UK's Unbound Lets A-listers, Aspirants Pitch for Cash to Publish

[Sandy Thatcher <sandy.thatcher@alumni.princeton.edu>]

At last year's Charleston Conference I gave a talk titled "Back 
to the Future" in which I promoted the idea of crowdsource 
financing as one way toward moving scholarly book publishing 
toward an open-access model. The paper I later published in 
Against the Grain (Feb. 2011) is available here: 
http://www.psupress.org/news/SandyThatchersWritings.html

I'm delighted to see that this idea is beginning to be put into 
practice, albeit not specifically in scholarly publishing.

Sandy Thatcher

>Publishing Perspectives
>International publishing news and opinion daily
>at http://publishingperspectives.com/
>
>09/02/2011
>
>-------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Feature Story / Crowdsourcing:
>
>Live Nude Authors: UK's Unbound Lets A-listers, Aspirants Pitch 
>for Cash to Publish 
>http://publishingperspectives.com/2011/09/uk-unbound-author-aspirants-pitch-to-publish/
>
>Can crowdsourced funding for books transform publishing as we 
>know it? John Mitchinson, co-founder of UK company Unbound, 
>thinks so.
>
>Unbound Live is an event is hosted by Unbound, the crowd-funded 
>publishing house launched earlier this year in the UK, that 
>allows the public to pledge money for projects they would like 
>to see published. If enough money is raised, the books will be 
>published and those who pledge even a small amount will see 
>their names appear in the first editions.