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Cory Doctorow Releases 'Eastern Standard Tribe'
OrenWolf writes "Cory Doctorow (of EFF and Boing Boing fame), has released his second novel, Eastern Standard Tribe today.. it should be showing up in bookstores shortly.
As with his earlier work, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, Cory has made the whole text of the novel available as a free download "in a variety of open, standards-defined formats, under the terms of a Creative Commons license."
Cory also has a writeup "explaining why I've done it: in a nutshell, this worked really well for my first book, and I'd be crazy not to repeat the experiment with my second novel.""
Is this Open Source thing catching on? I have no idea where this is heading but this is surely a writer that is looking forward instead of backwards. I'm not sure Cory Doctorow knows what this will bring but is willing to take a chance - just as a visionary is supposed to. Is this the new revolution? Open Source code, Open Source books, the free flow of ideas and art throughout society. The revolution has started and it's free.
Stay tuned for new sig...
I've just published my first book with Insurgent Productions and the contract leaves me a whole lot of flexibility as per promotion and manipulation of the content.
[shameless plug]The book is for sale at frankduff.com[/shameless plug]
I am currently wrestling with the idea of releasing the full e-text. I intend to do so eventually, but am worried that if I do so in conjunction with the print release it might seriously affect sales, particularly since the website is one of my main retail points and the novel is short enough to reasonably read on a screen.
lysergically yours
From the webpage:
I don't believe that there's any market-demand for teasers or for "Digital Rights Management" technology: [...] so I'm giving this novel to you in three open and flexible formats"
If you want to, go ahead and buy a copy and I'll get my royalty. But there's no obligation on you to buy it if you've read -- you're not ripping me off -- [...] I'm not in competition with my publisher here.
Good to see that there are a few authors and publishers out there that knows that giving away free downloads do not hurt sales -- if the book is good it will most likely sell more. (see Baen Free Library).
As for Doctorow, I enjoyed Down and Out, so I'll surely give this a try.
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
Being "mentally ill" and therefore poor, I tend to pirate books a lot. I like to read, I can't afford books, and going to the library can be both stressful and embarrassing. People like Cory make my day. I just downloaded both books and am about to start reading down and out. Again, Thanks!
"I intend on figuring out the way that some writers--that this writer, right here, wearing my underwear--is going to get rich and famous from his craft. I intend on figuring out how this writer's words can become part of the social discourse, can be relevant in the way that literature at its best can be."
"I don't know what the future of book looks like. To figure it out, I'm doing some pretty basic science. I'm peering into this opaque, inscrutable system of publishing as it sits in the year 2004, and I'm making a perturbation. I'm stirring the pot to see what surfaces, so that I can see if the system reveals itself to me any more thoroughly as it roils. Once that happens, maybe I'll be able to formulate an hypothesis and try an experiment or two and maybe--just maybe--I'll get to the bottom of book- in-2004 and beat the competition to making it work, and maybe I'll go home with all (or most) of the marbles."
It seems very much to me like he's interested in the future possibilities of publishing as art form and lucrative career... A very important part of the latter is the economics and relationships of publishing and e-publishing. I'm simply raising the obvious question of quantifying and comparing the data for discussion. Are there ingenious schemes anyone can think of to do so?
-Trick
So just to be evil, how much money has Mr. Doctorow made from his books? In other words, has the experiment been "worth it", or does he have to do other things to supplant his income (aka "have a real job").
I just downloaded both, and plan to give them a read on Mr. Palm Pilot and if I like them, I'll probably buy Meatspace versions for family on holidays, but I'd be fascinated to see what the "download-to-purchase" ratio is.
It's the same kind of model we see in places like Megatokyo, Penny-Arcade, etc - free content with physical goods (books, T-shirts, posters, etc) being the actual income. Makes you wonder if Doctorow's endeavors are as successful, and if he should sell a T-shirt.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
dead tree versions have other advantages as well over pda's/mobile devices, like looking cool on your shelf and reminding yourself that they exist. Can't afford too many at the moment though, which is a shame.
that said, I read the latest harry potter last summer from the screen of a nokia 3650. and yes it was more convinient than the dead tree version(which of I have access to as well so it didn't really hurt any sales either), the paper version is unnecessary thick, so thick that it's not comfortable to read or carry around in travel luggage(in trains, busses& etc that I sat in a bit during the summer). that and the fact that the text would fit in a book that had half the pages if it was in different font, but it seems like it's thick for marketing purposes(and to justify greater price I suppose).
I also read a bunch of other books with it.. it was really handy since I whenever I had just a slight pause in what I was doing or was just having idle chatter with somebody I could just keep reading.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I've d/l'd a couple of versions (see other posts for why) and started reading the first book, but just didn't find it that engaging, nor to have any new ideas.
Hasn't that story (future w/ immortal people who can do pretty much anything and are pretty much totally out-of-touch w/ the past) already been told in Roger Zelazny's _Elegy for Angels and Dogs_ (and reprised in Walter Jon Williams' sequel _The Graveyard Heart_)? (the twain were published as a Tor Double, but not in the way cool upside down / double book format since one was a sequel of the other).
I read through the first few pages of the other story, but just not finding much of interest there either.
Anyone want to reassure me that they're worth the effort to read, or warn me away from wasting any further time / effort?
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
Of course, there are also some third party writers of various quality that are not so free (especially under windows). It's also good to note that under OSX, "printing" to pdf is a standard feature.
Be glad life is unfair, otherwise we'd deserve all this.
Could someone explain to me what the "uthor" mentioned on the cover of this new book is?
I didn't even know he stopped posting here. =)
You can specifically turn off stories from editors that piss you off. Katz was the first to go, followed closely by chrisd.
I wonder if you can block stories based on the appearance of specific strings in the titles. I, for one, would love to see a front page without stories whose titles contain the words "Groklaw", "SCO", "Microsoft" or "mp3 player."
The only surefire protection against Microsoft infections is abstinence. - The Onion
Edgy is probably the wrong word for your book. Disgusting is probably much more appropriate.
And yet... I read it. The whole thing, cover-to-cover (well, virtual cover, anyway). The idea and implementation were compelling, and as you backed off over the second half and began to deal more with ramifications of a death-obsessed (well, virtual death-obsessed) society, I began to enjoy it more, and realized the graphic violence towards the start was necessary.
I ended up walking away after reading it, thinking "what a powerful novelette". It ranked right up there from the "changing the way I look at life" with The Bicentennial Man, Ender's Game, and the original Foundation trilogy. Even the preservation of life, taken to an extreme, can become an evil thing.
Yet it still grossed me out for the first half. And I wouldn't buy it in a dead-tree edition, simply because I wouldn't want my kids to touch it until they are at least 16 or so. Isn't that odd.
Oh, and back on-topic, I'm planning on reading Doctorow's book. So far, free musical content has caused me to purchase quite a few music albums I'd never have thought of otherwise, mostly from small local bands; I'm eager to see if it works the same way on me for books.
Matthew P. Barnson
I learn what I think when I read what I write
What you have described seems to be how the US copyright system was designed. Copyrights exist for a limited amount of time so the author gets paid and encourage new materials to be written, and then public domain after a short period of time. The problem was that the copyright period kept getting extended thanks to the influence of powerful media megacorps. But since the USA exports a hell of a lot of crap that depends on these expanded copyright laws, I don't think they'll be returning copyright laws to their its anytime soon.
501 Not Implemented
For me, at least.
Now that the rah rah posts have run their course (open source! sharing! vive la revolution!) let me provide my point of view as a reader.
I would rather pay for a book (or check it out from a library) than download it for free.
I am happy to pay money for a book because I get a book. Along with the book comes the convenience of reading in bed, on the couch, on the train...pretty much anywhere there is light. Sure, an ebook reader would give me that (more if it's backlit, less if you read at the beach) but then there's the satisfaction of holding a book, flipping through the pages, smelling that new (or old) book smell. The physical book adds value to the text and is worth paying for.
Would authors sell more books if they gave away their first few books for free? Who can know? A lot of dot com companies tried to give away services in the hopes of converting free users into paying users, but I don't know if the same model applies.
To be honest, I do consider "virii" a "real" word. It is an irregular plural form of the english word "virus". It just is not justified by latin language rules, but then again, it doesn't have to. I just pity the etymologists that wonder about the origins of this form in a few centuries - somehow I doubt that they will consider slashdot trolls and similarly stupid online publications as the real source, although they actually are.
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
Because it's from an author who, for the second time, is releasing his book under a "some rights reserved" license, for free, and this hasn't hurt past book sales.
Since both of his books have been released using this method, the above is unprovable. His sales may have been considerably better had he not released it online too.