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Cory Doctorow Calls Death To Music, Movies, Print
An anonymous reader writes "Boing Boing editor Cory Doctorow depicts an unfortunate near-future for a handful of media industries being transformed or killed by the Internet. Predicting a large-scale transformation of the music, movie, book, and newspaper industry, Doctorow says, 'The Internet chews up media and spits them out again. Sometimes they get more robust. Sometimes they get more profitable. Sometimes they die.' While the Internet has the potential to help the dying book industry, for example, Doctorow predicts the 'imminent collapse' of the American newspaper industry because advertisers are uninterested in spending money on the remaining offline readership, such as senior citizens, who prove less valuable."
It's had multiple print runs, been published in both the US and the UK, where they've sold well, and has been nominated for and granted a range of literary awards.
For chrissakes, sales volume is not about quality; Lynne Spears' (no doubt ghostwritten) crap go on there higher than he did. Little Brother went on at #14, then #9, then barely crawled up to #8, probably in sole part because every boingboing reader with spawn anywhere within 2-3 degrees of themselves (ie, the neighbor's kid, their coworker's sister's kid, etc) bought a copy and forced it on the poor kid's parents, who most likely said "a book about a kid who gets interrogated by DHS? And starts hacking stuff?" and chucked it in the can and thankfully gave their kid some quality YA literature. His work is such a piece of shit, he had to get boingboing readers to buy copies and GIVE THEM to libraries because they wouldn't buy/print copies of their own:
My sincere thanks to all of you who talked about the book, gave it to your friends, sent it to teachers and librarians, and downloaded it -- you all helped make this the first-ever Creative Commons-licensed novel to get on the NYT list!
How fucking sad is that? If he wasn't editor of boingboing, nobody would have given the book even a first glance. Same as if Cmdr Taco wrote a book- it'd only have a prayer because of slashdot readers.
Also: FOUR HUNDRED PAGES. Jesus christ!
Checking the Boston Public Library catalog, all but one of the NINE copies in the system are sitting on the shelves.
Please help metamoderate.