Cory Doctorow has a Kickstarter for an audiobook edition of the third Little Brother novel

[frauenfelder]

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/09/08/cory-doctorow-has-a-kickstarte.html

…

[Ken_Flowers]

Thousands of self-published authors take the risk of funding an audio version for their books. Sometimes they do that with pre-orders, but still, they take the risk based on the quality of their work. I would guess that Corey already knows the audio book will sell enough to pay for its production. I’m missing the point of a kickstarter here.

[everdred]

@Ken_Flowers

I’m missing the point of a kickstarter here.

Perhaps to call attention to the issue with Audible?

[Ken_Flowers]

Which works better than paying upfront and selling direct, how?

[buddybradley]

um, did you actually read the post and watch the video?

@frauenfelder

Which is where you come in: if you help me pre-sell a ton of ebooks and audiobooks through this crowdfunder, it will show publishing that readers are willing to buy their ebooks and audiobooks without enriching a monopolist, even if it means an extra click or two.

and as always with Cory, it comes down to his hatred of DRM and sticking by his principles no matter what

[politeruin]

What they said.

But also… Cory has admitted his finances aren’t great at the moment what with a pandemic cancelling his speaking gigs and whatnot. He could solve that immediately if he was willing to go with audible but i admire him sticking to his principles here and finding another way. The other thing is that pre-orders for authors go a long way to showing publishers there’s a captive audience willing to buy your stuff, as he says. Anyway, great to see he’s already blown well past his goal.

[bexwhitt]

Amber Benson did a great job with John Scalzi’s locked in books, I’m looking forward to this.

[bexwhitt]

Audible is an Amazon company, you can understand his reluctance.

[willmore]

Why isn’t Cory posting this here himself? Why are people always posting about things he’s doing? Is he no longer a contributor to BB?

[dfaris]

Aside from a couple of book reviews, Cory stopped posting here some time ago. No official word as to why he left. Previously.

[willmore]

Thanks, I searched the BBS a while back to see if I missed anything official, but I missed that thread–not surprising as it looks like it got hijacked three ways from Sunday.

[politeruin]

I’m amazed how much he’s already raised in just 2 days, though as he says it’s not about the money it’s about sending the message that selling outside of audible can be a feature and not a bug.