All these days, LibriVox has given us so much. So many lovely, professional-quality, beautiful, charming, touching, humorous, awesome recordings. So many stories. So many old books and classics we never could've gotten otherwise.
LibriVox has done so much for me. Without LibriVox, I would never have known that I could coordinate things and handle the web without breaking any code. I never knew I could have fun and still do something useful. It has given me so much, it has given me confidence, joy and a sense of achievement. Nothing else has done that for me. No one else has done that for me.
Now, we get to give something back.
Here's Hugh's message.
Dearest LibriVox listeners, volunteers, & supporters:
For four-and-a-half years, LibriVox volunteers have been making audiobooks for the world to enjoy, and giving them away for free. We’ve made thousands of free audiobooks that have been downloaded by millions of people; our site gets 400,000 visitors every month. To date, all our costs have been borne by a few individuals, with some generous donations from partners. However, these costs have become too big.
LibriVox needs your help.
We’re asking for donations for the following:
- to cover hosting costs for our website (about $5,000/year)*, which includes:
- the site you are reading now;
- the forum;
- the wiki;
- the catalog;
- a whole lot of back-end software to host and process audio before it goes to the Internet Archive
- but does NOT include hosting audio files which is done by Archive.org
- to redesign the site and improve its accessibility
- to make the LibriVox catalog easier for listeners to use
- to make the management software easier for admins to use
We expect this fund-raising drive to sustain us for three years at least.
Your donation will support the work of our volunteers.
Our fundraising goal is $20,000. After we reach it, we’ll shut down our fundraising campaign. And we hope we can make it another 4.5 years without having to bother you again!
- Visit the Internet Archive donation page (the Internet Archive, a registered US charity and friend of LibriVox, is managing our fundraising campaign)
- Select a donation method** (Justgive.org, Paypal, or Check)
- Be sure to write: “Donation for LibriVox” along with your donation (otherwise we won’t get the donation!)
- Don’t forget to write: “Donation for LibriVox” along with your donation!
*NOTE: From our great sysadmin Dan, regarding server costs:
For a variety of reasons, we require a full dedicated server, or at least a very high-end VM with several hundred GB of storage. Though we don’t host the files for end-user download, we do provide an uploading service which book contributors use to share individual chapters and other similar things.
Combine that with lots of wordpress/phpBB modifications, and pretty high wordpress/phpBB traffic, and we fill up a server pretty fast.
In short: Hundreds of GB storage + ~1800 gigabytes Internet transfer per month + heavy MySQL usage adds up to a pretty expensive server or high-end VM. Note that none of this includes projected growth, we will need more resources soon, and that’s also a factor in the dollar amount Hugh mentioned.
I’d also like to point out that the figure does not cover sysadmin support. I work for free. And my job is a lot harder when I have to deal with an intermediary sysadmin, which some hosting companies force upon you. Where we are right now, I myself am root.
**NOTE: From the Internet Archive (who is kindly administering this campaign for us): Please reassure your donors that we do not sell our mailing list nor send unsolicited mail out.
Love you, LibriVox!
Go volunteers and listeners! We can do this!
