About this project
$12,214
389
Help us rescue unique, out-of-print adventure stories from copyright limbo and make them available online and as e-books!
Our Big Idea is a simple one, but we think it’s pretty great. And apparently, the Internet agrees! Check out our first project, Save the Sci Fi - now in it's second year, and still going strong!
You see, we love books. A lot. New and old (but mostly old), any era, any genre. Take Adventure – now that's a genre. Once the bread and butter of popular pulp fiction, adventure stories offer escape from the ordinary, transporting readers into worlds bursting with high seas thrills, Amazonian man hunts, hot pursuit of buried treasure, sweaty knife fights – earthly excitements of all persuasions - like these! But in a war of attrition with radio, film and TV, adventure literature eventually bid a gradual retreat from popular memory, leaving countless world-famous titles of yore out of print, out of circulation, and unavailable in any digital format.
Now that just doesn't seem right. Adventure doesn't retire to a quiet life of bingo nights and prune juice! Adventure gets back in the saddle, back on the water, back up the mountain, back where the action is. And that's where we come in: bringing adventure back, one book at a time!
Here's the plan: Each month we’ll choose one great classic, obscure or otherwise fascinating adventure book no longer in print and not available online, track down the author (if they’re still around) and/or copyright holder, clear the copyright, and publish the title as an e-book. Every book will come with newly imagined cover art and editor's notes sharing what we learned about the book, the author and their history along the way.
But before the adventure begins, we need your help! Your support allows us to rescue a year's worth of adventure titles (one a month) by providing for the following:
* Acquiring and sifting through forgotten treasures among many, many paper copies of old, out of print adventures books
* Expanding our website to allow display and delivery of our adventure library to supporters like you
* Building another open source book scanner (see http://www.diybookscanner.org/ for an example) to increase our ability to convert forgotten pulp into digital formats
* Covering costs associated with tracking down rightsholders, authors and/or their estates, as well as clearing electronic publishing rights to orphaned books
* Covering costs associated with legal work done by our attorneys, all of whom are generously contributing their time pro bono (we’re trying to keep our costs as low as possible)
* Spreading the word to potential supporters who love great books and ideas (may include attending conventions, creating t-shirts, prints and anything else we can think of)
Rescuing out-of-print and otherwise orphaned books by bringing them into the digital domain is more than a labor of love – it's our life's work. Please help us continue preserving the past for the future. Because Singularity (&Co) loves company!
Risks and challenges
Luckily, as this project parallels our Save the Sci Fi Kickstarter campaign, we're very familiar with the challenges that come with meeting our goals, and confident we can tackle them well.
The greatest challenge of our last project was fulfilling shipments of physical prizes, a process we've since been able to streamline.
The other big challenge was clearing books in time to publish one each month. This time, we've given ourselves a little leeway there by pre-clearing three books, giving us a time cushion to find, clear, and publish more titles in a timely manner!
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Funding period
- (45 days)