It’s been about 9 days since I released my half-new novel Biodigital via Unglue.it’s “buy to unglue” program under which books are put Creative Commons and made available for free download after a sales target (or default date) has been reached. My books Acts of the Apostles, Cheap Complex Devices and The Pains have been under Creative Commons for some time; last week I made them available though Unglue.it’s new “Thanks for Ungluing” program as a way to try to collect a few $$ from souls of goodwill who contribute for books that are already freely available. JohnSundman.com was launched at the same time.
I think it’s safe to say that as of now, banking on revenue from Unglue.it does not seem to be a wise retirement strategy for me. I’ve taken in about $100 from all four books combined. A few people have tweeted or blogged it, including John Biggs at Techcrunch, but in general the reaction to the Unglue.it announcements from the world at large has been pretty muted.
However, the nice thing about ebooks and ebook platforms is that once you go to the trouble to put your book “out there”, you don’t have to do anything to keep them there. Acts of the Apostles, now nearly 15 years old, has found an audience. So has Cheap Complex Devices, though its audience is smaller. The Pains has not yet developed much of a following, though I remain confident that it someday will. And as for Biodigital, who knows? I hope that it will find readers, but right now it’s available exclusively on Unglue.it, which is a pretty obscure site. After a month or two I’ll make it more widely available. But in any event I’ll be increasingly focusing my attentions on Creation Science, and looking forward, not back.