About this project
Hello, we are Michael and Rebecca, and we would like to welcome you to our Kickstarter project: Leebre.org, a web application that will encourage Creative Commons novels and provide resources for independent authors.
What Will Leebre.org Offer
Following the evolution of the publishing industry, Leebre.org will empower a community of readers and writers interested in alternative publishing tools. It will feature a community-oriented web interface, donation buttons for authors, online and mobile readers, bios, book previews, and a purchase link to print on demand services. The donate button will also allow authors to redirect donations to their favorite social cause or NGO.
When uploading a book, then, authors will be able to choose either to have their donations sent to (1) a cause or (2) simply themselves. Authors will also have access to free, easy tools that will allow them to design their work with beautiful, professional typesetting. All books uploaded to Leebre could be downloaded fully in various e-reader formats, or read online.
Please watch the video for a tour of some of Leebre's features!
Why Support and Join Leebre
There is currently a renewed interest in e-books with the popularity of various devices. However, there is currently no high-quality online publishing option for independent authors. We have spoken and worked with many authors, and they are all in agreement that no service like Leebre exists for authors, and that they would earnestly like such a method for exposure like this.
Leebre, then, will be particularly useful when it comes to expanding an author's audience and allowing readers to directly contact and support their favorite writers. Besides contributing to improving literacy and encouraging creative thinking, Leebre will also allow its community of writers and readers to effectively make a difference in society by supporting philanthropic causes of their choice.
Features
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Author blog syndication, so readers can keep up with their favorite authors, and authors can engage readers in their existing blogs (via RSS, so Blogspot / Wordpress is supported). (We didn't have time to show this in the video.)
- Make elegant easy, allowing authors to avoid the fuss of reformatting their novel.
- Leebre.org has a 100% dedication to the community and free software. It is built with free software (Django), and will be developed on public repositories. There will never be ads, or any other sort of compromise of the site's mission.
- Leebre is mostly finished! As you can see from the video, I already got started with a prototype. With your support, I can get a high-quality server and turn this prototype into a finished product as quickly as a month's time.
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Winning combination: communities for CC music, such as Jamendo or Magnatune, have been very successful. We're taking this successful formula and applying it to fiction.
Planned features
- Crowd-sourced editing, to give independent authors the same advantages that authors get from traditional publishing, giving them feedback and proofreading that they could not get otherwise.
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Online creativity workshops will allow authors to get a similar experience to creative writing workshops in college courses, by utilizing the editing tools just among friends in a group. This would also allow professors of creative writing courses to leverage the web for in person workshops, providing bigger audiences to students in existing fiction workshops.
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Internationalization is a major planned feature. Rebecca will provide a Brazilian Portuguese translation, and facilitate a launch in Brazil. Even the title is intended to be understandable in several Latin-based languages (Spanish speakers may see it as a "leer+libre", Portuguese as "lêem+livre", and so on). As with crowd-sourcing editing, popular books may be "crowd-traslated" into other languages, giving independent authors the possibility of international impact.
- Graphic novels and illustrations may come along further down the road. Connecting artists with authors could create amazing collaborative works.
Timeline
Leebre is mostly done already. What we need to do now is to set it up on a good server. If you Kickstart us, we can hit the ground running with the virtual private server required to run Leebre, and get a Beta version of the website available immediately after the Kickstarter deadline in the first half of February.
Questions,
Comments
Feel free to contact me with any questions, or ideas. If you are interested in liberating fiction with free, social publishing, support Leebre. Thank you.
CC notice: the stock photo used in Leebre is generously under a CC license and was originally made by Thyago - SORG|FX.
FAQ
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When uploading books, you can select from the suite of Creative Commons licenses to license your work. Also, with the feature to support charities and causes, we hope eventually even well-established authors may consider releasing work under CC licenses. Furthermore, it respects other people's licenses: the cover designer can include a separate CC license for the image used, which is included in all subsequent distributions. Planned features include the cover designer also integrating CC image searches, and then offer to import directly the image and license into the cover.
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No. Leebre itself is only for e-books. That being said, it will help you format your book for a 3rd party print-on-demand services such as LuLu, and then provide a place to link to purchase a hard-copy of the book.
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Nope! Leebre will remain both free and ad-free.
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Sure! Leebre even lets you place a purchase link on the Leebre book page, so if you are selling it at a print on demand service such as LuLu or as a e-book on an online store, you can use your Leebre page to promote the paid edition. Also, one planned feature is a book widget for blogs. With this, you will be able to promote your book by embedding it elsewhere!
For more information on Creative Commons, please see their page: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
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Currently the only social media integration is the ability to Like and Tweet books and news stories. These features weren't shown in the video. More social media integration is planned, though, including widgets and plug-ins!
Have a question? If the info above doesn't help, you can ask the project creator directly.
142
Backers
$3,431
pledged of $3,000 goal
0
seconds to go
Funding Successful
This project successfully raised its funding goal on January 31.
Pledge $5 or more Pledge $5 or more
Earliest possible account (that is, a "Beta" account), and your name in the credits on the website.
Pledge $25 or more Pledge $25 or more
The above, a stylish Leebre bookmark, showing that you support free e-books, and a personal "thank you" letter from the team.
Pledge $70 or more Pledge $70 or more
All of the above, a personal thank you call from the team, and a custom memory card mailed to you, already filled with free Leebre fiction ready for your e-book reader or computer (as soon as we reach 500 stories, or another milestone of your choosing).
Pledge $175 or more Pledge $175 or more
All of the above, and a Leebre book of your choice printed and mailed to you, license permitting.
Project By
Connected as Michael Bethencourt (127 friends)
Michael Bethencourt is a professional programmer and web designer, having worked in the past for companies such as Facebook and Microsoft. He graduated in 2011 from University of Wisconsin-Madison with a CS degree, and likes free and indy video games, free music, and free beer.
Rebecca Carvalho is a published Brazilian author of both fiction and non-fiction, and freelance journalist. She graduated in 2011 from Lawrence University with a B.A. in English, and likes pens, journals, and cats. (=^_^=)
