I’m on the Unglue.it mailing list. There was a message from founder Eric Hellman in my inbox today letting me know that the world’s first unglued eBook, Oral Literature in Africa, is available in the iBookstore.

I took a few minutes to check the Swiss store, and sure enough there it was:

Since it has been unglued, I was able to download it for free. Here is a snap of the copyright page from iBooks.

Despite this, it seems that Amazon isn’t offering the book for free. According to Eric,

It’s also available in the Kindle Store. But there’s a problem. Amazon doesn’t like free ebooks. The lowest they’ll price it (without charging the publisher a fee for the download) is $1.99. But Amazon will lower the price to zero if other retailers offer it for free. So go ahead and click the “tell us about a lower price” link. The publisher has done that, and we’ve done that. We want it to be free there too!

I checked the Kindle store online. The eBook is priced at $2.43.

Ironically, the preview displays the copyright page, and right there in the preview, the link to Open Book Publishers is live. When you click, it will take you to the Oral Literature in Africa page where you can download a free Kindle version directly from their site.

Update, November 14: Since I received Michele’s comment, several people have reported on Twitter that Amazon has lowered the price of Oral Literature in Africa to $0 including Unglue.it. I’ve been able to confirm this on the Amazon Kindle Store search results page. On the book page however, Amazon is now showing me a price of $2.38. I don’t know why, but I suspect it might have something to do with my location. I’m accessing the Kindle Store from Switzerland.

Further reading:

Unglue.it “Unglues” Its First Book

Open Thread: Amazon Forces Unglue.it To Suspend Crowdfunding For Creative Commons eBooks