1. Why?
We love books. We want to keep
on publishing good books. Weird books. Interesting books. We are curious
about the future. If everyone downloads books straight to the Kindlenub
in their head, we might be in trouble. But if there are still people
who like to read books on paper, maybe some of them will read some
of these downloads and then decide they would like the actual books.
Therefore we're releasing some of our books
also releasing it as a free download
in various completely open formats with no Digital Rights Management
(DRM).
2. Creative What?
We're interested in spreading
the word about Creative Commons.
Copyright is a good thing and artists deserve to be paid whatever
society is willing to pay for their work. But, do artists need to
retain the rights to their work for 70 years after their death? Uh,
no.
3. Can't I buy the book?
Yes, we certainly encourage readers
to buy the book -- we're a tiny
independent press. We receive no grants, we're not a nonprofit: sales
are good!
4. Will giving this book
away kill sales?
We don't think so.
50,000+ people have downloaded
Kelly Link's Stranger Things
Happen since we made it available under Creative Commons.
In the meantime the book has gone into its sixth printing, has been
translated into
more than half-a-dozen langauges, is being taught in many schools,
and is still being passed hand to hand to new readers.
Our books soon be available in
hundreds of libraries, on books.google.com
and Amazon.com's Search Inside program, in a few used bookshops, on
BookCrossing,
Scribd, Teleread, and, again, in hundreds of libraries.
In other words: as with any book,
if you want to read it for free, you can. We've just made it easier
for this book to reach the 6 billion readers out there!
4. Questions
Got a question? Email us and hopefully
we'll post an answer. We are a tiny press, though,
so please don't get jumpy if we don't answer immediately. We're busy
working on our next books, freelancing, or
performing quality control on chocolate.
More thanks:
-
Much of the
impetus, information and inspiration for using the Creative Commons
license came from author, innovator, and groundbreaker Cory Doctorow.
(Thanks, Cory!)
-
Thanks
also to our webhost Utopian.Net
(run by artists for artists) for help with this project (and being
great hosts!).
Donate?
A number of readers pointed us toward
Jim Kelly's great page of Free
Audiobooks and suggested we add a donation button.
Please note: this is not
something you have to do (especially if you own the book!). The electronic
editions above are Free -- and one of hopefully many Creative
Commons-Licensed Free Downloads we'll release (check for updates).
You can buy the book at
the following spots: Paypal | mail
order | Our local bookshop
| Powells
| Direct: 800-729-6423. If you donate below, we'll send you a thank
you email but nothing else (well, unless you go wild!). We're an indie
press, hoping to survive, bent on publishing the best books we can find
and in no way a 501(c)3 or whatever kind of non profit. We want to make
a living publishing good books and pay authors and artists decent money
along the way. We are 'for profit' even if that's more of a conceptual
aim than an actuality as yet.
So thanks for reading. It's a noisy
world and we appreciate the time you took getting here. Enjoy the book,
spread it far and wide, come back sometime, and if you really want to,
go ahead and donate: