News

Speaking on privacy at Battle of Ideas London this Sat

I'm speaking at London's Battle of Ideas this Saturday, Oct 31, on a panel called "Rethinking Privacy in an age of Disclosure and Sharing." The event goes 1:30-3:30 and there are still a few tickets left!

The increasing reach of information technology into all areas of life, from social networking websites to data sharing in public services, has thrown up a number of questions about privacy. Information about our medical records, financial circumstances and shopping habits is increasingly likely to be stored in electronic media that are out of our control. Some critics worry more about Tesco’s data-gathering than any ‘surveillance state’. The controversy about Google Maps’ Street View function, which captured thousands of unwitting people walking or standing on the streets, is a reminder that new technology constantly raises new questions about our privacy. So how worried should we be? Does the convenience of easily accessed information outweigh the danger of abuse? How are our conceptions of privacy changing? And following the success of the Pirate Party in Sweden, can we expect privacy to move up the political agenda in the UK too.

Rethinking Privacy in an age of Disclosure and Sharing

Free download of official Norwegian Little Brother

Samlaget, the Norwegian publisher for Little Brother, have released the full text of the book as a downloadable PDF. Samlaget have been incredibly forward-looking and a delight to work with. They brought me to Norway to participate in a debate on the future of copyright law at the Litteraturhuset, and my translator, editor, and publicist were all excited by the possibilities opened up by free digital distribution as a means to sell print books.

I often get asked why the foreign editions of my books aren't available as a free download and the answer is simple: I rarely have any direct contact with my non-English publishers, let alone the kind of close working relationship that has enabled me to sell my UK and US publishers on the idea. But every now and again, a publisher will be excited enough about this to opt to put materials online off their own bat, and this is always wonderful for me. Samlaget is one of those publishers; Ragnfrid, my editor there, was the first non-English-language editor to buy the rights to Little Brother, right after it was published in English (her husband downloaded a free copy from my site, and shoved it into her hands!).

Cory Doctorow Veslebror Ser Deg

CC licenses help readers, Part MMXII

Espen Andersen writes, "After buying 'Little Brother', I discovered that a page was torn out. Rather than exchange it, I just printed out the missing page from Cory's webpage."

Yet another argument for CC books

Little Brother wins the Sunburst Award!

I'm delighted and honored to announced that my YA novel Little Brother has won the 2009 Sunburst YA award for best Canadian sf novel for kids. The Sunburst is named for Phyllis Gottleib's first novel, my friend and the "mother of Canadian science fiction," who died this year, so it's especially poignant and significant to have won this in 2009. I also won the Sunburst in the adult category for my first short story collection, A Place So Foreign and Eight More.

My sincere thanks to the jury for making this book their choice, and to the donors who make the Sunburst possible.

Cool free cover-image for Little Brother from Wordle

Ross sez, "Recently, I stumbled upon a website called wordle.net, which creates images out of text files. The image is calculated in a histogram style, with words that appear more appearing larger than words that don't appear as often. I decided to hack the algorithm by pasting 'Little Brother Cory Doctorow' about a thousand times (don't worry- it wasn't labor intensive- I used gvim and the handy keyboard shortcuts) before the text of your novel to allow your name and the title to appear more prominently in the image, for those that are into that sort of thing. The wordles have a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, so I'm pretty sure they could be redistributed instead of your licensed cover art on freely downloadable versions, if you felt like it. The only caveat is that you need to attribute the image to wordle.net. The images I have attached are free for you to use. I'm not related to this website at all. I just thought it was cool."

Homemade Braille edition of Little Brother from Detroit public school teacher

Patricia Smith is a teacher of visually impaired students in Detroit's public school system. She mailed me a copy of my YA novel Little Brother that she had run off her school's Braille embosser and supplied to her students. She reports, "What I could not enclose is the gratitude from my Braille reading students. For various reasons, most books in Braille are aimed at younger children. My students are all between the ages of 12 and 15 and have no real interest in reading a Kindergarten level book. I was finally able to give them something interesting, compelling, and, most importantly at their grade level." Patricia notes that she was able to do this only because the text of the novel is available as a free, Creative Commons licensed download (though US copyright law grants her the right to prepare a Braille edition of any book, the cost of doing so from a traditional printed book is prohibitive, and converting from a DRM-crippled ebook is technically difficult).

Braille Little Brother, courtesy of Patricia Smith of the Detroit public school system, the office, Clerkenwell, London, UK

Fan-annotated site for Little Brother

@Halvais, a fan of my novel Little Brother, has set up a wiki-style site with the full text of the book for group annotation with links and commentary. Sweet!

W1N5T0N

Book-donation drive

In Canada, the US and the UK, kids will be going back to school in a short while, so now's a good time to remind you of the donation program for my books. Here's how it works: teachers, librarians (and others, like people who work in family shelters, halfway houses, prisons, etc) indicate that they'd like copies of my books for their classes or collections. Then, people like you order copies and have them sent straight to the teachers. I pay someone who checks out each donation solicitation to make sure that it's legit.

I do this in lieu of cash donations, because this has so many beneficial side effects: it registers as a sale, which means my publisher is happy; it supports booksellers (you can donate a copy from any bookseller that has a mail-order business), who are firmly on the side of the angels; it gets me a royalty and keeps my rapidly growing toddler in shoes and sailor suits; and, of course, it gets books into the hands of teachers, librarians, care-givers, case workers, and the kids, clients, and patrons they serve. It's a win all the way around (and yes, I'm thinking of ways to automate and expand this program to include other authors, possibly through a charity that can issue tax-receipts to donors, which would be just so kick-ass).

We've given hundreds of books to schools, libraries and other worthy institutions this way. For years, readers have asked me if they can donate cash to me because they've downloaded my books and don't need the physical objects. I'm really happy with this solution, even though to date it has made a small loss (it's not cheap to pay someone a fair wage to hand-write all the web-pages, and vet all the solicitation).

Donate Little Brother

Donate Content

Little Brother shortlisted for Canada’s Sunburst Award

The shortlists for Canada's Sunburst Award for best sf novel have been posted and I'm delighted to find that Little Brother made the young adult list! The prize is announced in September; it's a juried award (I was honored to win the prize for my first short story collection, A Place so Foreign and Eight More).

Shortlists for the 2009 Sunburst Awards

Get together July 9 in Chicago

I'll be in Chicago on July 9 to see a production of the highly praised theatrical adaptation of my novel Little Brother. The July 9 show is sold out (performances run until July 18), but Bill Massolia, who wrote the play and runs the company, has organized a get-together beforehand. If you're in Chicago, I'd love to see you and say hi!

Meet Cory Doctorow before the show.
July 9, 5:45pm to 7:00pm.

Jack's Bar & Grill/404 Wine Bar
2856 North Southport Ave. Chicago
773-404-8400

I love the name of the Wine Bar -- though I worry about it being not found.

Jack's 404

Little Brother, the play

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