By Maria Fernanda Rodrigues

This post comes from our sister site, PublishNews Brazil:

The university press Fundação Editora Unesp joined the digital era by going beyond merely digitizing its books: in March 2010, it released a free digital collection of unpublished papers and thesis written by its teachers and students. During the last year Unesp registered 50,000 downloads of the first 44 e-books. It’s an extraordinary boost to the authors whose books would likely have otherwise spent years in limbo waiting for an opportunity to be published or else gathered dust. Last week, Unesp added an additional 50 titles to the catalogue. Their goal is to release 1,000 e-books in 10 years.