The next issue of Theatre Bay Area will feature the full text of Josh Costello’s theatrical adaptation of my novel Little Brother, which was incredibly well-received on stage in San Francisco last year.

My latest Guardian column, “Why the entertainment industry’s release strategy creates piracy,” looks at the weird entertainment industry practice of defending their right not to sell us the things we want to buy, and the rather more odious practice of asking the public to foot the bill for this strategy:

In a real marketplace, the ability of entertainment companies to stagger their releases would be curtailed by the willingness of customers to put profits ahead of their own desire to watch TV or movies when the rest of the world is talking about them on Twitter and Facebook – and not six months later, timed to coincide with a bank holiday. However, by equating watching TV at “the wrong time” with theft, the entertainment companies have been pretty successful in convincing politicians that the public should foot the bill for this decision through costly market interventions, up to and including a branch of the City of London police charged with finding copyright infringers.

Which brings us back to the empirical evidence on lawful alternatives and piracy rates. The fact that people eschew the black market when there is a legitimate alternative tells you that they’re not thieves looking to steal. Rather, like the notional customer who sneaks in her own fizzy drinks rather than paying for the cinema’s insane markups, they are potential customers whose purchases have been forfeited by a business that has violated rule number one: offer a product that people want to buy at the price they’re willing to pay.

Why the entertainment industry’s release strategy creates piracy

As I mentioned yesterday, the sequel to Little Brother is coming out in February. Called Homeland, it picks up the action shortly after Little Brother ends, and features the continuing and exciting adventures of the characters from the first book. Tor, my publisher, have posted the first cut at the 20-city US tour schedule (the Canadian dates are still TBD, as is a likely stop in Lawrence, KS). I’ll be on the road for most of February, and I’m visiting a lot of cities in the south and southwest where I’ve never appeared, so I’m looking forward to seeing some new faces!

Here’s a short list of the cities I’ll be visiting: Seattle, Portland OR (Beaverton), San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Tempe, Albuquerque, New York, Cincinnati (Crestview Hills KY), Miami (Coral Gables), Chapel Hill, Decatur, Oxford MS, Memphis, New Orleans, Houston, Austin, Nashua NH, Portsmouth NH, Concord NH, Washington DC, and Cambridge MA. Like I say, those are the confirmed stops, but there are more to come, and Tor will be keeping the master list at the link below.

Mark your calendars and spread the word!

Homeland Tour

Color me deee-lighted: the notoriously hard-to-please Kirkus Reviews just published a review of Homeland, the sequel to my novel Little Brother, and they loved it. After a glowing recap of the plot, they said,

Such nerd-favorite icons
as 3-D printers, Wil Wheaton and /My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic/
serve as in-jokes, but the concise explanations of real-world
technology and fast pace make it accessible to less technologically
savvy readers.

Outstanding for its target audience, and even those outside Doctorow’s
traditional reach may find themselves moved by its call to action.