Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Jan. 11th, 2003 03:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robotech_masterI've just submitted this to Plastic; figured I should go ahead and link it here since I've been intending to write something about this book here anyway, and this beats writing it twice.
Following in the footsteps of print-and-e-publisher Jim Baen (see this Plastic story), SF author, EFF member, and weblogger Cory Doctorow has placed the complete text of his first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, on-line under a Creative Commons license that allows free copying and distribution by peer-to-peer, but no commercial use or derivative works.
And contrary to the conventional wisdom, giving the book away seems to be bringing it no small measure of success. Doctorow says in a recent weblog entry that the book was downloaded 20,000 times in the first 24 hours, and was up to Amazon sales rank 304. (In the hours since then, the it has fluctuated between 400 and 600.) Readers have donated conversions of the book into formats ranging from HTML to PalmDoc to Newton.
Conventional wisdom says that authors should try to prevent their works from ending up on peer to peer?that nobody will want to buy something they can download for free. Yet, in practice, that doesn't seem to be the case. Often, people who wouldn't pay for an e-book because they don't like screen reading will still read enough to decide they want to read the whole thing in paper, then go off to buy it. Or people might decide to read the whole thing on-line, but buy a copy to stick on their shelves to look nice, or as gifts for friends. People who might never have picked up a book by an unknown author in the store will pick it up on-line because there is almost no effort or risk involved. And that builds word of mouth, which is what every author needs. (For more on this means of building up word of mouth, see some of Eric Flint's rants in the Free Library.)
But more than that, Doctorow wants to leverage the power of peer to peer for his works in just the way Harlan Ellison is trying to fight against for his. In his preface, Doctorow states:
(And Doctorow isn't even the first to try this: Baen's Honor Harrington CD-ROM, released with War of Honor, comes with blanket permission to make and share copies. The disk, containing 37 1/3 e-books, has been posted to USENET, shared on peer-to-peer, and hosted on the web.)
One could make the case that in this era of contracting midlists, when authors of books that only sell decently have a hard time getting published, unknown authors have to resort to unusual methods to get noticed?be it giving the book away free, or just creating a highly-addictive web game based on it (as the author of the soon-to-be-released Jennifer Government has). But will this continue to be enough? Or will even these efforts get lost in the shuffle when everybody is doing it? Time will tell.
Following in the footsteps of print-and-e-publisher Jim Baen (see this Plastic story), SF author, EFF member, and weblogger Cory Doctorow has placed the complete text of his first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, on-line under a Creative Commons license that allows free copying and distribution by peer-to-peer, but no commercial use or derivative works.
And contrary to the conventional wisdom, giving the book away seems to be bringing it no small measure of success. Doctorow says in a recent weblog entry that the book was downloaded 20,000 times in the first 24 hours, and was up to Amazon sales rank 304. (In the hours since then, the it has fluctuated between 400 and 600.) Readers have donated conversions of the book into formats ranging from HTML to PalmDoc to Newton.
Conventional wisdom says that authors should try to prevent their works from ending up on peer to peer?that nobody will want to buy something they can download for free. Yet, in practice, that doesn't seem to be the case. Often, people who wouldn't pay for an e-book because they don't like screen reading will still read enough to decide they want to read the whole thing in paper, then go off to buy it. Or people might decide to read the whole thing on-line, but buy a copy to stick on their shelves to look nice, or as gifts for friends. People who might never have picked up a book by an unknown author in the store will pick it up on-line because there is almost no effort or risk involved. And that builds word of mouth, which is what every author needs. (For more on this means of building up word of mouth, see some of Eric Flint's rants in the Free Library.)
But more than that, Doctorow wants to leverage the power of peer to peer for his works in just the way Harlan Ellison is trying to fight against for his. In his preface, Doctorow states:
What?s more, P2P nets kick all kinds of ass. Most of the books, music and movies ever released are not available for sale, anywhere in the world. In the brief time that P2P nets have flourished, the ad-hoc masses of the Internet have managed to put just about everything online. What?s more, they?ve done it for cheaper than any other archiving/revival effort ever. I?m a stone infovore and this kinda Internet mishegas gives me a serious frisson of futurosity.Elsewhere, Doctorow has said that the whole story of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is a kind of parable of Napster, the way his short story 0wnz0red was a parable about trusted computing. What better way to drive that home than to make that a method by which the book was available?
Yeah, there are legal problems. Yeah, it?s hard to figure out how people are gonna make money doing it. Yeah, there is a lot of social upheaval and a serious threat to innovation, freedom, business, and whatnot. It?s your basic end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenario, and as a science fiction writer, end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenaria are my stock-in-trade.
(And Doctorow isn't even the first to try this: Baen's Honor Harrington CD-ROM, released with War of Honor, comes with blanket permission to make and share copies. The disk, containing 37 1/3 e-books, has been posted to USENET, shared on peer-to-peer, and hosted on the web.)
One could make the case that in this era of contracting midlists, when authors of books that only sell decently have a hard time getting published, unknown authors have to resort to unusual methods to get noticed?be it giving the book away free, or just creating a highly-addictive web game based on it (as the author of the soon-to-be-released Jennifer Government has). But will this continue to be enough? Or will even these efforts get lost in the shuffle when everybody is doing it? Time will tell.
