Canadians: Now that summer’s over, it’s your last chance to select your favorite young adult reads in Indigo’s summerlong Teen Read Awards. They’re soliciting Canadians’ daily votes for great books for teens to read, as part of a longer and larger promotion of teen reading and literacy. I’m honored to note that my latest young adult novel For the Win is in the final heat!
Monthly Archives::
August 2010
Canadians: Now that summer’s over, it’s your last chance to select your favorite young adult reads in Indigo’s summerlong Teen Read Awards. They’re soliciting Canadians’ daily votes for great books for teens to read, as part of a longer and larger promotion of teen reading and literacy. I’m honored to note that my latest young adult novel For the Win is in the final heat!
I’ve just done the online checkin for my flight to Australia tomorrow for the Melbourne Writers’ Festival and the World Science Fiction Convention (also in Melbourne), so now seems like a good time to publish my schedule of appearances for the week that I’m there:
Melbourne Writers’ Festival:
Lecture, 1800h, Thursday, September 2, RMIT Capitol Theatre: Big Ideas: Copyright versus Creativity
(Note: the seminar announced for Sept 1 has been rescheduled; I’ll post here when I have the final info)
World Science Fiction Convention:
Border crossing: YA authors writing for adults and vice versa (Thursday, Sept 2, 1500h, Room 212)
Making a living: Professional writing for speculative fiction authors (Friday, Sept 3, 1200h, Room 219)
Copyright in the 21st Century (Saturday, Sept 4, 1000h, Room 203)
To market: How to sell your short stories (Saturday, Sept 4, 1100h, Room P3)
Did the future just arrive?: The e-book and the publishing industry (Saturday, Sept 4, 1300h, Room P3)
The writer and the audience: Online interaction and public personae (Saturday, Sept 4, 1500h Room 204)
Reading (Sunday, Sept 5, 1000h)
Kaffeeklatsch (Sunday, Sept 5, 1100h)
The future of short fiction (Monday, Sept 5, 1100h, Room 203
Dirty feed (Monday, Sept 5, 1200h, Room 210)
My August Publishers Weekly column reports in on my experiment to see which of the major ebook stores would carry my books without DRM, and with a text disclaimer at the beginning that released readers from the crazy, abusive license agreements that most of these stores demand as a condition of purchase. Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Kobo were all happy to carry my books without DRM, and on terms that gave you the same rights you got when buying paper editions. Sony and Apple refused to carry my books without DRM — even though my publisher and I both asked them to.
The upshot is that you can now buy electronic editions of my books in the Kindle, Nook and Kobo stores in DRM-free, EULA-free editions!
In May, I cornered Macmillan CEO John Sargent and CTO Fritz Foy at the Macmillan BEA party. As the publishers of my books with Tor, I asked them if they’d be willing to try offering my e-books to all the major online booksellers—Amazon’s Kindle store, Apple’s iPad store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook store, Sony’s e-book store, and Kobo—as DRM-free products with the following text inserted at the beginning of the file:
“If the seller of this electronic version has imposed contractual or technical restrictions on it such that you have difficulty reformatting or converting this book for use on another device or in another program, please visit http://craphound.com for alternate, open format versions, authorized by the copyright holder for this work, Cory Doctorow. While Cory Doctorow cannot release you from any contractual or other legal obligations to anyone else that you may have agreed to when purchasing this version, you have his blessing to do anything that is consistent with applicable copyright laws in your jurisdiction.”
As I explained to John and Fritz, although all my books are available as downloads for free, I often hear from readers who want to buy them, either because it is a simple way to compensate me (I also maintain a public list of schools and libraries who’ve solicited copies of my books so that grateful e-book readers can purchase and send a print copy to one of them, thus repaying my favor and doing a good deed at the same time) or because they like the no-hassle option of tapping on their device to buy a book. I am more than happy to offer my otherwise free books for sale in any vendor’s store, of course, but only if the vendors agree to carry them on terms I feel I can stand behind as an entrepreneur, as an artist, and as a moral actor.
