My amazing friend, Jason Griffey, has made an amazing little thing called LibraryBox. From the website:
LibraryBox v2.0 is a combination of a router (a variety of hardware will work), USB drive, and software that, when combined, give you a small, low powered webserver. The webserver acts like a captive portal, and delivers files that are stored on the USB drive.
In “captain dummy speak,” it is a device which creates its own wifi signal, allows users to log on to the signal, and then download any content on the device. It is completely open source and completely awesome. Libraries and educators around the world are using it to distribute books and class materials and to reach students in new ways.
I wanted to find a way for authors to use LibraryBox and I think I found a darn good one.
At the RWA (Romance Writers of America) Annual Conference in San Antonio starting on Thursday, July 24th, I will be walking around with a LibraryBox. I am starting on Thursday so it will not interfere with the Readers for Life Literacy sale on Wednesday.
Why should you care?
Everyone knows ARCs and free books are the things we love to give and receive at conferences. For indie authors or small pubs, this can be hard when most of their stock is ebooks. My LibraryBox will be a free, easy way for you to give copies out to people at the conference in real time to read, review, and rave over with almost no work on your part. Anytime I am at a conference event, I will have the LibraryBox on. Anyone with a wireless device (tablet, phone, etc.) can log on to the wifi signal the box creates and download books to read. LibraryBox keeps tabs on how many of each item is downloaded, but it does not track individual users due to privacy. At the end of each day, I will post the top 10 downloads. If you are an author or a publisher and you would like to participate, here are some FAQs you might want to know, be aware of, take heed of:
- In order to participate in this project, you must be the digital rights holder for the works you send me.
- This is for traditionally (with a publisher) or indie (self) published works. WIPs or manuscripts will not be accepted.
All files received for this project will be on this LibraryBox for the lifetime of the box, freely available. If this is a major sticking point, let’s talk about it.Updated: The RWA file on my LibraryBox will be deleted after the conference.- All books for this project will be in a folder marked “RWA2014” on the device listed in alpha order by author’s last name.
- Files should be in easily readable formats, like epub or pdf.
- There will be a page on this blog listing all the participating authors and publishers so readers and attendees can take a peek and so you can brag about it.
- I will in no way use the books sent to me for profit or in any way not specified in this blog post. Like any digital content, once it leaves my hands, I can not control it.
- You do not have to be attending RWA to have your book included!
Interested? Send me a copy of your book to mboule at gmail dot com. I will send a confirmation email when I receive your file.
I toyed around with dividing books by subgenre. Any thoughts on that? Opinions?
Questions? Ask them below.