1) as participants in Unglue.it.

It’s not all book rights, author profiles, payment processors, web development, and campaign stats around here. Even in a decentralized company with no face-to-face office, one has to have some hijinks and shenanigans. Here’s ours.

The Library 2.0 Ideas twitter feed (@library2) randomly generates modern (trendy? insane?) ideas for library services every half hour. A few days ago, it suggested this:

Write a song about LibraryThing for Libraries…FTW!!!

— Library 2.0 Ideas (@library2) January 13, 2013

So. As one must:

We sent that along to LibraryThing‘s Tim Spalding, who clearly has more sound-mixing skills and possibly a lot more he’s procrastinating on, because that resulted in this:

This…demands a response. Suggestions welcome.

Wow, what a year!

59,932 unique visitors
2,678 registered users
12,462 dollars pledged
3 unglued books

If you took part in unglue.it in 2012, by registering, by pledging, by helping to spread the word, by reporting bugs, or by offering your works for ungluing, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. It is a great honor to serve as your instrument of change in the world of reading and creating books, even if just a tiny bit.

Here’s what happened:

We unveiled a preview of the website in January. We were immediately reminded of the importance of optimizing slow database queries.

We got a lot of good response, but we waited and waited for PayPal to approve our business. It was very frustrating for us, but in retrospect, the delay allowed us to get the website to a good place.

We switched to Amazon Payments, and at long last, on May 17, we launched. Of the 5 campaigns we were running, one of them really took off. The campaign for Oral Literature in Africa succeeded one month later with 259 pledges totaling a bit more than $7,500.

The remaining campaigns suffered a bit from summer doldrums, but the rug really pulled out from under us when Amazon told us we couldn’t do crowd-funding any more. In the ensuing uproar, we gained over 800 registered users, even while we were closed for business! So there’s always a silver lining.

In September, we helped to release the unglued edition of Oral Literature in Africa.

On October 17, we relaunched with Stripe as our payments provider. We like Stripe a lot, and we hope you do, too.

December saw two campaigns succeed. The unglued edition of The Third Awakening is ready to read, for free. So You Want to be a Librarian will be available soon. Next up is National Book Award winner Love Like Gumbo.

The three books could not be more different from each other. Oral Literature in Africa is an academic classic. The Third Awakening was self-published through Smashwords. And So You Want to be a Librarian is book for prospective library school students from an independent publisher. We don’t know yet what genres of books will best fit the unglue.it model. Trying is really the only way to find out.

I am frequently reminded of the scene in Return of the King where Pippin asks Gandalf if there is still any hope for Frodo and Sam. “There never was much hope. Just a fool’s hope” says Gandalf.

It turns out that what we’re trying to do together with your help is really really hard. When we talk to people our model, we find that our task is to create new understandings of what books can be. We have to help people and institutions open themselves to the new possibilities. This sort of change is not easy.

Much change will come to pass in the coming year. Some of that change will be of our own devising, but more of it will come from you, and from people who have not yet heard of unglue.it.

Things are now set in motion that cannot be undone.